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Clifford, S. (2020, October 25). Schools clamored for seesaw's app. that was good news, and bad news. The New York Times. Retrieved May 2, 2022, from https://www.nytimes.com/2020/10/25/technology/seesaw-school-app.html

Froese, J. D. (2018). A grounded theory exploration of multimodal transmediation of student work in Digital Learning Environments (dissertation). ProQuest, Ann Arbor, MI.

Kesler, T. (2018). The reader response notebook: Teaching toward agency, autonomy, and Accountability. National Council of Teachers of English.

Kress, G. (2000). Design and transformation: New theories of meaning. In B. Cope & M. Malantzis (Eds.), Multiliteracies: Literacy learning and the design of social future. London: Routledge.

Mambrol, N. (2018, December 15). Transactional reader response theory. Literary Theory and Criticism. Retrieved May 2, 2022, from https://literariness.org/2016/10/28/transactional-reader-response-theory/

Multimodality (Kress). (2020, June 2). Learning Theories. Retrieved May 2, 2022, from https://learning-theories.com/multimodality-kress.html

Rosenblatt, L. M. (1969). Towards a Transactional Theory of Reading. Journal of Reading Behavior, 1(1), 31–49. https://doi.org/10.1080/10862969609546838

Suhor, C. (1984). Towards a semiotics-based curriculum. Journal of Curriculum Studies, 16(3).

Zheng, B., Warschauer, M., & Farkas, G. (2013). Digital writing and diversity: The effects of school laptop programs on literacy processes and outcomes. Journal of Educational Computing Research, 48(3), 267–299. https://doi.org/10.2190/ec.48.3.a

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Podcast on Getting Started with Digital Notebooks

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Podcast on Getting Started with Digital Notebooks

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In the Ed Newsstand Podcast, Troy Reynolds lists out a plethora of resources to check out when getting started with digital notebooks. His newsletter includes links and is very middle to upper grades focused!

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As I was getting the newsletter ready for this week I stumbled across a video from @adelaideed on TikTok. What you will find in this newsletter are resources for starting your journey with digital notebooks or, if you are a power user, resources for taking digital notebooks to the next level regardless of the presentation platform you use. Resources you will find from @adelaideed are an overview video to get you started with digital notebooks, a video of why digital notebooks make life easier, a video for how to use digital notebooks with students, and a video for why we need digital notebooks as a teaching resource in this new post-COVID educational world. You can also find links to her website, her TPT store, and how to get started making your own money from digital interactive notebooks.

If you would like more examples for building digital notebooks into your curriculum, I have a link to an article from Edutopia that will provide you with four benefits of using digital notebooks with your students. I also found a Google Site from All Saints Episcopal School with twelve links and four videos with everything from how to get started building digital notebooks to how to take digital notebooks to the next level. A website with more resources than anyone knows what to do with comes from Matt Miller from Ditch that Textbook. On his website, he has twenty activities for filling digital notebooks as well as walkthroughs for getting started. There is also a help article from Kami that demonstrates how you can use their software for building digital notebooks.

I also have a resource from Dr. Catlin Tucker that provides walkthroughs with screenshots for building interactive Google Slides. Suzy, from TeachStudentSavvy.com, has video tutorials and explanations for using clickable tabs and a table of contents, how to change backgrounds, how to group items, and keyboard shortcuts for Google Slides. Finally, digital notebook templates are available for free on SlidesMania.com and SlidesGo.com.

You can visit the newsletter to access all the links and videos embedded: https://tinyurl.com/edNewsstand2022

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Send in a voice message: https://anchor.fm/ednewsstand/message

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‎The ed Newsstand: 4.21: Digital Interactive Notebooks on Apple Podcasts

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As I was getting the newsletter ready for this week I stumbled across a video from @adelaideed on TikTok. What you will find in this newsletter are resources for starting your journey with digital notebooks or, if you are a power user, resources for taking digital notebooks to the next level regardl...

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The Newsletter that Podcaster Troy Reynolds makes for his podcast The Ed Newsstand

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edNewsstand Newsletters | Season 5 | 2021 - 2022

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2021 - 2022 Newsletters Google Workspace Updates | 9.17.21 iPadOS 15 | 10.1.21 Nearpod Updates | 10.8.21 (Zoom Audio & Google Profile) Kami Updates | 10.15.21 (Legos & Gmail signature) 9 Pillars of Digital Citizenship | 10.22.21 (Contact Cards) Flocabulary | 11.5.21 (Comment Bank Google Docs/Clas...

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1. Plan out the structure and set up of the journal beforehand.

2. Create templates for students to use in Google Slides (which can then be uploaded to SeeSaw and edited). While drawing out conversation boxes may be simple by hand, it can be cumbersome and time-consuming for some students digitally. Have templates ready and linked on one of the front pages of the journal for students to upload and use if they would like.

