One staple of traditional science education is the scientific notebook: the classic composition notebook filled with kitchen chemistry experiments gone awry, detailed sketches of leaves, and dozens of exciting scientific discoveries written in childhood chicken scratch.
Surprisingly, after 8 years of teaching elementary science and 1 year of middle school science, I’ve never made traditional science notebooks with my students. I’ve always been wary of the potential for notebooks to value product over process, as a few of my own science teachers did: Did you carefully copy the procedure down as I told you? If you did, A+!
Instead I want my students to use their valuable time to think like scientists, not just go through the motions of doing something that appears to be science. So I’ve always opted to create my own worksheets that scaffold activities to save students time on less valuable tasks (copying down a procedure) so they can spend more time on the real learning. In my experience worksheets work very well in the moment, but they lack the portfolio quality of a traditional scientific notebook. Yes, I know you can try to have students keep sheets organized in a folder or a binder, or even try binding them up like books- and some of my colleagues have students paste sheets right into their traditional notebooks- but all of these methods take a lot of effort and class time to be successful. There’s got to be a better way!
Digital science notebooks to the rescue! Making an digital version of traditional science notebooks is an idea I’ve been kicking around for a long time. At first it seems pretty obvious: computerized communication has all but replaced pen and pencil in so many aspects of our daily lives, and there’s no sign of that slowing down. It stands to reason that our current students will be living in a paperless society by the time they are adults- so why can’t science notebooks join this wave of the future?
This is why I was more than a little surprised to find out how few teachers out there in the blogosphere (and scientists too for that matter!) have embraced a digital version of the composition classic. Googling around I could only find one teacher/blogger who has much to say on the subject: Greg Benedis-Grab, and unfortunately his blog on the subject seems to have been taken down (though it’s still cached here). Greg used the Google Apps suite with his students to do nearly all pen and paper tasks (including drawing!) in an online format, and students used a Google Site as their “notebook”. For more info on Greg’s digital science notebooks, check out his webinar video.
What about real scientists? Surely they have embraced modern technology, right? Again, I was surprised to find out in this article from Nature that scientists are only beginning to move away from paper notebooks even though the “electronic lab notebook” has been technologically feasible for more than a decade. However, it does seem pretty clear that many scientists are making the switch to digital notebooks- all the more reason for our students to do it too.
How do teachers make the switch to digital science notebooks? I’m not sure- but it’s my goal this summer to figure out a way, and then pilot the digital science notebooks with my 6th graders in the fall. So if any of you teachers out there are currently using some form of a digital science notebook- I’d love to hear from you! Currently I’m leaning towards a Google Apps/Sites solution since my students are already familiar with these and my school will be using Hapara next year which should make my life easier… but there are still lots of issues (both technical and pedagogical) to figure out. I will continue to blog on my thoughts and progress over the summer, and I welcome you to join in the discussion!
My name is Nick Mitchell, and I love the art and science of teaching.
The Scientific Teacher 
Nick,
I am also making the transition to digital notebooking for the 2013-14 school year with my sixth grade class. I have been using this teaching technique for about 12 years with my students and absolutely love the insight it gives me into their thinking. I am thinking of using the Google tools, but would like to figure out a way to use Schoology as well. Schoology is new to me, so not sure if it will work for the purpose I’m looking for. Good luck. Feel free to share successes and frustrations with me during the process.
Hi Kim,
Great to hear from you! I’m glad to have someone else to bounce ideas off of. I’ve never used Schoology- my school uses Moodle for course webpages, but unfortunately it’s pretty clunky. I’ll post more about my Google tools notebooks shortly, there are a few snags I’ve run into- maybe you have some good ideas!
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Nick,
I’ve watched the two webinars on You Tube using Google tools to make digital notebooks and I got a lot out of it. However, my students will be using iPads and I’m not sure how well Google Docs is going to work. I did find someone who recommended using Evernote on the iPads, but It is limited in the ability to allow students to collaborate. Do you have any experience using iPads and/or Evernote?
Kim- I’ve used iPads and Evernote personally, but not in the classroom. GoogleDocs can be used with iPads, but I’m not sure how well. In general iPads are much better for capturing photos or videos than typing- so if that’s what you have you might want to consider having the students make more of a photo/video science journal rather than a notebook. I’m going to try using our school’s iPads more this year for that kind of stuff and then have students add the media to their digital notebooks, so I’ll let you know how it goes!
Nick,
After experimenting with a few different apps for iPads, I’m going to plan to use Notability this year. It seems to have more options than Evernote. I also like how easy it will be for the kids to turn in their work. Wa-hoo! No more lugging home a crate of notebooks and throwing out my back in the process!
My school received a grant for Chromebooks for our entire student body so I’m looking at making the transition to digital science notebooks. I would love to have someone to share ideas with this 2013-2014 school year!
Linda- wow, that’s an excellent grant! Chromebooks should work very well with Google Docs, so you should be in good shape for trying out digital notebooks. I’m almost finished setting up the basic notebooks for my class- I’ll post about it soon so you can take a look and we can bounce ideas back and forth.
I’m really looking forward to seeing what you create for your science notebooks. I’ve been playing in Google Sites to create a template for my students, but still have a lot of questions about how to manage everything. We are getting Hapara, but I don’t have it yet so I’m not sure how it all integrates. CAN’T WAIT TO SEE YOUR NOTEBOOK PLAN! School starts this week!
Linda- did you see my new post about how I’m setting up my notebooks: https://scientificteacher.com/2013/08/14/setting-up-digital-science-notebooks/
I hope that will be helpful. I think the combination of GoogleDocs, GoogleSites and Hapara would work well. Hapara can also be linked to your students GoogleSites notebooks, so you can easily know when they’ve made changes. It explains more about that on the Hapara site here: https://hapara.zendesk.com/entries/20528638-Setting-up-Google-Sites-based-portfolios
Let me know if you’ve got additional questions- if so it might be easier to communicate via email.
Hi Nick,
I am interested in creating digital science notebooks, too. I teach 5th grade, and all my students have an iPad to use in the classroom. We used Notability a lot in our lessons, but I want to try new things this year with technology especially the idea of QR codes in the classroom, digital notebooks and digital portfolios.
We will have access to a class set of chrome books next year, but I am new to using chrome books in the classroom. Any suggestions on chrome books and how to use them with digital notebooks would be appreciated.
My school is a 1:1 laptop program with Macs, so I haven’t used Chrome books specifically, but they would be ideal for a digital notebook like the one I use, because it’s all based on Google Docs and Sites.
I would recommend checking out how you can use Google apps with your 5th graders- in particular the collaborative aspect of shared documents that Google Docs makes possible.
Jumping right into digital notebooks in your first year with Chrome books might be a little ambitious, but you can certainly start exploring right away! Perhaps try out a few digital documents to see how you and your students like them first. To make it easier sharing documents I would recommend taking a look at Google Classroom too, since this makes sharing and collecting digital work from students very easy. Good luck!
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