Chapter 34: Elevate Classroom Teaching & Learning with Google Notebook

 Chapter 34: Elevate Classroom Teaching & Learning with Google Notebook

Date/Time: 22nd April 2025 - Saturday, 1: 27 pm

This is another interesting post exploring the amazing features of Google digital notebook and the potential of Google Notebook in education. The post highlights how educators can benefit from this amazing digital notebook. It’s a new resource introduced by Google and can transform teaching and learning in the classroom. 

The post reflects on different sessions held with educators from across Pakistan and a very prestigious school Happy Palace Group of Schools from Karachi who have actively participated in various online training sessions. This was a 2 hour session online created in Google Sites with attendance forms, feedback forms and lesson checks created in Google Forms. All participants are added as collaborators in Google docs. 

This was the first and second session on introducing the amazing digital google notebook to participants in a 2 hour session online. The session started with discussing the difference between digital and traditional paper pencil notebooks. Participants could highlight key differences between traditional notebooks and digital notebooks. These included the ability to save data, security of data, sharing data, adding collaborators, reuse the notebook, customise and add images/video to digital notebooks. And as far as the traditional paper pencil books are concerned, they can be physically damaged, cannot be shared and cannot be customised. And as educators we look forward to working on resources that can make life easier for us. Being able to add all data and resources on the same platform and share with all concerned is a feature that adds value to any digital resource.

The next task in the online session was to create a digital notebook using Google Notebook and explore the three parts of the Notebook. These include sources, chat and studio. The sources section has all uploaded sources that participants have to explore, analyse and create content. These can be PDF files, documents, slides, YouTube videos and website links. The next section is the chat section, where users can write prompts and queries to explore the resource. The third section is the studio section, where users can create interactive conversations based on the content they have uploaded. What makes it more interesting is the fact that users can join in the discussions as well. The two hosts welcome the participants and appreciate their contributions in the online discussion. 

All participants in the sessions created their Google Notebooks using their Google ids. They uploaded different curriculum documents and resources to the sources section of the notebook. Once these were uploaded they wrote different prompts to explore the notebook. These prompts included:

• Create summaries of first 10 chapters of the book

• Create worksheets based on the first chapter of the book

• Create course outlines for 6 months based on the first 6 chapter of the book

• Create a worksheet of 100 mcqs from the first 6 chapters of the book

• Create a lesson plan to teach content from the second chapter of the book

In the next task participants used the studio section in Notebook to create a conversation and they all added themselves in the conversation. They contributed to the ongoing discussion. This was a completely new experience for them. This was followed by a very constructive discussion on how educators can use Google Notebooks in their classroom. Participants shared about using it for creating content based on  the textbooks , keeping it safe in the same platform and adding collaborators who could add resources and work along with the participants in the same platform. It is a whole new level of collaboration which otherwise is not possible. They shared ideas about creating both formative and summative assessments in notebooks, for creating dialogues to understand difficult concepts, improving confidence, speaking and listening skills (audio conversations) , creating lesson plans, worksheets and much more. 

Some participants asked questions related to the availability of the ebooks of textbooks online. They were advised to keep scanned copies of textbooks in Google drive. Another important question shared by participants was about discussing the book content with original authors. At the moment two hosts take the lead on the discussion and discuss the content but they cannot speak like the original author. Another area of concern was related to sharing and adding collaborators. If you are using an official account, you cannot add collaborators from outside the organisation in your digital notebook but if you are using a personal gmail account and notebook, you can add as many collaborators you like. 

Overall this was a great session with lots of positive feedback from the amazing group of educators from all across Pakistan. Will be sharing more details on the Google Notebook in the upcoming sessions soon innshaaAllah in my new post.

Happy Reading.

Regards and prayers

Sheeba Ajmal