Overview and second pilot in 2010

This project and the technology involved was developed in collaboration with Professor Andrew Lister (Queens University, Canada) and provides students with a tool that allows them to have a local copy of their class wiki (lecture slides and class materials) which is searchable and to which they can add their own private notes. Students also gain the ability to work with class wikis even when not connected to the internet and are able to synchronize with the online class wiki when they are connected. During the 2008/2009 academic year the notebook was trialled in one of Andrew's classes of 250 students and met with considerable success.

A complimentary instructor's notebook allows teachers to prepare and review content for the class even when they are not online. Additionally they are able to keep private notes associated with the class materials as well as present slides in the classroom directly from their notebooks.

A second pilot is being conducted at Queens University in the spring semester of 2010 using an improved version of the notebook based on feedback from Andrew and his students. Once this pilot has been running for a few weeks the updated notebook will be made available to all via an updated notebook generator.

The technology developed for this project is versatile and offers an excellent basis for developing tools to:

• implement distance learning projects,
• facilitate access to educational resources for students with only intermittent internet access,
• allow collaboration and communication between students and teachers,
• compliment in-classroom and after school educational experiences by allow teachers to utilize new pedagogical techniques.

In 2010 we will be working towards extending the Student Notebook to create a "student dashboard" which includes flexible textbooks and curriculums, team-based mentoring and data from school information systems.

Andrew Lister's thoughts on the pedagogical advantages of using student notebooks:

"Many professors distribute lecture outlines or slides electronically, permitting students to add their own notes via word processor, so that each student can have an integrated, searchable repository of public and personal course content. Using Wikispaces and TiddlyWiki, it is possible to provide lecture outlines or slides as cross-referenced, tagged hypertext, and to allow students to add their own notes, tags, and links in the same simple, wiki-based, hypertext format. The "student notebook" is a file that resides on each student's computer, and thus is always accessible to the student, but which automatically syncs with the course wiki whenever the student is connected to the internet, and which students can edit using an ordinary web-browser. Official lecture outlines and student notes are connected but distinct. Discussions that take place on the wiki online also download. The result is that each student can have a set of notes whose web-like physical structure mirrors the web-like structure of the knowledge the students are developing." - Andrew Lister

Blog posts about the student notebook project:

• Report on the classroom experience of the Student Notebook pilot project
• Introduction and overview of the Student Notebook
• Demo and screencast of the Student Notebook

Screencast of Student Notebook demo:

Live Demo:

• Demo