12th August 2008

QuickStart Guide for Internet Research with Google Notebook

posted in web 2.0 |

I’m sharing a morning workshop on Friday for high school teachers in Mustang, Oklahoma, and will provide a brief overview of Google Notebook. In preparation for that workshop, I’ve created a ten page handout titled “A QuickStart Guide for Internet Research with Google Notebook.” Feel free to use and redistribute this as desired, as with most of my other online educational materials I am using a Creative Commons Attribution-Only license to share it. I created this how-to guide using the drawing environment of NeoOffice and Skitch. NeoOffice is the Macintosh-port of OpenOffice. NeoOffice is a free software program, and Skitch is currently in free public beta.

I’m convinced Google Notebook is one of several tools which should be considered “basic ingredients for blended learning in the 21st century.” I’m amazed how many high school students here in Oklahoma are still asked by their teachers to HAND WRITE full website URLs down on notecards or notebook paper when they are conducting Internet research. Writing down URLs is a total waste of effort and time when powerful and free tools like Google Notebook are available which can streamline the research process. Our students need to spend more time THINKING and ANALYZING during the research process, rather than simply performing rote tasks like copying long URLs by hand with pencils and paper. Although I’d rather share longer, sustained PD workshops about digital storytelling compared to a tool like Google Notebook, I do think it’s an important and powerful tool, so hopefully this time with teachers will be well spent / invested.

I published an article for the TechEdge in 2006-2007 titled “Online Research with Google Notebook” which may also be of interest, along with the official Google Notebook FAQ. I’m collecting links related to this workshop on a wiki page, “Google Notebook: A QuickStart Guide for Internet Research.”

Todd Maffin’s 8 min, 42 sec YouTube screencast “Using Google Notebook” also provides a good overview of how the program can be used to improve Internet research:

If you have other links and resources related to using Google Notebook that you have used and recommend, I’d love to learn about them. :-)

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This entry was posted on Tuesday, August 12th, 2008 at 12:41 am and is filed under web 2.0. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.

There are currently 4 responses to “QuickStart Guide for Internet Research with Google Notebook”

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  1. 1 On August 12th, 2008, Kim Caise said:

    Wes, your work and creations with Google notebook is awesome! I plan to use with students/teachers and anyone that will listen the resources you shared. Thank you so much for creating these so others don’t have to reinvent the wheel developing resources for Google notebook!

    Kim Caise

  2. 2 On August 12th, 2008, Wesley Fryer said:

    You are most welcome Kim. :-)

  3. 3 On August 12th, 2008, Reidar Mosvold said:

    Thank you for a great set of tips! I have used Google Notebook for quite some time, but it is great to see that you can always learn something more :-)
    As usual, I really enjoy reading your works. Keep it up!

    -r

  4. 4 On August 13th, 2008, Claudia Ceraso said:

    I have this pbwiki page on Notebooks. Just starting with basics howto videos.
    http://claudiaceraso.pbwiki.com/Google+Notebooks