One of the participants in my C++ online course, Charles Coleman (a biology and physics teacher at Colorado Academy) recently traveled to Cincinnati Country Day School to participate in their laptop seminar. His notes (used with his permission) are fascinating reading!

Steve Bergen, March 2001, bergen@nobles.edu

Before going to CCDS it was clear to me why a teacher might want a laptop, but I wasn't so clear on how important it is for each kid to have one. Now I can see this. "Discourse" is a program you probably know. Teacher poses a question and kids all type away answering it. Teacher is able to view each kid's contribution. Kids who are shy and never heard from suddenly get a chance to show their stuff.
Charles Coleman, Colorado Academy, Science Teacher, March 2001
chaslcoleman@yahoo.com

I asked my bug-bear question about how the kids can download huge files with sound etc. over their dubious home connections. It never happens! At the end of a class the students all download a file folder over the school connection and take it home on their computers. This makes oral files attached to a word docs< possible. Cuts down correcting time. Foreign lang. teachers like this since they can get students to practice their accent and listen to the teacher.

Teacher can scan a document and insert questions (comments) that the student must respond to with their own comment in the text. Forces close reading of articles or their textbook. The list goes on. I am not sure when we will adopt the full implementation, perhaps in a year to two, but I think it will be a good idea.

List of topics:

Annotating images with comments using excel.
Annotating Word Documents with comments
Articles Folder (Scanned)
Automated bibliography
Books on laptop Technology
CD portfolio of Images for Art Students
Criteria for Student Website Design
Digital Camera
Digital notebook
Discourse
English Class Use
Expectations of Teachers
Folder on Server to Speed Access
Hidden Text
High-lighting
Hyperlinks
Inspiration
Instant Messaging
Jeopardy
Marked Up Text
Powerpoint as a Background
Powerpoint Narration / Assessment
Search and Replace
Silent Conversation
Teacher’s Web Site
Text Annotation with Insert
Vernier Probe
Web Activities
Web Page Creation

Here is my description for using the comment feature
of word. I am sure there is nothing here that you
don't know about, but I'm just showing you the sort of
stuff I am handing out to teachers (some of whom you
may be dealing with). All my material is in a larger
hyper-linked document (another technique I am
demonstrating to teachers).

Word’s Comment Feature (see also Excel’s Comment
Feature and the “Hidden Text” feature)

Use this feature:
i) to help students engage in close reading,
ii) to “hide” information for review within a document
iii) to comment on student’s work
iv) to insert reading questions into text
v) to insert dictionary definitions into foreign
language poems
vi) to annotate difficult text

Here is an example of a “commented” paragraph in a
word document. The commented text is highlighted and
followed by an ID mark e.g.. [CC1]. These comments may
be a recording of your voice. Double click on the
little symbol of the speaker that is beside the word
“recording”. If you don’t hear anything, your volume
may be turned low or off. You can read the student’s
work and make oral comments that play when the cursor
is placed on the comment. In the paragraphs below I
will outline how you can create these effects.

Arranging it so that your name and initials appear in
the comments:

1. Go to the Tools menu and select Options.
2. Go to the View tab and make sure that Hidden Text
(in the Formatting Marks section) is checked. Click on
OK.
3. Now go to the Tools menu again, and again select
Options.
4. This time select the User Information tab.
5. Insert the appropriate name and initials in the
boxes and click OK.

The initials will be displayed next to the highlighted
parts of the text where you have inserted comments.

Inserting The Comments:

1. Double click where you want to insert a comment. A
double click will highlight a single word. Three
clicks will highlight a whole sentence. (Or you can
click and drag to highlight text).
2. Go to the Insert menu and select Comment. The
screen will split horizontally and at the bottom you
will see the cursor placed after your initials.
3. Type the comment you would like to insert.
4. If you want to insert an oral comment you must
click the little tape recorder icon near the page
split. When you do this, the recorder will appear.
Make sure you have the microphone jack inserted in the
appropriate socket. Click on the red button and speak.
(One minute of chat will create a sound file 1 Mbyte
long. This will nearly fill a floppy disk, so keep
this in mind.). A loud speaker icon will appear in the
comment area in the bottom half of the screen. It can
be sized by dragging its corner toward its center.
Make it small, and then drag it to the highlighted
comment position in the text. Drop it there. When you
double click on it the sound will play.
5. Click on the close button in the new comment window
6. If you want to edit or delete a comment, move the
cursor over the highlighted comment area and click the
right mouse button (lower button on a laptop). Click
on Edit Comment or Delete Comment.
7. The comments can be printed out. Go to the File
menu and choose Print. When the Print Window appears,
click on the Options button found in the lower left
corner. Go to the Include with Documents section. Make
sure that the Hidden Text option is checked. The
comments will print in the same way that numbered
endnotes do.

Adding typed comments (not oral ones) in this manner
will not significantly increase the size of the file.
You could hand out disks containing the document you
want your students to read, and have them respond to
your comments embedded in the text. Or you could
insert your own comments into text handed in to you on
a disk by your students.