Create Digital Notebooks: Oh, the possibilities!
A couple of weeks ago, Mrs. Errington emailed asking about creating digital notebooks similar to the ones available on Teachers Pay Teachers. I'm so glad she posed the question because I've had a great time looking for an answer! While the templates available on the paid site are pretty awesome, you and your students can create digital notebooks for free using the tools we already have in our Google Apps for Education (GAFE) accounts. Using Google Slides as your template, under FILE, change the page size to 8.5"x11". From there, the sky is the limit. Add backgrounds like the one pictured above. (I added an image of lined paper for a background in my practice notebook so that it had an authentic "notebook-y" feel.) Embed a video from Teacher Tube, create boxes for students to manipulate to put items in order, add graphic organizers, and more. Spanish teachers or music teachers can add audio files for students to translate or classify. Students can upload pictures of their handwritten work, insert images from Google Drawings (great for showing math work or a sketch of a process), or add a video that they've created and saved in their Drives (Due to Youtube restricted access, this requires using a hyperlink rather than embedding the video). Art students can add pictures of their work throughout the year. Music students can insert recordings of their rehearsals or performances. Ag students can keep a comprehensive record of their ag hours, progress on their projects, pictures, and tables of expenses, etc. Students can work in a shared notebook to complete a project or create study materials for a competition. An elementary classroom can create a class notebook as a digital scrapbook for the year, which can later be downloaded as a .pdf and shared with parents. The possibilities are endless. By sharing the notebooks in Classroom, each student gets his/her own clean copy, and by adding to the notebook throughout the year, the students are creating their own digital portfolios. If you and your students create a digital notebook, please share what you're doing! (Thanks, Ms. Bagwell, for the image of your 8th grade ELA digital notebook.)
More on Google Forms
One of the newest features to Google Forms allows pictures to be inserted into the Form before and after questions and to be used as answer choices. Brenham ISD has a great slide presentation that shows how to insert the images and that gives tips on using them. Be sure to check out the last three slides of the presentation that feature the Alice Keeler Quickshare Screenshot extension for Chrome. It's a nice way to capture a full or partial screen shot and have it automatically saved to your Drive so it can be used elsewhere.
Convert a .pdf to an image an annotate it in Google Drawings.
As a former English teacher, I'm pretty excited about the possibility of annotating images and text in Google. One of my biggest concerns about using a digital notebook is meeting the student's need to actually write on his/her copy of a poem, picture, or page. While the highlighting and commenting features in Google Docs meet most of the need, sometimes a student just needs to write on a document. Enter Google Drawings! Take a screenshot of a section of text or upload an image of a rough draft to Google Drawings, and students can annotate the image using the drawing tools. They can insert the image back into a digital notebook/document/slide or turn in the image as an assignment in Google Classroom. Have a great .pdf that you want students to annotate? Use the .pdf to .jpg extension to convert the .pdf to an image, insert it in Drawings, and scribble away. (See BISD calendar below)
Best Practice for adding images to your Google Site
If some of the images on your website are not available under the student profile, here's a quick fix: While it is possible to insert an image directly into your site using the IMAGE link, (left arrow) your BISD site will have fewer viewing complications if you upload your image to your Drive and insert the image into your Site from the DRIVE link (right arrow).
Interested in getting your Google Educator certification?
Visit the Google Training Center to get training, practice, and certification. The Level 1 certification test costs $10. The training and practice are free. Getting Google Educator certified is an easy way to grow in your Google-ness and to become a Google resource on your campus.
