Update: This post is my original instructions for setting up digital notebooks. For the updated version (and tutorial videos!) check out my Digital Notebook page.
After much fiddling around and way too much time spent trying to make it look “cool”, I’ve figured out the basics of how I’m doing digital science notebooks with my students this year. Several teachers out there have also expressed interest, so here’s the nitty gritty below of how I’m setting it up. One caveat though: my Middle School has a one-to-one laptop program, so my students basically always have their laptop with them and are already pretty well-versed in the technologies I’m using for this. So what works for me at my school might not be the best fit for you.
Step 1: Goodbye paper, hello GoogleDocs
All of the traditional papers that I would photocopy and hand out to my students in the past will instead be shared through GoogleDocs. GoogleDocs is a great way to digitally manage documents so that the teacher can decide whether students are editing documents individually or in groups as appropriate. Anytime the teacher (or another student for that matter) leaves a comment for a student on their document they get notified by email. In addition, whenever students makes a change to their document, GoogleDocs automatically saves it and keeps a record of when all changes were made (good for accountability). Last year I already used GoogleDocs for almost all my students’ homework assignments (here’s an example), and it worked well. Now I’ll be taking it one step further and turning everything digital: notes sheets, lab reports, handouts, homework… which means no more collecting, lugging around, and passing out papers. Yay.
Step 2: Manage GoogleDocs without making a mess
A lot of people who “don’t like GoogleDocs” complain because if it’s left untended, your Google Drive page starts looking like the email inbox from hell. Since all of the documents that you create and edit will show up there, you need to set up some organizational system to make it easier to access the documents you actually want. Last year my students and I created shared folders for our GoogleDocs to simplify things. Everything I dumped into my shared folder was automatically shared with my students, then they would make a copies of those master documents and put them in their own GoogleDoc folder that was shared with me. Decent solution, but Middle Schoolers being Middle Schoolers, there was always a handful that would forget to share their copy with me, leading to a recurring digital paper chase.
This year my school is paying for Hapara which creates software that handles all this organization for me. With a few clicks documents are automatically shared with the right students and accessible by me. Hapara also gives teachers a handy “teacher dashboard” that will show you at a glance all your students GoogleDoc documents- whether or not they have remembered to share them with you:
Don’t have Hapara? It’s certainly not a deal-breaker, since you can manage GoogleDocs yourself with a little pre-planning like I did last year, but there’s also a free option out there: Doctopus. Created by an awesome educator who’s work I just discovered on YouPD.org, this GoogleDocs script also lets you automate the generating and sharing of digital documents.
Step 3: Putting the “notebook” in a digital notebook
As great as GoogleDocs is as an education tool, without a way of organizing documents in the same way you would within a traditional 3-ring binder or notebook, all these digital documents float electronically around in students’ files the same way their paper counterparts do in the messy backpacks teachers abhor. In my switch from paper to electronic documents, my first two goals were to find a way to make digital notebooks better at organization and presentation than traditional notebooks. So the last step is to figure out how to tie all these digital documents together, easily and elegantly.
There are several different options I considered (Blogger, LiveBinders, EverNote) but in the end I decided on using GoogleSites to create the notebook. Most of my students already have experience making websites on GoogleSites, so that played a part in the decision, but the main reasons were the flexbility offered by a website and the synergy between GoogleSites and GoogleDocs.
The flexibility of a website allowed me to go retro and design a digital notebook that looked like a classic composition notebook:
By clicking on the “stickers” on the notebook cover, students can navigate to the different units we study, and then within each unit there’s a section for Class Stuff, Lab Stuff, and Homework Stuff which look like Post-its in an actual notebook:
You can actually insert entire folders of your GoogleDocs onto a GoogleSite, which means my students won’t have to individually add documents to their digital notebooks- they will be added automatically whenever I create a new document and put it into one of their shared folders (no wasted class time!).
Using GoogleSites also makes it easy for students to incorporate anything created with GoogleDocs in their digital notebook: data tables or graphs made in Google Spreadsheets, scientific sketches made with Google Drawings, Google presentation projects, Picasa photo slideshows, the list goes on and on. I want their notebook to be able to easily highlight their best work so it doubles as a portfolio, and GoogleSites will allow student to do this easily without jumping through a lot of technical hoops. I’m also working on the possibility of creating a “learning dashboard” for each student that will display their progress on the learning goals for each unit and guide them to helpful resources when they fall short of meeting expectations (more on this later!).
