I decided early on that I wanted some continuity with my notebooks. Slides default at widescreen - 16:9. I change the size to 8.5:11. I want our notebooks to mimic paper notebooks AND 8.5:11 means I can easily print out pages of our notebook if I ever need to. I also decided to create a notebook per grading period. Each grading period our DINs easily contain a hundred + slides. This is because our Digital Notebooks contain our reading selections in addition to our literary concepts. It is an all in one teaching & studying tool. Our notebooks are the foundation for all our learning and we used them daily.
Each DINs has a cover slide where students add their name. The cover helps to make the notebook their own and makes the resource a little more formal. In addition, as students add their own names, I get to teach them some cool skills which I need them to know like how to change the font, the size, the color, etc. Our Notebooks also include our student objectives for our current grading period. It is important to me that students know what our academic focus is.
There are some things I have learned along the way. First, when building your notebook remember, you are not limited to the slide. Digital Interactive Notebooks are typically not used in presentation mode.
For example, when reviewing Growth and Fixed Mindsets in our first grading period's DIN, students would simply drag and drop to sort Fixed and Growth Mindset statements.
This allowed for a quick check of their level of comprehension. Notice that when Google Slides is in edit mode, the foreground of the slide is a usable space. In our Growth Mindset activity, the foreground housed our mindset statements. Other times, the foreground became where we annotated our stories. Cool right?!
Whatever your subject, whatever your grade, going digital with your Interactive Notebooks can be a powerful way to take your student learning to the NEXT LEVEL!
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I use a free add-on called "Magic Exercise Book" that you can use to send the same text from a google docs or a google slide to documents or slides you have already assigned to a class using "make a copy for each student". It is great for sending generic feedback to the entire class, providing the answers or an exemplar or for posting the next assignment or task if you don't want them to see it just yet. (Some of my students will "work ahead" if they can see everything. It only posts the new material to the end slide or the end of the document.
ReplyDeleteThank you for your comment! Keep in touch and let me know how you are doing. If you have any questions, please feel free to contact me. We are in this together!
ReplyDeleteI would love to ask you a few questions! What grade do you teach? also when you create the DIN is the full notebook set up with the slides already created and students enter and manipulate as you go....or do you have the ability to add new slides or “pages” to their notebook as you assign new activities?
ReplyDeleteI teach 8th grade ELA. I set up my notebooks per grading period. We don't usually add pages, but I do on occasion. I give my students an orientation at the beginning of the year where I teach them how-to do basic things like add and subtract slides.
DeleteDo you have a “template” for the students? I am really interested in setting one up for ELA!
ReplyDeleteYes. My notebooks are set up BEFORE I assign them.
DeleteI build my notebooks before assigning them through Google Classroom. :)
ReplyDeleteHi! I joined your Facebook group, and I was wondering if you might be willing to share a copy of your cover with tabs? I’ve been looking for the perfect template to get started with, and I like your cover style the best.
ReplyDelete