Digital Learning Environment Blogs

Get the RSS feed

|

Jim Vanides Archives

My 5 Favorite Tablet PC Tips for Educators
by Jim Vanides

With all the growing interest in tablet-based computing in schools, I thought it would be timely to share once again “My 5 Favorite Tablet PC Tips for Educators”. These are simple ways you can use a digital pen to support your teaching – especially in math and science, where diagrammatic discussions are key. I also include a tip at the end for using your existing laptop to take advantage of the power of digital ink…

As with anything new, especially education technology you’ve never used before, start with someone simple. The best starting point for learning to use your digital pen is marking up PowerPoint. This feature has been in PowerPoint for years, and you can do it with a mouse – but a pen makes it so much more useful.

What’s interesting is that teachers who are doing this have discovered that they make better use of PowerPoint: Because they leave more whitespace so they can draw as they talk, the presentation slows down to the speed of thought. Students are no longer scrambling to keep up. There is the additional advantage that the markups can be saved and distributed to students later, easing the cognitive load of note-taking.

EXTRA TIP: Create your master powerpoint, but don’t present from it; always make a copy, then start marking it up. This way you always have a fresh “clean copy” to start from.

Windows Journal is a replacement for your chalkboard, whiteboard, and/or
overhead projector, and is marvelous in its simplicity. It's basically an infinite pad of digital paper - with some features that have many educators tossing out PowerPoint and using Journal instead. Here's why:

Unlike PowerPoint, with Journal your annotations, drawings, scribbles, text and pasted images can all be REPOSITIONED afterward. Just use the lasso tool to grab and move an object.

Instructional Use: Journal is great for facilitating a brainstorm discussion. Write a list of ideas as step 1 of a brainstorm, and then (step 2 of a brainstorm) discuss ways to organize all the ideas - and move the list items being discussed. You can't do this on a white board unless you erase and rewrite everything. Yes, you can brainstorm with stickies - but those tend to be hard to read from far away. With a digital projector located toward the back of the classroom, the projected image can be ENORMOUS.

Unlike PowerPoint, if you want to spontaneously add a blank page because you've run out of space for more annotations, you can easily add a new page and keep going. With PowerPoint, you'd have to stop your presentation, save your annotations, insert a slide, and then restart the presentation. Ugh.

Instructional Use: You can prepare your lesson plan ahead of time, pre-populating your Journal file
with curricular materials you want to share. Invariably you'll be asked a question which requires more space for drawing as you discuss the question. Journal helps you shift from "presenter" to "discussion facilitator".

Unlike PowerPoint, you can STRETCH (or unStretch) the digital canvas as needed. Want to insert some space between diagrams? No problem - just activate the "stretch" icon and tap/drag the pen DOWN to add more room (or tap/drag UP to unstretch).

Instructional Use: Have two drawings or photos, one on top of another, but now you need some room to label key features? Just STRETCH the paper and make some room for your annotations.

EXTRA TIP: Put the Windows “Snipping Tool” on your tool bar. It will make it REALLY easy to grab images and paste them into Journal while you’re having a discussion with your students. 

Looking for ways to be more efficient? Try paperless homework! If you're already having students use MS Word to write assignments, you can mark them up and send them back without ever having to print (and carry around) the originals. Here's how:

Microsoft OneNote is a “digital binder” – actually, it’s a shelf of digital binders, each of which can have an infinite number of tabs, with each tabbed section having an infinite number of pages, and each page goes on forever. Imagine being able to search a shelf-full of binders for a hand-written note from 6 months ago!

One of the best kept secrets of MS OneNote, however, is its ability to record sound while you take notes. The best part of this best kept secret is that the audio is synchronized with your digital ink. Want to hear what was being said during the seminar when you took that illegible note? Just click on the ink and it will play the audio that was recorded at the time you scribbled your note!

EXTRA TIP: audio recordings work best when you have a separate, USB-attached microphone. There are some excellent high-quality condenser microphones you can get for this, but even a Logitech USB mic on a stand will be a big improvement.

If you don’t own a tablet pc yet, you can still make your existing laptop easier to use in a tablet-like way. There are a variety of low-cost USB attachments that add pen capability. The WACOM Bamboo is one example, and costs less than $100. It’s not quite as convenient as direct manipulation on-screen, but it is much easier than using a mouse. 

If you have any other tablet pc tips, let me know! Post a comment or tweet me @jgvanides. I’d love to hear your stories!