Hyperdocs: An adventure or a deadend

 

Our adventure this week was in Hyperdocs, a topic that I felt pretty confident with after the last year and a half of preparing teachers for virtual lessons.  As our Instructional Team planned to help our teachers, we realized that Hyperdocs would be a great way to deliver content and provide a workspace while students were online.  We began digging in and providing training.  It turned out to be more difficult than we expected.

As noted in our reading, a common misconception is that a Hyperdoc is simply a glorified document with links or a virtual worksheet.   When teachers attempt to make a Hyperdoc the very thing it wasn't designed to be, it takes away the power of this learning platform.

After diving into the resources on the Wakelet, I was reminded that just as with all technology integration, an educator must first have an understanding of best practices in teaching.  If a teacher isn't already considering how their students could communicate, collaborate, critical think, or create, then it is difficult to get them to simply transfer their "sit and get" instructional method to an interactive Hyperdoc.  I was even reminded that we need to really think about what we put in a Hyperdoc when we prepare one for our students.  When I am coaching teachers and we are working on a delivery method such as Hyperdoc, Flipped Instruction, or even PBL, I encourage them to choose one unit and really work on the method to make it strong - in lieu of trying to make every lesson a Hyperdoc (when given a choice in a non-pandemic world, of course).  

During quarantine teaching we found that Hyperdocs can also create some roadblocks and/or even deadends depending on the teacher's mentality.  If the Hyperdoc was lengthy or had a lot of different things for the students to create that were linked to other things, then it became difficult to grade.  My recommendation  is to use the Hyperdoc to give students options and only have one or two graded parts.  Let the activities in the lesson focus on the process of learning and not just the written outcomes.  Some of our more successful teachers used Google Docs or Google Slides uploaded to Google Classroom and then pushed out a copy to all of the students.  Each student had their own copy and ALL work was done in the doc for ease of grading.  My first choice for creating Hyperdocs is Google Slides because you can embed videos rather than simply link them.  I have found the more I can keep them in the original doc, then the more likely they are to not miss part of the assignment.

I liked the padlet resource that was provided on our Wakelet assignment because it had a lot of options in one place.  Even though Wakelet isn't my favorite tool, the fact that it was designed with some interaction by having us go out to Twitter and respond to what we learned made the activity more engaging.  It was more of a curation of materials, but the social media aspect created the interaction with other students.  This interaction could have been increased by having us share links to our hyperdocs and respond to each other.  

This week, I have seen some pretty fancy Hyperdocs and I think it is important to remember that "pretty" doesn't mean effective.  Be sure you are focusing on learning objectives and outcomes.  Another tip is to train your students how to use them.  Don't assume the navigation will be intuitive.  Hyperdocs are a powerful tool when planned for and used effectively.