Refreshed Digital Notebook Activities for Social Studies

With the move to Hybrid and Distance Learning last year, digital learning activities became more important than ever.

Thankfully, I had been using digital notebooks in my classes for a few years. It started with occasional trips to the computer lab. I designed the digital pages I created to look like traditional notebooks - vertically aligned and in the style of the "cut-and-paste" activities we were already doing.

These worked great and students enjoyed them. With the move to fully-digital, however, a few things started to pop up that inspired me to redesign the notebooks. This redesign turned into a complete overhaul of all my digital notebook sets this summer.

You can preview and download any of them through the links below, but here are the major updates and changes:

1. New Horizontal Format - Laptops and Chromebooks obviously have horizontal screens. While the Zoom feature on Google Slides was helpful on the old style notebooks, I wanted students to easily be able to see the entire slide. Now, they can. 

2. Updated Links to Online Sources - As I am sure you have experienced, websites can go down. It's frustrating when they're great resources (I'm thinking specifically of the old NPS Fort McHenry site on the War of 1812) . I went through all my notebook activities and replaced any broken links. 

What should be especially helpful is that I used my own online textbook links whenever possible because I know these ones won't come down and they're focused exactly on the content. 

3. Engaging Activities - All of the same great activities from the old digital notebooks are back with some awesome updates to them as well. These activities include:

• Sourcing documents
• Drag & drop timelines
• Analyzing primary and secondary sources
• Interpreting and inserting images
• Notetaking
• Comparing and contrasting topics

4. Refreshed Themes - each digital notebook set now has its own theme to match the unit. This makes each slide really pop and help students get immersed in your unit of study. 

Here's a few sample images from my World and US History digital notebook sets: 

These updated digital notebook sets are awesome for in-class learning our when kids are learning at home. You can preview each unit individually or download them here:

Complete US History Bundle

• The 13 Colonies
• The American Revolution
• The Constitution & Convention
• The Early Republic
• The Age of Andrew Jackson
• Manifest Destiny
• The Civil War
• Reconstruction

US History Part 1 Bundle

• The Gilded Age
• The Progressive Era
• American Imperialism
• World War 1
• The Roaring 20's
• The Great Depression
• World War 2
• The Civil Rights Movement
• The Cold War
• Modern America

 US History Part 2 Bundle

Complete World History Bundle

• Prehistory & Early Man
• Ancient Egypt and Mesopotamia
• Ancient China and the Indus River Valley
• Ancient Greece
• The Roman Republic
• The Roman Empire
• Islamic Civilizations
• Classical Asia
• The Middle Ages
• African and Mesoamerican Civilizations
• The Renaissance & Reformation

World History Part 1 Bundle

• The Age of Exploration
• Absolute Monarchs
• The Enlightenment
• Revolutions in France and Latin America
• The Industrial Revolution
• Imperialism
• World War 1
• World War 2
• The Cold War

 World History Part 2 Bundle

Civics &  Government 3 Branches Bundle

• Legislative Branch Digital Notebook
• Executive Branch Digital Notebook
• Judicial Branch Digital Notebook

 Another option would be to join Students of History! When you sign up, you get immediate access to all these digital notebook sets. Plus there’s lesson plans for every day, flipped classroom videos, Google Slides, primary sources, worksheets, and more for every unit.

Joining up gives you everything you need in one place so you never have to stress about planning again!