AVIDigital: AVID Digital Strategies

Overview

Over the course of the year I have been working closely with our high school AVID teacher, Joel Velasco, to digitize the process of organization and note taking. Our campus offers a 1:1 situation but relies on the student to pay an insurance fee before receiving their device. We wanted to build a system that would be device agnostic and cater to the smart phone generation. Through some trial and error we have found a solution that seems to be working for the students that are brave enough to practice it.

Classmint Cornell Notes

Last year our AVID instructor found a web 2.0 company named Classmint to use as his Cornell Notes system on student devices. The platform even allows students to 'fold' their notes just like the real thing. This separates it from simply building a template in a Doc and replicating it for every class. Students have cloud storage through the system and can 'publish' the notes to share the URL. Other features allow you to tag notes and organize them into folders under the My Notes tab. 

The service does allow you to export a PDF copy in order to load in cloud services or print out. Unfortunately this feature seems to fail when I try it, and this would cause some issues for students that are dealing with teachers that have a lower comfort with tech integration and need paper copies. 

Digital Binder

We quickly realized that we needed to digitize one of the key features of AVID, the binder. The traditional three inch binder complete with pencil pouch, loose leaf paper, and dividers is the antithesis of the common 15 year old. We knew that once we created a system for the binder the other facets of AVID would follow. Form templates could be made to account for tutorials. Writing activities would come alive with modern processing tools. Even collaboration takes a new face with video conferences and collaborative apps like Google Docs and BaiBoard. 

First Trial: Google Sheets Notebook

Shot of my sample Sheets Notebook.

Our first trial used a technique I saw in use at an elementary in our district. Using a website or some other tool they were able to build a digital table of contents for their class procedures, lesson overviews, etc. The system used a basic hyperlink formula that is pretty common in sheets: HYPERLINK=("URL","hyperlink display name"). With this you can link to videos, Google Docs, and their Classmint notes.
From our end this was an easy process, but I'm not a 15 year old. Most found the process very cumbersome and archaic. "Type in a formula? How 2010." This was not the solution we were working for.

Second Trial: Evernote

My last three years in the classroom I used Evernote as a digital storage bank of board notes, files, and hyperlinks. This was the easiest way I found to record what I was doing and share it with my students and parents. The process was so fluid that I would even have students turn in work coming in from an absence because they checked the site and stayed current. It was a very powerful communication for me as a teacher and I still encourage others to use it in this fashion. I often had parents emailing me mid-day asking for an Evernote update. Now that's powerful. 

View of my Evernote Dashboard from teaching. 

One night I was looking through some of my old Texas History posts and I decided to switch to my 2012-13 notebook to look back at some of my World Culture assignments. That's when it hit. Online notebooks. Sharing options. File loading. Image and photo capabilities. This was what we've been searching for, and it's one of the most advertised and successful apps out there. 

The Evernote platform was easy for the students to catch on to. With the addition of the Scannable app, students were now able to scan their worksheets from their less tech focused classes and include them in their online notebook. My co-worker even found a Cornell Notes template that students could replicate and fill in. 

Be warned: there are some storage limitations. Evernote runs it on a month to month basis. If students really got carried away they could easily hit the mark, but we haven't encountered this yet. 

To Be Continued...

As our pilot continues I'll update this blog in comments. At this point we are happy with the Evernote solution but continue to search for the next big thing. If you are interested in learning more or collaborating on our AVIDigital adventures email me at tejashanson@gmail.com.