You can go ahead and check out the template notebook site here (or go here for my updated template). When it’s completely finished I plan on saving it as a GoogleSite template so others can use it as they see fit.
Awesome job on this plan, Nick! Thank you so much for sharing! Last week I attended a training in my district with a representative from Apple. I shared my vision of digital notebooks with the rep. and she recommended using Notability, as my students will have iPads. This is going to be totally new to the kids as this is the first year with 1-1 devices, so I’m in the process of breaking down the procedures we’re going to follow step-by-step. Can’t wait to get started and see if what I planned will actually work.
Kim- thanks for sharing the tip about Notability. I’ll have to look into that myself. Note-taking is one of the biggest challenges for going paperless in the classroom I think, so it will be very interesting to hear how it goes. Keep me posted!
Nick,
I’m so glad I came across your post! This semester all of my science students will begin using a Digital Science Notebook and I have come across similar issues. We used Notability a lot last semester and it’s a great handwriting app. However, several students encountered loss documents, saving glitches, and other various hiccups. I still love the app but more as a tool instead of a “notebook.” Please keep posting updates on this topic!
Mrs. Cooper- thanks for the comment. I can definitely recommend the combination of GoogleSites and GoogleDocs for digital science notebooks. I’ve been using them all year with over 6th grade students and had almost no technical issues. It has been really nice to have lost documents and missing papers a thing of the past! I have been crazy busy this year- but I will try to post an update soon with some more details about how it’s been going.
So glad I came across this blog….Are you still using the digital notebooks. We are going to be a one to one school next year and I’m hoping to implement a digital notebook. Any advice would be great on how it worked out.
Cynthia- good to hear from you. I have been using the digital notebooks all year, and really need to update my blog with another post. They are working very well- GoogleSites and GoogleDocs is definitely a winning combo! If you’re making the switch I would definitely recommend looking into Hapara though, since it makes accessing students work and grading MUCH easier. It’s been a super busy year for me, but I will try to post an update soon with more details about how it’s going.
My school doesn’t have — and won’t purchase — Hapara. Do you know if Doctopus will easily “collect” pieces of the notebook so I can grade them? I’d rather not go into each digital notebook and search for the document that needs to be graded, of course.
Yes, when you use Doctopus to share documents with students it will also automatically share them with you, so finding them is easy. I would just add the class period number in the title so I could get the whole class to pop up in a single search in Google Drive. You could also consider using Google Classroom instead (see my post about it), which is free if you school has a Google Apps for Education account. Doctopus is more customizable at the moment, but probably a little more “techie” to deal with.
Did you create the first page of the site that has all of the student’s learning targets on them with your resources on it. If you did how did you share it will all of your student’s “portfolios”? I am very interested on how you did this.
Hi Amanda,
Yes- it’s very easy actually. I just created a Google Doc (which I call their Study Guide) and share it with the class so they can view-only. Then I have them insert this document on the home page of the site. That way whenever I add additional resources to the Study Guide they can see it immediately on their homepage.
Hey Nick, thank you for sharing your amazing ideas and your switch from paper notebooks to digital notebooks. I have been trying to set up my digital site through google sites and I have been running into some trouble. I love your template and would like to have that as a base to start. Do you ask each of your students to set up a page on google sites and that in return is there notebook? Is this where they will transfer all of their information and share it with me. I have been trying to look at it for organizational purposes but its so hard to see when you are on the other end of the computer lol
I appreciate any guidance.
Science Teacher Canada
Hi Stephanie,
Thanks for your comment. Yes, I have each student create their own GoogleSite website using the template that I created. They also create folders in the Google Drive which will store all their documents. Hapara does this automatically for you, which is why I would recommend using that if your school can set it up. On their website students can insert their Google Drive folders so they can see their documents on their website. Does that make sense?
Nick, Thank you for this post. In my experience, with Google Sites Templates, it takes some time to unravel the links. What process do you go through in order to get each page setup correctly?
Hi Scott,
Which links are you talking about exactly? The links from page to page are easy, you can set these up on the template and they will transfer automatically when the students create their site from the template. I avoid having to insert other links by just having students insert their Google Drive folder directly on the site.
One thing I’m going to change for next year is getting rid of some of the fancy “mouse-over” effects on the homepage that required students editing the links themselves. This was an annoying and unnecessary step- the more the template is pre-made for students, the less the technology wastes their time and the more it can be used to compliment learning.
This is awesome. i am trying to do the same thing. I have been using ISNs for years and would love to go digital with my gifted students next year in Social Studies. I have to admit, I am a little intimidated by your instructions, but I am going to try. Are there any youtube videos that can walk us through the process? Great job!!
