Digital Notebooks

My first Dive into Product Design

The Problem (Define)

It all began with a problem. My students were not turning in their assignments.

I made it my mission to find out why. Did I need to give them the look and a talk or help them or both?

interviews (Research)

I sat down with students with missing assignments to pinpoint the cause. Some of the kids knew exactly the reason. Some needed some help uncovering it. But we discovered one major theme:

Technology has done wonders for education. But it has also created a disorganized, fragmented experience as we piece together countless apps and software to create our classroom experience.

My students could not keep up. Assignments were being lost, forgotten, and buried. Students were not completing their assignments because of a lack of organization, not motivation. That just wasn’t okay with me.

We were using google classroom. I kept my Google Classroom well-organized with unit sections and dates to create a visual hierarchy that was easy to navigate. I wrote thorough directions. But that wasn’t cutting it. Google Classroom does not have an obvious indicator of what has been turned in and what has not.

Shopping Solutions (Analysis and Planning)

I needed a one-stop shop for everything in my class. Google Classroom was clearly NOT cutting it. Students still had to turn in assignments there, but everything else needed a central location.

Many teachers used google slides digital notebooks. They hyperlinked slides to resources and other slides for organization. The problem was, you can’t write in google slides. Students had to type. I don’t know if you’ve watched a class type with something other than just their thumbs, but… it’s painful. And they would have to delete the lines that indicate blanks in guided notes before they could fill in the missing word. Just kind of annoying. Then there was the whole teaching them to organize their google drive. No thank you. So google slides was out.

Then I looked at Numbers. All our students had ipads, and those ipads came with Number installed. Each tab could represent a different activity. You could write or type. You could add all kinds of files: screenshots, links, graphics, shapes. That meant I could build interactive assignments right there in the file. To distribute the file, I could airdrop and post it to google classroom for absent students. This was the solution I needed.

Building The First Notebook (Design, Test, and Launch)

It was time to create the first digital notebook. This was the easy part. I took screenshots of my slides and added them as guided notes. I added assignments. I linked videos, added projects with rubrics, created drag and drop and matching activities. Then I shared it with the other teachers on my team asking for fresh eyes and feedback.

I tested the notebooks out with my students before we rolled this out to the entire department. I walked them through the notebook and asked them to provide feedback as we worked through the unit.