3. Practice, practice, practice! Make sure you walk students through how to use a digital (or physical) journal many times. The more you model and practice with them, the less you will be needed later on.

4. Allow students to explore and play with the app first. While responding digitally on SeeSaw, expect students to play around with the features and over-use the “fun” parts. Create time for them to play with the platform and get used to its features. This would be a great time to have them decorate and personalize the front of their journal.

5. Show students examples of when you would rather respond by hand on paper versus digitally.

6. Tell families how they can view their student’s journals and work on SeeSaw. The app has many great ways to involve parents!

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Ability to Meet the Needs of Diverse Learners

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Ability to Meet the Needs of Diverse Learners

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SeeSaw is very student-friendly! Within the app, students can create a response using written text, images, and voice recordings, or they can upload their own media. If creating a response in the SeeSaw app is too cumbersome, they can take a photo of their physical paper response and upload it to SeeSaw to save in their digital journal. This allows all students to respond in ways that are suitable for them. A Reader Response Notebook in its essence allows students to respond in a way that reflects their abilities. Students do not necessarily have to use written text to respond, or they can respond in the language(s) of their choice. Teachers can scaffold learning and responses by providing pre-made templates for students to fill out if they chose that type of response. Students love to use SeeSaw and see it as a treat! The app combined with Kessler’s RRN will promote students' autonomy and agency.

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Adaptations for Virtual and Hybrid School

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Adaptations for Virtual and Hybrid School

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Traditionally, many of us used a physically bound notebook for content area journals. The Pandemic forced us to consider other ways- and maybe even for the better! While making the jump to a fully-digital journal might seem daunting, it follows similar protocols.

As the teacher, you still need to determine the contents of the journal and a way of organizing it. Digitally, this requires more links. Gather up your templates and links and create a page for students to reference.

Since you are not walking the isles of your classroom, create a video with instructions on how to create their journals. Make sure there are multiple modes of explaining (video, written simple instructions that students can listen to, pictures of you doing each step). Based on the grade level, the notebook creation might need to happen over multiple days to ensure all students have done each part.

You can share a lesson page with a pre-recorded video of you teaching how to use a certain response/ strategy with a book. This would normally be done as a whole class mini-lesson.

If you are teaching in a hybrid situation, or in person but want to move towards a digital notebook, students will easily be able to use their journals at home or at school without any disruption. Even if they do not have a device at home, they can create on paper and update their digital journal once they are back in school by uploading photos of their work.

No more losing journals! You have access to students' journals whenever you need to. While teaching virtually, you can confer about a book a student read while both looking at their journal.

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Implementing a digital RRN in your classroom may help students to

progress in their writing

take greater ownership of their reading and writing

increase their rate of learning

aid in their understanding of abstract concepts (Froese, 2018, p. 5)

New research has “identified the Transmodal Student Work Model as a new, research-based structure for learning with digital tools” (Froese, 2018, pg. 5). You can read more about Froese’s work researching transmediation and digital tools in classrooms here.

Another study suggests that “well-planned use of laptops and digital media can help diverse learners improve their literacy processes and outcomes”. The use of laptops, whether full-time or part-time, improved language arts test scores for at-risk students, such as ELLs and low SES students, in two school districts in the noted study (Zheng et al., 2013).

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Kessler’s Reader Response Notebook draws upon Rosenblatt’s (1969) transactional theory. She asserted that the reader was just as important as the text being read; the interaction, or transaction, between text and reader are what create meaning (Mambrol, 2018).  He also looks to Kress (2000), who’s multimodality theory asserts that people use more than just written and spoken language to communicate. We use body language, signs, image, sound, and a variety of other modes to communicate with each other (Multimodality (Kress), 2020). Thirdly, a RRN is built around Suhor’s (1984) theory on transmediation, or the “process of transforming the meaning in one sign system, such as language, into another sign system, such as drawing” (Kessler, 2018, pg. 6). These three theories lay the foundation for Kessler’s Reader Response Notebook, which moves away from a teacher-directed reading notebook and towards one that is student-centered. The reader makes meaning from a text, uses a range of modes to interpret and respond to that text, and translates learning between those modes.

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Check out SeeSaw's YouTube channel for more ways to utilize the app. They show you how to create, assign, grade, and make the most of this digital platform!

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"educational app" "seesaw app" "seesaw learning" "ed tech"

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To learn how Seesaw can work for your classroom, school, or whole district, visit: https://web.seesaw.me Questions? Visit help.seesaw.me Subscribe to our channel for free professional development, classroom inspiration, tutorials, and more!

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Have you struggled to implement and keep up with students' reading journals since the Pandemic? Or maybe you struggled before like me! In this Padlet, I've laid out resources,  how-tos, and ideas as well as theoretical connections and research to show you why a digital reading journal (specifically a Reader Response Notebook) can work for you! Utilizing Google Slides and SeeSaw, you can have students work in a journal digitally in your classroom or virtually- as long as there are devices to be used, students can seamlessly work in any environment. While my audience is elementary teachers, middle and high school teachers may find Google Slides and Google Classroom to be a suitable fit for them.

