Doodlers, unite !

I am sure that all pupils, students and even businesspeople often make masterpieces like in the pictures; the reasons and stimulus are different: the person is just scribbling while thinking of other things, the person is simultaneously drawing the thoughts in her/his mind, the person is sketching a plan for later actions, etc. That process may be helpful, very important or just a waste of time depending on the reason, time and place. However, Sunni Brown claims that it is an efficient way of learning regardless of the circumstance and the reason.

Sunni Brown is co-author of GameStorming: A Playbook for Rule-Breakers, Innovators and Change Makers. She is the leader of the Doodle  Revolution – trying to expose the myth that doodling is an obsession. Sunni states that doodling moves people into higher levels of visual literacy. Her second book, The Doodle Revolution, will be published in 2012. 
Brown (2011) assumes that people are averse to doodling at schools, universities, workplace, and meetings: it is perceived as inappropriate time waster. Maybe the reason is that there is no definite understanding of what is doodling. Brown found out that in 17^th a doodle meant a fool, in 18^th century it became a verb and was understood as to mock, taunt, deride, and nowadays, doodling means making meaningless marks, doing something of little value or just doing nothing.  According to Oxford English Dictionary, to doodle means to do spontaneous marks to help you think. But, again, It is perceived as an inappropriate, not serious practice: they say that a person was caught, discovered while doodling in an important meeting. However, brown assures that doodling is a magic tool to supplement you to learn, remember, and digest the information.

Actually I agree with Brown in some sense, because I use doodling as well when the information is too wordy, messy or difficult to understand and remember.  But I did not exactly catch her idea of encouraging simple scribbling or similar time-wasters during class time. I had an insight that she was just presenting her personal opinion on doodling, because no reference to data sources, surveys or any kind of basis for such claims was presented. However, being more confident in its statements and tying them to real examples, Brown can succeed in her Doodle Revolution, as doodling indeed has great importance when used timely and in the presence of necessity.