Public Education Today, Tomorrow, Forever...

One of the things I really think is ideal for students to be able to do, is to create, manage and maintain their own Interactive Notebook. When I was teaching high school biology (I just retired this past school year), we were using notebooks (composition), but they were not interactive. Our notebooks were for students to keep their assignments in, so they could be used for further learning outside the classroom, help them prepare for quizzes and tests, be able to prove to the teacher they completed the assignment or the assignment had been already graded, collaborate with other students on assignments and labs and help them to keep their learning material organized to name just a few things why we did them.

The drawback. The students did not like having to carry them around with them, which basically defeats the main purpose in having them in the first place, which is to be available at anytime when they need to use it. Nevertheless, it was a success, but it takes a lot of time and energy on the part of the teacher to make sure the students are doing it right. It also requires the student to put in the time and energy to make it happen too. All to often though, students would not do this outside the classroom no matter how hard I tried to get them to do it.

My colleagues had the same results as I had too. So, we would end up updating the notebooks during class time, which took away from learning the content. To get around this problem, I would go around the classroom as I had always done and have discussions with the students on biology or put on a science related video while they updated their notebooks.

On iSessioner.com, the coder and I have been spending the last two months creating a true Interactive Online Notebook students will not have to carry around with them and has all the capabilities any student would need to enhance their learning. The students will also be able to create public or private notebook posts depending on what their needs are. Do you want the world to see what you have created or do you need the posts to be private, so you can have others provide feedback to you, work with you on the notebook posts or do you need to show the post to your teacher for a grade? Either way, you can go from public to private or private to public.