Digital Notebooks in Math Class
I’m sitting in a 7th grade math class watching a lesson on scientific notation. The math hasn’t changed since I was a kid, but how this classroom does business sure has.
Traditional math class – The teacher does the day’s lesson on an overhead (or chalkboard or whiteboard) while kids take notes in notebooks. Kids do math problems on paper and handed them in (loose leaf, math notebook, or individual worksheets) the next day.
Today – The teacher writes notes/lesson on her swiveled tablet while her screen projects behind her. Students have digital notebooks they write in using the stylus of their tablet pcs. Each student has their computer swiveled (no screens to hide behind) and so does the teacher for maximum eye-contact. At any time, the teacher can click on a student notebook and see it live (notes, homework, notebook doodles…)
How does this work?
- Each student has a tablet pc. (We’re using Toshiba M700s; the teacher has an older R10.)
- Each student has OneNote 2007 (Think digitized/multimedia 3 ring binder capable of holding text, images, video, weblinks and audio)
- Each class section has a folder for its students on our network with Copy (teacher shares documents; students read-only), Drop (students read-only to hand in), Share (students full read/write), and Portfolio (each student sees only their own w/full read/write) folders.
- Every classroom has sufficient access to our network via wireless APs in or near the classroom.
Today we walked kids through the initial process of sharing their notebooks on the server in their math “portfolio” folders. (Each student has full read/write to their own folder as does the teacher; peers don’t even see this folder.) While I was walking the kids through sharing and importing the folder with the lessons for this unit, the teacher was opening each student notebook. This set-up took about 15 minutes. We’d tested the process in my tech class the week earlier, so I knew the process worked and the kids’ tablets were set to make nice with the networks.
In their next math class, kids will log into their tablets and launch OneNote. This process will start the sync of the cached notebook on the tablet with the primary version that lives on the network. In the time it takes to boot and log in, the day’s homework is handed in. The teacher syncs her computer the same way, so she can view a cached version of her student notebooks for viewing, annotating, or grading when she has time. When she’s back on the network, she syncs so that kids will get updated comments from her on their notebooks. It’s kind of like IM with your student/teacher inside your math notebook, but you have to be on the school network for the messages to sync.
In the future, when the teacher has a new section to add to student notebooks, kids will copy the folder from the class “copy” folder and paste it to their individual notebooks. When OneNote is opened, the folders will come up as new sections. Each unit has subsections – Assignment sheet (lists the homework for the unit), Class Notes (space for kids to take notes in class), Practice (for in-class practice exercises), Handouts (a section for pdfs or other handouts distributed by the teacher after the section is created), and Homework (students do work here for the next class).
I don’t know yet how this will impact the math class, but I saw kids engaged and less concerned about organizing work. I saw a teacher excited because she could give kids immediate feedback as they worked without singling them out for attention. Kids with large handwriting could zoom in and have more room. Assignments can be color coded and include hand-drawn work, clip art, audio, video, etc. Notebooks can be “searched” for terms, page numbers, or any text entered. Notebook pages can have graph paper, lined paper, or blank backgrounds. Lots of possibilities for lots of learning needs.
In the next week, we’re going to keep testing in this math class. I’ve got an appointment for the same teacher’s science class in two weeks. By the end of November, I’m anticipating this sharing to be common in math and science, potentially in languages and English.
I can’t believe I’m blogging this for the whole wide world to read, but today I really like Microsoft J
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Comments
Tomas,
Here are two ideas that might work for you:
1. Math Type – You would need to copy and paste from Word. It’s a little expensive for a single user license, but our math teachers really like it.
http://www.dessci.com/en/products/mathtype/
2. Office 2007 has a toolbar similar to Math Type. I’m not sure how sophisticated it is (we don’t have users on 2007 on my campus yet – just OneNote 2007 w/Office 2003).
Neither require tablets.
http://blogs.msdn.com/microsoft_office_word/archive/2006/10/04/Equations-in-Word-2007.aspx
Unfortunately, I don’t know how to get the toolbars up in OneNote of if it’s possible yet, but I know copy & paste works.
Hi Tami! I found this blog entry when looking for a way to use my notebook pc to take notes in math and science classes. The difference between me and your 7th graders is that I’m a university freshman, so my needs for mathematical formulas might be a little more advanced…
However, my problem is that I haven’t found a way of typing down my equations in OneNote fast enough. How do you do it? Is it possible without a tablet PC? (I already have a notebook, and I don’t like the idea of having to buy another one just for math notes…)