I'll Get This Elmo Eventually

better stick men.jpg

A year and a half ago
I bought a used Elmo document projector. I actually got a really good deal on it – $49. I was really excited about it because I thought I could use it effectively during sermons. I’ve only used it a few times for preaching and unfortunately I feel like I have used it only once in an effective manner. The other times haven’t been a waste, they were just examples of imperfect use. Tonight I used the Elmo again at Tapestry in another NON-exemplary use but I think I have finally figured out how to consistently use it in an effective manner. What I figured out tonight was that I need to practice my drawings before I use the Elmo and my drawings need to be large and simple.

sermon.jpg

The image to the right is what I drew during the message. The only parts that I feel like really helped the message are the two pages on the bottom of the image. These drawings were big and simple and that’s exactly what seemed to work well in communicating what I was talking about. The top part of the image on the right is filled with smaller images and stick people that I used during the message. Those smaller and more complicated images didn’t really help the message much. Way to small. Next time I am going to draw much bigger images and use many more pages to do so.

I am also going to practice all of my drawings before the message. I had the entire message figured out but I didn’t really practice the drawings before delivering it. This meant I was trying to figure out how to draw something while I was actually talking about it. Not a very good idea. One of the “threads” decided to help me draw better stick figures and gave me some examples (the image on the top of this post). Her stick people look much better than my stick people do. My stick people were so pathetic that I believe they were actually a distraction. So next time I use the Elmo I am going to draw out the entire message on a practice run first and use big, simple images. I think that will make it more effective.

We’ll see if I am correct.

One Reply to “I'll Get This Elmo Eventually”

  1. Hey Robert:

    One of the best books out on this (I don’t have it my artist daugther Rachel does) is the Sketchnote Handbook by Mark Rhodes. Here is the Amazon link to the book plus access to all the vidoes that show you what it means. I would get it but it is hard to send books to Siberia and at this point there isn’t a kindle edition.

    http://www.amazon.com/Sketchnote-Handbook-Video-illustrated-visual/dp/0321885112/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1367100447&sr=1-1&keywords=sketchnote+handbook

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