What is, in your opinion, the most important tool in your makerspace? You are far off if you think it’s the laser cutter or the 3D printer.
You can probably tell by looking at the image illustrating this post so I will tell you straight up front. The most important tool of any school makerspace is the good old pencil.
And I don‘t mean it philosophically. I mean actual pencils, the ones we write and draw on paper. Those! And you need lots of them for your students.
Yes, we want our students to master computer-aided design tools, digital fabrication machines, and microcontrollers so they can be comfortable using any technology.
But if there is one tool they should master first, it’s the pencil.
The pencil is the quintessential tool that helps designers, writers, artists, and anyone creative to jot down ideas and sketch out visions for our future.
And there are two reasons why no one talks about the pencil. First, it’s not as shiny as other equipment in a Makerspace. Second, many educators think they are not very good at drawing and sketching.
I wasn’t always comfortable using a pencil.
When I was a kid, like many other children, I loved to draw.
Throughout my school years, I kept my interest in drawing, even though I was not particularly good at it, especially when trying to draw realistic images.
In design university, my relationship with drawing changed.
I lost my confidence while watching many students with far better skills than mine.
I held onto the popular idea that you do not have to be good at drawing to be a good designer. Instead of practicing and trying to get better at it, I developed myself using digital tools to visualize my ideas.
It was only when I started working as a junior product designer that I saw how important and valuable hand drawing is.
The pace in design companies is fast. As a product designer, I always ran against the clock to generate as many creative ideas as possible for clients.
It’s not unusual to receive a design brief where you aim to develop 20 new concepts for a new product and to hear your manager tell you that all you have is 12 hours, including research, brainstorming, concept definition, and presenting your designs.
It was in this setting that I learned:
There is no faster and more efficient way to generate and communicate ideas than using a pencil.
Most importantly, It is a skill that can be learned and developed.
The pencil is the best friend of creative thinking.
One thing a lot of people do not realize is that most of the value of knowing how to draw comes not from the ability to generate beautiful or realistic illustrations but from its potential to support our thinking process.
By asking our students to put their ideas on paper, we are helping them to think. By trying to represent what they are trying to achieve visually, they improve each of their ideas because they can see it with their own eyes and reflect on it.
Because sketching an idea by hand takes very little time, it also encourages the exploration of different solutions to it.
When you are bound to draw with a computer, the time needed to make changes to it is so high that you end up discouraged from deviating from the design path chosen at first. This stiffens creativity. You stay where you are.
„The computer dictates how you do something, whereas with a pencil, you are totally free“
James Dyson
So, if you want your students to explore different ways of designing something, get them to draw their ideas with a pencil before opening up any design software.
Quick pencil sketches help us communicate our ideas.
It turns out that it is not only in design companies that the skill of sketching or drawing by hand is welcomed.
Whatever the professional path our students choose, they will be faced with countless situations where they will have to defend their ideas in a meeting or explain to a colleague how a specific problem might be solved.
In any of these situations, quickly using a pencil to sketch a solution is of enormous value.
How to encourage your students to draw and sketch
Now that you read just how important the pencil is for the creative process, I want to share some ideas you can adopt to promote its use in your school:
- Fill every corner of the room with anything that can be used as a pencil: Markers, Pens, Drawing Pastels.
- Make no shortage of plain paper to go with it. Make it easy for your students to draw their ideas.
- Whenever your students tell you about something they are excited about, ask them to show it by sketching it out. Create a culture of sketching.
- Ask your students to draw what they want to make before using any of the machines in your makerspace. You will be surprised by what that makes to their creativity.
- Celebrate every drawing made. Put them on the wall if you can. Remember, it is not about the artistic quality of the drawing but the ideas it represents.
- Embrace drawing yourself. Why would your students believe it is important if you do not draw? Remember that students are best led by example.
Do you have any strategy for stimulating drawing in your classroom? If yes, share them in the comments section. The more strategies, the better
Have fun drawing!