Fast forward to today, where more and more books are now available online. My placement has a classroom set that students may check out, but the entire textbook is also online for easier access. Students no longer have to carry a 5 pound textbook for each class when they can easily go online and read the assigned pages. The issue now was how to take notes from the readings.
With paper copies, students were free to hilight, underline, dog-ear, and write notes in the book on what they read. They could use Post-It tabs to locate the book sections they needed. Online, these activities are much more difficult. For instance, the book used in my placement just has the block of text on the screen. It's difficult to switch back and forth between screen and paper as one takes notes. If only there was a way to take notes right on the screen. Oh, and word-processing programs don't cut it because switching between windows is irritating.
Enter Scrible, a free cloud-based program with a downloadable toolbar that can help students hilight and annotate webpages and e-books. The pages can be bookmarked for later, with all the hilighting and notes intact. This would save time and paper while decreasing the clutter usually associated with printout copies of articles and books.
I heard of Scrible, as well as other annotation programs like DocHub (formerly PDFZen), through Katherine Lester's talk at the MACUL conference last week. With entire libraries online (see the Michigan e-Libary at mel.org) that are organized by reading level (like NewsELA and TweenTribune), it's no wonder that more and more teachers are making the switch to digital books and articles. And now, with the advent of free programs like Scrible and DocHub, teachers can save paper and decrease clutter because the articles don't need to be printed out.
Did I mention that all this is Chromebook compatible and free? Welcome to the new age classroom.
5 comments:
Melissa,
I find it both exciting that all of these resources are digital, but it also poses potential difficulties to note-taking that you mentioned. However, you posed great resources to this dilemma! I had never heard of these apps, I use noteability, but these sound like excellent free alternatives! Also, I have used Newsela, such a great resource! This shift to digital books and resources has posed a whole new set of skills that need to be modeled and taught. How do you not only note-take, but do so, online? How do you evaluate these sources? Melissa, thank you for all these great resources! I definitely will be looking into the note-taking tools, for both my students and my own use! Was any disadvantages to these tools mentioned in the talk? If so, how did they approach them?
Melissa! Thanks so much for sharing this awesome resource. Scrible sounds perfect. After reading that one article in Anne’s class, I was concerned with online reading and its effects on student learning. Plus, it can be annoying as you mentioned flipping through a bunch of online crap. But, Scrible is in for the rescue and solves many of the issues. Inevitably, there will be a movement away from actual hardcopy textbooks. They’re literally backbreaking anyways. It makes me feel so old to think about lugging around huge textbook and that’s all going away. Eventually, kids probably won’t even know what we’re talking about when it comes to “textbooks.”
As a future history teacher, annotating materials is critically important so I’m glad there is something free and Google compatible. Thanks again for putting the word out.
@Meghan: One thing the speaker mentioned about the whole digital books thing was that many students STILL preferred having a paper copy. She gave an example about kids wanting to borrow a copy of the book "Divergent" from the library, only to find out that the book was checked out. Even though she told the students that an e-book copy was available, students just said "nah" and moved on. With textbooks it might be a different story, since nobody I know of reads textbooks for fun, but there is definitely something about finishing a long paperback book that feels good...like an accomplishment.
It does seem like students are more open to having textbooks online rather than reading Hunger Games or Harry Potter as an e-book.
Melissa, thank you for sharing about Scrible! I hoped that I would be able to attend sessions at MACUL that would describe a new tool to me and illustrate how it could be implemented in a classroom, but I somehow managed to avoid those..
I will definitely need to look into this tool because the students in my biology class only have access to paper copies of the textbook in the classroom. I think many of them read the online version and do not take notes because it is too much effort to switch between screens. I know even when I read something online I dread having to type out notes if there is no highlighting tool.
Unfortunately the website that hosts the online textbook right now is not the best and it is often slow to load, if it loads at all. I think if this were fixed and the students/parents had no issues about downloading another toolbar, this would be a wonderful tool.
Given the option between a paper copy of the textbook and a digital copy with the added application of Scrible, do you think you would opt for the digital copy then? I can only speak for myself, but I would prefer to give my students individual paper copies if I could. However, it is calming to know that there are tools out there to get around the deficiencies of an online textbook.
Melissa,
You bring up a huge point of contention in education right now, especially with the impending M-Step exam. There's not enough research to support that these online tools are as effective as those on paper, and yet the high stakes tests are requiring proficiency with these tools. The tools you mention will, no doubt, continue to play a role.
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