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Mixing the digital and analog when it comes to reading and writing is always a tricky process. How much is too much? Where should the paper end and the digital begin? How do we differentiate?

Last year we played around with these ideas, a lot. As a district we purchased a license for Seesaw to begin making digital connections in the lower grades. For the upper grades we licensed Campus Press.

But at the end of the day not everything can be paid for, we still ned to leverage free tools. And we also need to make direct connections to traditional media. The actual pen is still pretty mighty.

So, here's one thing we did...

Student were broken up into book clubs. The teacher built a Padlet for each club. The students would read the books and jot down things they noticed; either based on a particular theme the teacher asked them to look for such as character or setting, or open-ended items about the overall story.

In most cases the jots were physical jots on Post-it notes as they read. After reading a particular selection; a paragraph or set number of pages, the students would then review their jots. They would take the one or two they wanted to focus more on and add those to the Padlet. As they discussed their jots on the Padlet, through additional posts and comments on existing posts, they would begin to think about which jot they wanted to expand on, to "write long" about.

Once they decided which jot to write long on they would use their blog. Their blog post could include links to the Padlet, links to author pages, images that support their ideas, and so forth. Once they were published (after utilize Categories and Tags for organization) they would share with their classmates.

Students were then able to read posts from different book clubs and leave comments about what they noticed. This process made all the students both readers as well as authors. Students read and made jots on a book and once the blog posts were published they became the published authors others left jots about (as comments).

A visual matrix of the process:

Unfortunately our blogs are currently restricted to our school district domain, so I can't post student examples. But we're working on opening it up... ;-)

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Digital Book Clubs: Padlet, blogs and the writing process

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Mixing the digital and analog when it comes to reading and writing is always a tricky process. How much is too much? Where should the paper end and the digital begin? How do we differentiate? Last year we played around with these ideas, a lot.

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Great app, especially for primary grades, to document work, explain understanding, and so forth. Paid version allows students to keep data/portfolio year to year

@mr_casal

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While watching a video, force the kids to stop and answer related questions to gauge understanding and formatively assess

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Great place to have a visually applealing single page of bookmarks.

~Nik

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Videolicious can be used to create free short videos and quick virtual tours.

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Highend image editor

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VideoNot.es Take notes synchronized to video clips. Notes stored in Google Drive

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Adobe spark can be used for students at any grade level to create movies/digital stories.  Great for foreign language presentations bc they can easily record themselves speaking and include it in the video.

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Love this app for creating infographics, posters, memes, ect

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Basic video editing in the cloud and stored locally or on Google Drive.

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App that turns text into a TelePrompter. Kids use it when creating videos (hold one chromebook with prompter next to chromebook recording)

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Teachers have begun having students use Google Keep to collect and organize information for research projects.

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Chrome Extension that grabs whole/parts of screen. You can edit and save to Drive

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Not sure if it's an app too, but we use it as an extension....highly recommended

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I use nearpod with 3rd grade students to have collaborative discussions.

~Nik

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I have been loyal to this one for many years....great for tutorials with so much media. Gives students voice and an expressive tool. Provides an opportunity to make learning visible.
https://explaineverything.com/

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I use this for demoing projects, flipping my class and even sending teachers quick tutorials when they have questions!

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I use Padlet for the first day of school and for "Do Nows" and "Exit Tickets" for the rest of the year.

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I use Padlet for the first day of school and for "Do Nows" and "Exit Tickets" for the rest of the year.