I tried something new today with my sophomores and the modern world history class/: they took collaborative notes which were mirrored on the second display in the classroom, while I lectured using the primary display.

Homework

Prior to class, students read about “the 1980s” and discussed world events with their parents. I converted Wikipedia’s article on the 1980s to a pdf; students downloaded it from Canvas into Notability on their iPads, read it, and highlighted the parts which were “most interesting” to them. Then, they asked a parent, guardian, or adult in their house, asking what they remember in global events from the 1980s; students summarized these responses and posted them to a discussion board in Canvas.

Class

After the first class, Yosup Joo and I spoke[1] while I moved into our shared classroom as he packed up to move out. Based on my description of the first iteration, we thought of alternate verbal directions for the second iteration.

The plan was for students to open a Google Doc (shown above) on their iPads, and take notes in Part 1 while I lectured from a mindmap in Inspiration (shown below) on my iPad. Afterwards, they would break into three small groups and each group answer one of the questions in Part 2 of the Google Doc.

First iteration:

After explaining the day’s lesson and beginning the lecture, I had to stop a few times to let students undo what someone in the class had done. Students were writing things like “liamsucks” in the Google Doc, selecting all and changing the font, inserting a random image, or selecting all and deleting. For the most part, that stopped when I paused the lecture to open the History on the Google Doc and track down the one student who had inserted the image, and scold him. When students saw that it could be done and how easily it could be done, the purposeful disruption of the Google Doc ended… but there were still incidental deletions, changes, and general interruptions to the flow of the lecture.

After the lecture, the answering of the three questions was a bit chaotic too. The desks in this classroom, in which I am simply a guest, are arranged in three rows of pairs. One student shouted that rows of pairs could answer a question each; there was a chorus of agreement — and then students started typing their answer to their assigned question. More chaos ensued as students tried to corral their group and form a coherent answer… which never really happened. (Below is a photo from this second part of the activity.)

Second iteration:

In advance of the second class, Yosup and I spoke, and we brainstormed alternate instructions for the two parts of the class. Before letting them into the Google Doc, I explained that they would feel tempted to screw around in it, that someone might want to select-all and change the font or select-all and delete, but that it’s just annoying to classmates and is easily undone. I also showed them the History in Google Docs right after they logged in, so they could see how easily I could see what each was doing. Both of these seemed to head-off the screwing around in the Google Doc.

Additionally, in advance of Part 2 and the answering of the questions, I strongly “suggested” to students that they brainstorm their collective response to the question before appointing a dingle student from the group to be the secretary. This went much better.

Conclusions

Collaborative note-taking on a lecture and collaboratively answering complex open-ended questions are (a) worthwhile learning tasks, and (b) have been possible for quite some time, thanks to Google Docs. What made this lesson different was having the second display surface in the classroom, which allowed me to easily see the students’ notes take form. Again, sure, I could have done this with just my laptop sitting in front of me, but I felt – at least in the second iteration of the lesson – that students were more accountable for their participation in the collective effort.

Second, I’m reminded yet again of how lucky I am to work where I do. Not only do I have access to resources, like a second display in the classroom, but I also have amazing colleagues, willing to spend 10-minutes in the middle of the day to talk with me about nuances of teaching and learning, and who are genuinely interested in helping me and my students.

1. We share our home class, teaching the majority of our classes there, and our desks are there. We also teach Psychology together, and so we regularly talk about curriculum and instruction.  ↩