(In my classroom we use the wonderful Open Office suite, including the slide application, Impress. That’s why I prefer inclusive generic terms for common software. When I say “slide application,” you might think “Powerpoint.”)

Kevin Jarrett at NCS-Tech has riffed on an idea originally proposed by Mike Eisenberg: using a slide application to take notes during the research process. Eisenberg suggested how to set up the slides; Jarrett liked the idea and created a template.

Why would you want to take notes with a slide application? Because each slide can work like a 3×5 note card, only digital. Jarrett’s template, which he calls Notetakr, includes a spot at the bottom for citation (kids can copy and paste the URL) and a spot at the top for the specific topic. The notes go in the middle. If you encourage students to use color-coding, they can do that, too.

Here’s the real beauty: students can use the slide sorting tool to move the slides around until the information is organized the way they want. The slide sorter may also help them construct an outline. Once the information is organized, kids are ready to start drafting, and they can move back and forth between screens as needed.

Teachers can easily project a slide onto a whiteboard or screen to discuss avoiding plagiarism.

This idea will work for any student who is old enough to understand an outline.

Students can load a copy of their notes onto a flash drive, e-mail a copy to themselves at home, upload a copy to a storage space (we use iFolder), or all of the above. No more cries of “I lost my note cards!”

Posted Tue, 30 Dec 2008 00:01:24 and filed under Writing, Technology. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.