May 04 2012
Using Livebinder as a learning tool
I plan to use LiveBinder as an open resource for FW 540, Vertebrate Population Dynamics. This tool gives me a place to start presenting online resources for students, from helpful Khan Academy video bits to links to tutorials on using Excel. I can embed my own jing files in this notebook also, demonstrating spreadsheet tricks needed for laboratory exercises. Students will be encouraged to add their own links and materials, from interesting websites, links to documents that they found helpful, or to upload their own content. From my preliminary explorations of this tool, I believe that not only can all students access it to add things to it, but the URL can be kept active so it ends up being a resource that they can collectively keep after the course is over. At least, that’s my understanding of this tool. Comments, anyone? Am I right about that?? I am also considering having subgroups of students work together on a notebook in which they will keep their group laboratory assignments, so they can collaborate on creating the models and exploring the questions I give to guide them in exploring model behavior and in its interpretation. I would like students to just have to become familiar with using ONE tool, so I am hoping LiveBinder will work for both. Another option is Zoho Notebook, has anyone played with that one much? I found for myself that LiveBinder was more intuitive, but that may not be true from the students’ perspective…
This looks like a great tool and it also introduces students to the advantages of digital note-taking. I have experience using MS OneNote and Evernote to create digital notebooks, but OneNote isn’t free and Evernote isn’t quite as intuitive, in my opinion. Your choice of a web-based tool like LiveBinders keeps the activity very accessible to all students and does appear to be easy to learn.
I looked through the LiveBinders website and it appears that you can easily collaborate as a group in a LiveBinder. Under the tutorials tab on the site there is a Collaboration video that explains it in detail.