1:1 Computing. The Two Column Notes Sheet

In the second part of this series, I figured I’d just jump right in with an example of something that I use in my classes.  It is simple to use and incorporates the Chromebooks or Laptops into your classroom in a way that avoids the whole “my principal told me I have to use these things so I am gonna do it whether it makes sense or not” feeling of some other activities.

In my zoology class, students spend quite a bit of time watching videos from the series “Inside Nature’s Giants”, many of which can be found on YouTube.  I have them watch these videos for three main reasons.  First, it is a great way to show dissections performed by top notch scientists and to expose the students to real dissections of large animals we could never fit into a high school science lab.  The camera work is amazing and, if you can get past a bit of blood and guts, you get to see things like the entire digestive system of an elephant laid out on the floor.  

Second, and this is a big one for a group of students who have never really studied evolutionary biology, they are not shy at all about discussing the evolutionary history and adaptations of these organisms.  Each episode normally features a few minutes on the ancestry and environmental changes that led to the critter we see today.  They also do an amazing job of showing things like the 15 foot long Laryngeal Nerve in a giraffe or the evolution of shark teeth from scales in the episode on the Great White.  

Third, in at least two episodes one of the main anatomists on the show, Joy Reidenberg, climbs in a freaking whale.  You read that correctly.  She climbs in a whale.  In.  A.  Whale.  

Totally cool.

Anyway, I have them watch these as a primer for the animal they are going to dissect the next day.  For example, we watch the episode on the Giant Squid before we dissect a squid, and I show them the episode on the Great White shark before we dissect the dogfish shark.  This gives them an opportunity to compare and contrast the large animal on the video with the one on their dissecting tray.  This comparison is, in fact, the primary thing I look for in their dissection write-up.  

Watching the videos also gives them a chance to work on picking out relevant details.  Sometimes I  just have them watch and take notes about what is interesting. (Holy cow!  That lady just climbed in the whale!)  Other times I have a more specific reason for watching like “pick out adaptations and evolutionary trends that allow the alligator to live both in the water and on land”.    

While watching the video I have them work on a document called the Two Column Note Sheet.  This note sheet, pictured below, has two columns:  a column designated for notes and a column designated for other things.  In the first column the students will type out anything that seems interesting or relevant to the main point of the video.  They fill this part out while watching the video.  

The second column is for images, video links, or any other information that might be useful in helping them understand their notes.  I encourage them to go wild in this section because it is digital they are not wasting any paper or printer ink.  This not only encourages the students to engage with the material on a deeper level than had they simply taken the notes, it also allows me to see what sort of connections the students are making.  It is sort of a quick check to see if they are thinking about the material of just finding pictures.  For example, one student wrote about shark tooth evolution in column 1 and then just had a picture of a sharks tooth in column 2.  A second student had the same note about tooth evolution  but had several pictures of teeth ranging from sharks, crocodiles, dinosaurs and humans.  This second student had also written “...all from the same ancestor?” in the area below the picture.  The first student didn’t think much about the concept beyond the obvious, while the second student was clearly looking to the larger pattern.

The last part of the two column notes sheet is the summary box.  In this box I ask them to write a few sentences to tie together their notes from column 1 and the pictures and links from column 2.  I’m not looking for anything fancy here, just a few complete sentences that show me that they are thinking about what they just watched.

There are many other benefits to using Chromebooks and laptops in the classroom and I will expand on a few other activities in the next part of this series.  

To get your very own copy of the two column notes sheet, click the link below and make a copy of it.

Link to Google Doc version of Two Column Notes Sheet.