After moving our classes to online platforms, our seniors, who are all English Language Learners, were given iPads to complete their mandatory senior projects (PBATs) for each of their four content areas (Social Studies, English, Math, and Science). Many, however, simply could not go online because they had poor internet access at home, and as a result they either needed more time to work or, in several cases, typed entire research papers with their thumbs on their phones. This was made worse by the fact that, for my Government and Economics class, they had to access multiple news articles from different websites to cite in in their papers, so they struggled to alternate between the articles they were reading and their papers in Google Docs. This year, they will again have iPads but many will face the same internet access problems they had in the spring. In addition, I had many students who simply preferred to handwrite their papers first instead of typing.
Enter the Great "Reusable Notebook That Digitizes Everything" Experiment! Rocketbooks are reusable paper notebooks that use special erasable Pilot FriXion pens whose ink can be recognized by the Rocketbook app. Take a picture of what you've written in your notebook and the app will automatically upload it to whatever cloud service you are using. The app will then OCR the writing and convert it into typed text. Once you're done, you can simply wash off what you've written and reuse the notebook.
By giving our students with limited internet access these notebooks, they will need to spend significantly less time fighting with technology and be able to focus on the substance of their work instead! Your support is needed and greatly appreciated!
About my class
After moving our classes to online platforms, our seniors, who are all English Language Learners, were given iPads to complete their mandatory senior projects (PBATs) for each of their four content areas (Social Studies, English, Math, and Science). Many, however, simply could not go online because they had poor internet access at home, and as a result they either needed more time to work or, in several cases, typed entire research papers with their thumbs on their phones. This was made worse by the fact that, for my Government and Economics class, they had to access multiple news articles from different websites to cite in in their papers, so they struggled to alternate between the articles they were reading and their papers in Google Docs. This year, they will again have iPads but many will face the same internet access problems they had in the spring. In addition, I had many students who simply preferred to handwrite their papers first instead of typing.
Enter the Great "Reusable Notebook That Digitizes Everything" Experiment! Rocketbooks are reusable paper notebooks that use special erasable Pilot FriXion pens whose ink can be recognized by the Rocketbook app. Take a picture of what you've written in your notebook and the app will automatically upload it to whatever cloud service you are using. The app will then OCR the writing and convert it into typed text. Once you're done, you can simply wash off what you've written and reuse the notebook.
By giving our students with limited internet access these notebooks, they will need to spend significantly less time fighting with technology and be able to focus on the substance of their work instead! Your support is needed and greatly appreciated!
Read more