Belinda- great idea about making some how-to videos, I’ll definitely give that a go! I’m super busy right now as I’m involved in a production of Les Miserables, but as soon as that’s over I’ll be able to start posting again. I’ll put making some videos on the top of my to-do list, thanks for the suggestion!
[…] notebooks- an online version of the classic science notebook that I set up using GoogleSites. I’ve already blogged about setting that up, so I won’t go into the details here, but I’ve received so much interest from teachers […]
Hi Nick,
Thank you for having this post! This is what I want to do with my classroom this year and was having some serious trouble just finding a site that laid it all out. I would love to use your template but I will be teaching 7th grade, this may just go to show how technological illiterate I am, but is there a way to change the title of the composition notebook to read 7th Grade Science Site?
Thank you so much!
Hi Christine,
Yes, this summer I’m planning on making a few how-to videos that walk through the process. Changing the name of the site is easy, you just need to hit the edit button (it looks like a pencil).
Glad my post was helpful- and I should post those videos in about 2 weeks when I have some time.
Nick
Hi Nick,
I figured out how to adjust the background composition image, but now I’m running into problems with layering images. I read that you thought it was easier to get rid of the mouse-over gadget, but how did you layer the gadgets to begin with? Thanks again!
Hi Christine,
That is a little tricky- basically I set up a table and gave that table a background using HTML code. I’m definitely not going to bother with the mouse-over images this year- it was a pain that students had to update all of them individually.
If there’s something specific you want to do with the images, let me know what it is and I can try to help you out.
Nick
[…] from teachers out there who want to know more about how to set them up. I posted last summer about the basics of setting up digital notebooks, but one of my readers (thanks Belinda!) made a great suggestion to create some videos that could […]
It would be great to know if anyone has any suggestions on how to set up and manage a digital notebook using iPads and Google Docs.
I have yet to hear of anyone who has used iPads and digital notebooks with much success… It’s possible to use the Drive app and have students keep a notebook just using GoogleDocs, but typing on an iPad isn’t ideal. There are different note-taking apps out there that others have tried (Evernote, OneNote), but I’m not sure how seamlessly they would integrate with a digital notebook. What I like about the Docs/Sites combo is that they integrate seamlessly, so less time is spent on techy stuff and more time is spent on the actual learning.
Is there a way to change the “post-it” note tabs categories using your template?
I love the retro feel!
Hi Alisa, Absolutely- check out my tutorial here: https://scientificteacher.com/2014/07/30/digital-notebook-tutorial-2-setting-up-a-digital-notebook/ I posted the blank post-it note tabs so you can create your own categories. I’m glad you like the template!
Any thoughts about how to use Google Classroom with work that needs to be shown? I am trying to figure out how the kids can show the work for dimensional analysis or stoichiometry problems. P.S. LOVE your site and appreciate all your thoughts and comments.
Nick, thanks for sharing your information about digital notebooks! Our district is just about to go to 1 to world technology. I really want to move to digital notebooks for many reasons. Can I get an editable copy of your notebook that I could use? What are the titles of you how to videos? I would love to view them? Jessica
Hi Jessica, sure thing- check out my most recent posts on https://scientificteacher.com/ I created a notebook version that you can copy and play around with yourself, and there’s also a series of videos that show you how. Good luck, and let me know if you have any questions!
Nick
Hi Nick,
Thank you for sharing all this information! This is exactly what I was looking to implement this coming school year. We have 1:1 Chromebooks with Hapara. I have already set up a template, and have been playing around with inserting folders and docs. My problem is setting up the subfolders. Hapara just launched its new dashboard, and I am unable to figure out how to set up the “Class Stuff”, “Lab Stuff” etc. subfolders. Any tips?
Hi Suzanne,
I’m glad you found this helpful! If you want to be able to share files into sub folders you’ll need to have your school’s Hapara administrator set it up for you. It’s the “elementary school” style set up you’ll want, with multiple folders for each class. I did it last year with my digital science notebooks.
This year I decided against using subfolders though- it’s a little confusing for students to have to look in multiple places for their documents. Instead I use Hapara for all class documents and Google Classroom for assignments like homework and projects. Classroom is set up very well for assignments, but I wouldn’t use if for everything because of the mandatory due date.
So you may want to consider not using sub folders. Instead I have the other tabs of my notebook go to the unit study guide, the student’s learning log, and a link to our Google Classroom stream. After each science unit is done I have the students manually create a subfolder and drag all their docs into it to clean up their science folder and make it easier to find stuff.
