Take Student Notes to the Next Level

I typically don't write tool-based blog posts since I prefer to focus more on the philosophy and pedagogy behind teaching with technology.  On the other hand, sometimes there is a tool that is just awesome and worth writing about.  In my classroom, one of those tools we always come back to is Skitch.

Skitch is an image annotation and creation tool.  If you are interested in giving it a try yourself after reading this post, here are some tutorials:


My students and I have found many uses for it.  Here's a list of some of them, with examples from my student Katie, who gave me permission to post her great work.  If you'd like to see more you can visit her blog at Using History to Make History.

Creating and Labeling Charts & Graphs

My students have access to all class notes and resources on our website.  As we work through an analyze the information during a lesson, they like to add their learning to the notes.  Skitch is a great way to do this.
Katie added detail to this racial class pyramid showing
the Spanish colonial order in the Americas.
Katie could have done this pie chart on paper, but she wanted
it saved in her Evernote, where she keeps all of her notes. She
decided to use the data to complete it digitally instead.
After reading about the Mexican Revolution, Katie
decided her notes would make more sense in the form
of a timeline.  Skitch was the quickest way to put it together.

Color-Coding Documents

When students have primary or secondary sources to read and analyze, they often like to mark them up and color code them.  While they could do this on paper with highlighters, the digital version is more long lasting and won't get lost in a messy binder.  Also, the digital version can be saved and embedded in a blog post or other project later to show learning.  Here are some of Katie's examples from a lesson on Napoleon.


Add Images to Notes

Primary sources are note limited to text like the documents from the Napoleon lesson.  A great deal can be learned from historical images.  Sadly, most school copy machines only print in black and white.  Much of the color and resolution of the images is lost.  While the original image could be projected on a screen by the teacher, that doesn't give each student in the room a personal up-close experience with that piece of history.  When combined with Evernote, Skitch can help students illustrate their notes with color images of all kinds.  Here are a few examples of how including the images with her notes made the difference for Katie.

This was an activator for our lesson on the
Luddites in England.
When we studied the Protestant Revival, images
of gatherings helped students understand the ferver
around the movement

Deep Image Analysis

You probably noticed that Katie circled a few elements in the images above.  Most of her notes were alongside them, though.  On occasion we have done real deep image analysis where students have added quite a bit of annotation to historical images.  Here are some of Katie's.

This shows the expectations on women in the early 19th
century. We analyzed it as part of our early women's
movement lesson.

This is propaganda from the Temperance Movement.

This image shows a young girl leaving her family to go
work in the textile mills in Lowell, Massachusetts.

Once students have done this annotation, they can record their voices explaining their notations.  Apps like Explain Everything make this process simple.  It is a great alternative to a quiz or essay to get students to talk about the history in their own words.

All of these examples are from just one student in my class, but all 120 of my students have been using Skitch to add color and analysis to their Evernote digital notebooks all year.  It has definitely allowed students to add personal colorful touches to their notes, get an up close look at historical images, and add these personalized elements to their multimedia blog posts and projects.  If you want to give it a shot, remember to check out the tutorials at the top of the blog post to get started.

Comments

  1. Jason VoorheesWednesday, May 18, 2022 1:44:00 AM

    Hey! Now I am working as a writer at one huge educational "paper help org" company. If you like to read or you need help in writing custom tasks, then follow the professional writing agency’s website, where you could buy correct essays. And we can help with any study problem you need to.

    ReplyDelete

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Three Social Media Starter Tips

Image
Note: This post was recently  published on the St. John's Prep GOOD to Go blog . Chad Konecky interviewed me and wrote the post based on our discussion. Demonstrating and reinforcing common-sense social media engagement is important, especially when it comes to adolescents and teens. Kerry Gallagher, St. John’s assistant principal for teaching and learning, is leading the Prep’s emphasis on developing best practices when using social media. “Mentoring healthy guidelines like ‘Think before you post,’ ‘be kind and respectful’ and ‘be mindful of who you friend’ are key, but we need to foster—and the boys need to hone—an even keener sense of their life online.” Interestingly, the challenges of building an online identity can become even more difficult if students and their parents choose not to use social media, explains Gallagher. Alternatively, when students do create an online presence, it can become an opportunity to learn how to act appropriately and with accountability....
Read more

Guest Post: Digital + Traditional = Teaching at Its Best

Image
Rachel Salinger is a high school English teacher at my school, St. John's Prep in Danvers, Massachusetts. She is passionate about literature and about giving her students learning experiences that arm them with the skills they need to be thoughtful and good stewards of our future. I asked her to share her recent project on my blog because I think it is a stellar example of how traditional teaching and learning strategies can be effectively combined with digital tools for a deeper student learning experience. I referenced this project briefly in my recent EdSurge column and wanted to be sure to highlight it in detail on my blog. Introduction In my CP sophomore classes, we read Macbeth over the course of a few weeks. The students really enjoyed the play (surprisingly!) and I wanted to do a more creative assessment at the end instead of a typical paper or test. In the past, I’ve done an iMovie project with Macbeth but really wanted to do something different this year. I met...
Read more

Teaching 19th Century Ideologies with 21st Century Technologies

Image
Some concepts are just hard.  They're hard to teach and hard to learn.  Every year that I've taught the History 10 curriculum to sophomores, one of those concepts has been 19th century European political ideologies.  Conservatism, liberalism, and nationalism have never really been pulled together into a lesson that excited me or my students.  We would work through it and we'd both be OK, but never enthralled.  This year I wanted to change that. Part 1: What Do They Already Know? I asked students to define and give examples of each term: conservatism, liberalism, and nationalism.  They used their understandings from a modern American perspective.  We talked it out and they wrote their examples on the Smart Board. Part 2: How Was 19th Century Europe Different? It was REALLY different.  Before going there, though, I wanted them to know what an ideology is. The next step was to help them understand what these ideologies mean to 19th century ...
Read more