Sticky notes online
Luckily some digital readers with web access allow users easy access to these tools outside their book applications. While I look forward to making good use of Diigo in Education as we start to read and evaluate non-fiction resources – Diigo’s strength, I believe – I have to admit that these garden-variety sticky notes hold little appeal for today’s middle-schoolers. This style of digital note-taking reminded me of the digital sticky notes on Diigo, which allow readers to share, annotate, and engage in conversations about internet resources.
The next problem – how could they share their notes with me (or their peers) in a way that would allow us to respond and ask questions to deepen their understanding? I was pleased to discover that most digital readers allow readers to print or share their notes these days.
STICKY NOTES ONLINE HOW TO
I discovered that most of my students knew about and embraced the dictionary at their fingertips with their digital readers, but few knew how to take notes with the same ease. This sticking point remains: What do we do about the students who are eager to use their Kindles, Nooks, and iPads for their independent reading? What are they supposed to do with their pads of florescent Post-its, attach them to the screen? A review of their sticky note responses allows me to nudge them toward closer reading and interpretation as they examine a single paragraph from Number the Stars. They are referring to evidence on the page for our discussions of A Wrinkle in Time. My students are “envisioning” their reading in more detail and starting to infer more connections. I’ll admit that I was skeptical at first, but I’ll be darned if it doesn’t work. With this somewhat antique technology, we learned to teach students to engage with a text, share their ideas, and write in more depth. One of the teaching tools for this purpose, as I learned from the Reading and Writing Project’s Summer Institutes, out of Columbia’s Teacher’s College, is the tried and true sticky note. With Minecraft and Instagram competing for their attention, we still want to lure our students into a rich and rewarding life of engaging with books. Hooking students on reading and keeping them engaged is the name of the game in the Language Arts racket these days.