Creating Digital Notebooks

How to create digital Interactive Notebooks to keep students engaged and working at their own pace.

Example of a digital notebook page

What apps or programs work best for notebooks?

I have been creating digital notebooks for the last four years and I have tried many different programs including; onenote, google docs, canvas studio, PDFs and more!

The best by far is google slides. Is it perfect? no. If anyone is reading this that can create something that combines the features of all the google slides/docs/drawing, that would be a superior product!

Here are the pros of google slides.

#1 It is free. Free for you and free for students.

#2 It's almost universally known and used and very user friendly and intuitive.

#3 It's easy to create with all the features you need to design pages, no add-on fees or subscriptions.

#4 It isn't going anywhere, I hate learning programs just for them to be dropped by my school district or no longer paid for. This is here to stay, so you can be confident in learning it and investing your time.

Where do I start?

I have a video series on youtube that explores all kinds of features and tips.

• Google slides for Assignments and Notebooks

• Making google slides interactive

• Assigning google slides to students

• Advanced slide design with canva

• My favorite digital apps and tools to use in my class

What is in the notebook?

I follow the Interactive Notebook structure with both Notes and Interaction, I try to alternate between a slide with a set of notes and a slide with an activity or project to practice it. Below is an example of one of our first units for greetings and goodbyes in Spanish.

Activity example from a digital notebook

How do you grade the notebooks?

I do NOT want to scroll through pages and pages of the notebook. I have over 150 students, and I need to save as much time as possible.

I have students submit screenshots of activities or projects that I want to assess. For me I can assign and grade these through canvas, but I am sure all other LMS's would offer a file upload option.

Example: Students took notes in their notebook on all the greetings and goodbyes in Spanish, I don't need to see those notes, I just want to see if they met the standard. I have them create a comic in Spanish and submit a screenshot of that. I can assess the standard easily that way. They don't submit everything!

Bonus tip! Creating a notebook I can update whenever I want.

I like to have a notebook that I can update whenever I have new content. Sadly, I don't have my entire semester planned in advance and giving students 50 slides of work to start out would be insane!

I use a google extension called "Slip N Slide" that allows me to add in slides to all of my students document in one click. It isn't the most intuitive program but once you get the hang of it, it is a life saver! I believe it's $10 for a lifetime access pass, but you can try it free for 90 days.

I have a youtube video on how to use it here.