In all types of classrooms (remote, face-to-face, blended, everything in between), teachers are looking to use more versatile tools to help their students learn and interact with science content and one of these resources can be a digital notebook. One of these tools is called a Digital Notebook, or Digital Interactive Notebook. Karen Randazzo and I collaborate in the Teacher Prep Room and she created a fantastic course all about Digital Interactive Notebooks you can find here.
I have gotten a bunch of questions on how my doodle diagram notes (I have a year of biology doodle diagram notes you can find here and chemistry here) could be used in a Digital Notebook and I want to give you a bunch of implementation ideas that you could use!
If you are using Google Slides, you can use this method to integrate Doodle Diagram Notes into your student Digital Notebook.
Step 1: Setup your initial Binder or Notebook for your course (or for a unit)
First off, you need a “binder” or “notebook” template to put the notes into. Here is a free binder cover you can use (subscribe in the form at the bottom of the page to get this binder cover in my free resource library).
You could make your own “binder” or “notebook” but you would need to make sure your Google Slides file has a page setup for 8.5″ by 11″. That is the size of most of my Doodle Diagram notes (I have a few landscape, but most are portrait). You need to select File -> Page Setup (like in the screenshot shown below).
Once you have your binder set up, you can import slides from my Doodle Diagram Google Slides Files, which are setup as individual Doodle Diagram Files.
2. Go to the File Menu -> “Import Slides”
Use the File -> “Import Slides” and locate the location of the Doodle Diagram notes slides you would like to add to the doodle diagram notebook.
3. Select the Google Slides file you want to import.
You will need to locate the Google Slides you have on your Google Drive. (I recommend having all of the files saved in one folder ahead of time to make it easier to add in one by one to your digital notebook.)
4. Select the individual pages in the files you want to import.
You’ll see a window and you can select which pages you want to select. You can select all or only a few! You can repeat steps 2-4 and insert pages from several different Google slides files into your digital notebook.
5. After you have the pages set that you want students to use in a week or unit, send it to your students on Google Classroom (or download as a powerpoint and send to your students in a different Learning Management System).
Now you have a digital notebook set up for your students! You can send students their own copy of the Google Slides using Google Classroom (or their own powerpoint in Schoology/Microsoft/Canvas.)
Once students have their digital notebook, they can create textboxes wherever they would like to type, they can create shapes to circle things in the diagrams, create arrows to point to important details, OR they can write directly on these pages using Kami and a stylus (if your students have tablet devices like iPads).
If you are interested in my Doodle Diagram Notes Pages, you can find my Biology year long set of notes here:
If you are interested in my chemistry set, you can find that year long set here:
Make sure you subscribe to my free resource library to get that free notebook cover you can use!
