Super easy PDF commenting for better collaborative reading and comprehension

In recent years lots of teachers would have spotted students developing the habit and tendency to skim read online and the shallow comprehension skills that follow. We constantly give students resources to read over to supporting their thinking and their understanding of case studies, yet many students will read too quickly and superficially without processing the information.

A lesson I did last week really changed my perspective on this, using a super simple PDF commenting trick in Google Drive. A colleague Sean McHugh spotted a few weeks ago that Google had added a comment function into any PDF you have stored in Google Drive. With a couple of quick clicks you can print an article off any website and save as a PDF and then save this into your Google Drive. You can then choose to share the PDF ‘with a the link’ and thus give the viewer the ability to comment on the document. You can click and see the explore the example below.

You can set this up as follows;

• Find your article online or find your saved PDF
• If you have an online article click to print but change destination to – Save as PDF
• Drag PDF into your Google Drive
• Click in the top right to share and then choose – Share so ‘Anyone with link can comment‘
• Then share this with your students, they can comment on individual words or top right to drag an area to comment.

At our school you can link directly from our Online Learning Platform ‘Teamie’ can it will sort the permissions for you. To save the craziness of an entire class commenting on one PDF best top copy and duplicate your file a couple of times and have smaller reading groups.

As an assessment trick, I asked them very specifically to look for definitions or examples of the concept we were studying in the article and to add a comment where they found them. I could scan the documents and see how they were going or add a comment to nudge them along.

EdPuzzle: video questions for formative assessment

Like all teachers, we see our face-to-face time with my classes as incredibly valuable and precious. I want to spend as much of this time as possible checking for understanding, exploring key questions and helping student grapple with complex ideas where I can coach, probe and support.

When introducing a new concept we often default to a mini lecture and some slides and ask a couple of questions to keep the students on track. With laptops and online tools such as EdPuzzle there are some really effective ways for students to work through a tutorial at their own pace and for you as a teacher to collate answers from all students.  Developing an online flipped instruction resource is a skill that teachers should have in their repertoire thereby being able to use the data to check for understanding and then plan how we might adapt our plans for the next lesson.

 

When other school activities, trips, or absences mean that weeks disrupted and we struggle to maintain the flow with our students an EdPuzzle can help you make the most of your precious time in class.

The following slides help you how to set up with EdPuzzle and how to add questions to a video. Signup with your Google Apps account here.

The essential steps are...

1. You can add any video from YouTube or other platforms
2. Just copy the URL and paste into the EdPuzzle search tool
3. Trim the video to highlight a certain passage of a longer clip
4. Click to add either open response, multiple choice questions or your comment on video
5. Save and publish to your students and then sharing the link via your online class.
6. Check your teacher dashboard to see summary of student responses, either by student or by question.

Notetaking with Evernote

Evernote is a great application for writing and collating notes and now it looks even better. Over the last month Evernote has had a refresh and remains one of the most effective note taking tools for school.

You can download Evernote from the App Store and signin to get started. The free account allows you to do everything you might need as a student.

If you are someone who saves school work in separate word documents, Evernote is the tool for you. Once you sign up for a free account your notes are saved both in the app and on the web. Your notes are also easily searchable by key words, tags and titles. Use the associated app Evernote Web Clipper to save websites and notes as you surf the web.

Some top tips to become an Evernote ninja

Master the Left Hand Sidebar

The sidebar has been updated to help you navigate through your notes more easily. The most recent notes show up, plus any Notebooks you drag to the shortcut section at the top. Try drag notebooks from each of your subjects into this shortcut bar.

Tags

Tags are a way that you can label notes so that you can search them later. Much like tagging a friend in a photo in Facebook, tagging should be part of your routine when taking notes and researching. The new tab icon in the lefthand sidebar help you see an overview of your tags and work.

Notetaking

Within each note there are lots of features to support your writing. Think about using the check list icons, bullet points, table and different colours. You can use these ideas to collate ideas or summarise viewpoints. Also try the record button to save some audio or the teachers talk into the note.

Saving from the Web

Evernote Webclipper is a Chrome Extension you can download from within Evernote Preferences. This allows you to grab snippets from a website and save this research back into your Evernote notebook. It is a brilliant way to keep track of your research.