Good luck with digital notebooking!
Hey Nick, I love the idea of digital science notebook and have been trying to go about figuring out how to do it. The problem I have is that at my school the students have 1:1 iPads. The iPads have difficulty with a lot of the google site features, making it difficult to use as the platform. You mentioned Evernote, would you suggest proceeding with that app or do you know of another app or google site work around that would work well with an iPad. Thanks
Hi Anthony, unfortunately I haven’t heard of a successful version of digital notebooks using iPads. They just don’t seem to be a great device for a lot of digital input, which is the primary function of a notebook. What I would suggest with iPads is using the mobile version of Google Classroom, which is a great way to share documents and resources. It’s more of a Facebook-style stream than a notebook, but it is free and very easy to use.
Science teachers in my school/district are hyper focusing on the students need to apply pencil to paper and spending time drawing organisms, plants, etc. rather than identifying parts on authentic pictures. I am struggling with this and wonder what other educational professionals think especially science teachers. I am an Instructional Technology Coach and not a science teacher so I am being very careful not to assume that I know better. Please let me know what you think.
Hi Keith,
I use a digital science notebook with my students, and I find that when drawing is necessary (which it is often) I have my students take pictures (“snapshots” for Chromebooks) of their drawings. That way they still benefit from drawing, but have a digital record of the drawing to insert into their Docs or notebook.
I really appreciate your quick response. The question I have is… Should students still be drawing or would students benefit from authentic pictures as they identify the parts using arrows and text.
Hey Nick!
Thank you so much for sharing this. My department and I plan on going fully digital next year and love your template! Is there anyway to change the “6th Grade Science” title along with the names of the tabs? I can’t figure that part out!
[…] going to become a science teacher, I plan on having my students write in my classroom. This link, Science Notebooks, talked about the steps to take to have your students create an electronic notebook. I feel that […]
My children were searching for International HTP some time ago and came across a business that has a ton of fillable forms . If you are requiring International HTP too , here’s or http://www.njms.umdnj.edu
Hi Nick, I teach Math and have been searching for a notebook for my classroom so I can ditch the paper (and excuses). I love your ideas!! Thank you for sharing. If you have updated or found better ways to do things, I would love to hear it so I don’t have to reinvent the wheel.
Nick, Please…. I need your help. I have my notebook set up for my kids. I have the folders in place ie 0 Biology Class. if I put an assignment into the folder on my drive it shows up perfectly in theirs within their notebook. but I cant figure out how to use doctopus to distribute to the entire class instead of individual, which takes a lot of time. Doctopus puts the assignment into their Shared with me folder. How do I get it into their notebook. I have attached the link to my notebook
Jeff
I am glad I found your blog! I tried to get your template for your digital interactive notebook, but it would not allow me to and said I must contact the owner. May I use your template and how do I get it?
dont like it
I am moving to digital notebooks this year. I am so glad I found your site. You have been a great help. However, I am having a hard time seeing the big picture. Are you still using digital notebooks in your classroom? I would love to see a student’s notebook. Would that be a possibility?
I am an Instructional Technology Coach and I have been working with an elementary school teacher on creating digital science notebooks. We looked at many ways and discovered that by simply putting the assignment in google classroom and identifying the assignment using topics (page 1, page 2, page 3. etc. it will automatically organize it into a science notebook. You can decide what type of document you will use for that page (google doc, google sheet, google draw etc.)
Thank you. We are using the LMS Canvas. But I am thinking the numbering thing will work. Again, thank you.
I am a teacher in Western Australia. So our education department just started rolling out Office 365 ( which comes with OneNote). Currently the school (IPS) has implemented Google (google school) but it does not integrate with 365. We need to go with one or the other.
Any suggestions on Pro/Cons of 365 (specifically looking at OneNote and the add on Class Notebook) vs Google Suit.
Good day! I’m about to start my research work on the impact of digital journal writing to learning and I know this could help me a lot. Please accept my gratitude Sir. Thank you so much. You’re such a big help.
Very truly yours,
C. B. Linsangan
Are you still using digital notebooks? Given that it is now 2019, I am wondering what you have changed or what you would update.
I ma trying to use your notebook template but I do not understand how to copy the second page to every unit in the notebook. Help? I have tried to complete but just cannot get it to work.
Are you using the new Google Site now?
Wendy Wiseman
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Thank you so much for your excellent resource. I was wondering how you grade or evaluate each of your students’ digital notebooks? Thanks!