Wednesday, August 06, 2014

"Social Media for Learning" meets "Show Your Work": The 21 Day Drawing Challenge

There's a fun social learning activity going on via Lynda.com., the "21 Day Drawing Challenge" . Led by artist Von Glitschka, the project offers a daily new assignment (like "draw a cat" or "draw a man on a unicycle using only a continuous line") along with a quick overview video and printable reference worksheet. 

Additional support and participant interaction happen via a Facebook page.  There Von Glitschka offers additional tips and sometimes directs participants to tutorials in other courses. Even better: People use the comments area on the daily Facebook posts to share pictures of their own drawings and to talk about what they found especially challenging or describe the technique they used. It's a great example of people interacting around a shared purpose, showing their work, helping each other learn.

Many people are also sharing their images via Twitter (#draw21days); @
kristinrtaylor tweeted a picture and said: "My first go at @lynda #draw21days challenge. Getting over my fear of others seeing my work. Have to start somewhere!" 

So if you're interested in using social media to support instruction, and/or seeing how "show your work" really works (or if you're interested in learning to draw!) do pop by and take a look. Day 3 has just started so there's still time to catch up if you'd like to join the fun.