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If you're looking for a way to give students agency and choice, look no further than Ted Kessler's book "The Reader Response Notebook". While this Padlet can be adapted to any content and type of journal, I talk specifically about Kessler's RRN.

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The reader response notebook (RRN) is a tried-and-true tool in elementary and middle school classrooms. However, teachers and students often express frustration with this tool. Responses can read as though students are just going through the motions, with little evidence of deep comprehension. With this book, teacher educator and consultant Ted Kesler reinvigorates the RRN by infusing this work with three key practices:
--Encouraging responses to reflect design work, using a variety of writing tools
--Expanding what counts as text, including popular culture texts that are important in students' lives outside of school
--Making the RRN an integral part of a community of practice
Providing myriad examples of student work and explicit teaching in classrooms, Kesler, with a community of grade school teachers and students, demonstrates how students' creative responses lead to deep comprehension of diverse texts and ultimately help them to develop their literate identities. This book colorfully illustrates how to teach students toward agency, autonomy, and accountability in their reader response notebooks.

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The Reader Response Notebook: Teaching toward Agency, Autonomy, and Accountability

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The reader response notebook (RRN) is a tried-and-true tool in elementary and middle school classrooms. However, teachers and students often express frustration with this tool. Responses can read as though students are just going through the motions, with little evidence of deep comprehension. Wi...

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An article from Edutopia on interactive notebooks specifically, but has many great connections to a non-interactive notebook that is just student-centered.

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Spiral-bound interactive notebooks have long been a popular way to encourage creativity and critical thinking-and digital versions can do so as well.

Allison Shelley for the Alliance for Excellent Education

In 2007, I taught at a public high school that was obsessed with interactive notebooks. They fully embraced the interactive-notebook movement and bought every ninth-grade student a thick spiral notebook for each core subject. The notebooks were delivered to classrooms in large boxes to be distributed to students each semester.

The concept is simple: The left side is for creative thinking, and the right side is for objective material. The right side often involves cutting and pasting handouts that require critical thinking and interacting with the materials. A table of contents (TOC) on the first page aligns with a large, visible class version to keep students on track with their page numbering.

They're designed to teach organization, allow students to explore ideas creatively in their own manner, and encourage multiple learning approaches for the same content that engages in higher-level thinking.

Recently, a friend shared with me the interactive-notebook strategy adopted by teachers at their school during the fall semester of the pandemic. Imagine: a PowerPoint with more than 40 slides for a sixth-grade unit on minerals and rocks. Each slide had an orientation to replicate a full-size piece of paper. Students made a copy of the PowerPoint and then filled in the blanks for questions, definitions, and notes. There were no left-side or right-side assignments and no encouragement to use different learning activities for the same content, and there was minimal higher-level thinking.

Students quickly learned that they could copy and paste answers from the internet or their friends. These new, digital-interactive notebooks abandoned every criterion of the interactive notebook. They were hardly interactive.

This example has not applied the substitution, augmentation, modification, and redefinition, or SAMR, model for technology transition, which helps educators adopt technology in a way that advances learning. For example, using a PowerPoint is a substitute for a teacher writing on a board. However, a teacher using Nearpod, which integrates interactive features and real-time feedback, truly is a redefinition of the class lecture.

There are many examples of interactive notebooks that have successfully transitioned from the clunky spiral notebook to the digital counterpart.

4 Ways to Get the Benefits of Interactive Notebooks Digitally

1. Ditch a clunky PowerPoint in favor of a TOC that includes left-side and right-side activities. Students create a folder in their Google Drive that will keep all the documents for that unit. Each time they create a new document, they add the hyperlink to the appropriate assignment in their table of contents. The idea of creative side versus objective side is preserved even if the actual assignments are not in those physical positions. Students see the difference in their TOC.

Click here for an example of the setup created by Rebecca Newburn, a veteran teacher of 31 years at Hall Middle School in Larkspur, California.

2. Include any great apps your students regularly use as one of the hyperlinked activities in the TOC. Your options are limitless. Students in a course with a lot of vocabulary can insert the link to their own self-designed Quizlet. If you love using ThingLink to have students annotate diagrams, graphs, pictures, and other visuals, students insert the link to their ThingLink. Use a lot of videos? Whether you are making your own videos or sharing other existing videos, use Edpuzzle as one of the right-side activities. With EdPuzzle, students watch videos paused at strategic moments with questions for engagement. Your imagination is the limit with other free apps, like Popplet for mind mapping or Padlet or Nearpod.

The advantage of the digital, interactive notebook is that all of these apps and online resources can now be integrated and organized into students' interactive notebooks.

3. Have students submit handwritten notes. I like my students to take notes by hand due to years of research about increased retention through this method. It allows students to detach from their computer and take notes from a textbook. Then they can submit a picture of the notes into their Google Drive with a link in the TOC.

4. Check work frequently, and encourage collaboration. With the spiral-interactive notebooks, teachers collected them for periodic feedback and assessment of learning. They were clunky and took up space. Teaching 150 ninth graders was a challenge. With the digital format, it's so easy to take a peek.

Even more so, the digital format lends itself to peer evaluation and collaborative study. Students studying together is a much-needed practice during the pandemic, when students long to connect. The digital, interactive notebook provides the structure that students need. They pair up and share their TOC with a classmate, who can then access a specific activity that has been assigned for review. Or they can use a Quizlet that another student created. This helps students not only assess others but reflect and evaluate their own learning.

These take-a-peek sessions can be followed up with whole-class discussions about what they observed and learned from their classmates. This is a great way to get students working in hybrid or remote situations to interact with all members of the class.

Interactive notebooks have been around for decades. As with any other great pedagogical strategy, it's possible with a little bit of creativity to transition to a digital format and maintain the learning advantages.

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How to Get the Benefits of Interactive Notebooks in Digital Formats

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Spiral-bound interactive notebooks have long been a popular way to encourage creativity and critical thinking-and digital versions can do so as well. Allison Shelley for the Alliance for Excellent Education In 2007, I taught at a public high school that was obsessed with interactive notebooks.

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How to use a Digital Reader's Notebook - Create Dream Explore Blog Post

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Why I use a Reader's Notebook:

One of the core aspects of my reading program is reader's notebook activities. While I meet with small guided reading groups my other students are reading independently and responding to their text in their reader's notebooks. Reader's notebook activities promote metacognition (thinking about their thinking). Maintaining a reader's notebook allows students to demonstrate open ended critical thinking about the texts they are reading. It also gives them a productive activity to work on while I meet with guided reading groups.

Why I Switched to a Digital Reader's Notebook:

My school recently got an influx of devices and I wanted to make use of them. My district is a Google Apps for Education district which made this a no-brainer for me. I don't have 1:1 devices and since students are all working at their own pace I knew a digital reader's notebook would work well. Some students are reading while others are responding. I simply added the digital reader's notebook to our Google Classroom and students can choose which page or prompt they want to work on. Sometimes they add their own pages and responses, sometimes they use the ones I have added and sometimes I assign specific pages depending on what we are working on in class.

One of my favorite aspects of the digital notebook is that students have virtual sticky notes. We used to go through a ton of sticky notes...like we probably kept sticky note companies in business. Then I created a page for them to record their thinking just like they would on a sticky note but instead it is a virtual one.

The best part is that they don't need to ask for more sticky notes, they just go to the master copy and copy the page and add it to their digital reader's notebook.

If you want to see how this works in action you can check out the video below:

While I have my students do many open ended responses like writing a letter to a character or writing a letter to me about their book, I also have some specific activities for them to complete like the ones below:

These are all activities than can be done in a paper reader's notebook as well but if you're trying to go paperless or use less paper a digital reader's notebook is a great simple option that is easy to implement.

It's also nice not to have to lug those books home with me to mark! I can just login to my computer at home and check out what they're working on. I can leave quick feedback as well throughout the school day by using the comment feature in Google Slides....so much quicker than having to leave a written response!

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How to use a Digital Reader's Notebook - Create Dream Explore

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One of the core aspects of my reading program is reader's notebook activities. While I meet with small guided reading groups my other students are reading independently and responding to their text in their reader's notebooks. Reader's notebook activities promote metacognition (thinking about their thinking).

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Seesaw | Elementary Learning Experience Platform

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Seesaw | Elementary Learning Experience Platform

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Elementary Learning Experience Platform | Seesaw

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Seesaw is a Learning Experience Platform with 25M+ users, enhancing elementary education, engagement, and school culture while improving academic success.

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Google Slides: Online Slideshow Maker | Google Workspace

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Use Google Slides to create online slideshows. Make beautiful presentations together with secure sharing in real-time and from any device.

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How to use Google Apps or Google Drive with Seesaw

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Teachers and students can add work created in Google apps like Docs, Slides, or Sheets directly into Seesaw portfolios! There are two options: Link to Google Files: If you want students to be ab...

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To view a collection of Kessler's blog posts, see his page.

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Tedsclassroom. 61 likes. All things education through the lens of Ted Kesler: where great education happens.

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How SeeSaw Became the Hero of At-Home Learning

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How SeeSaw Became the Hero of At-Home Learning

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Schools Clamored for Seesaw’s App. That Was Good News, and Bad News. (Published 2020)

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It wasn’t simple to become a do-it-all education tool almost overnight.