Digital Citizen

Tool demonstrated: Hyperdoc (w/ Google Docs)

What is a hyperdoc? Stick around—I’ll tell you!

A hyperdoc is a lesson shared on an electronic document accessible from all types of devices. A hyperdoc will have lesson instructions, resources, jumping-off points, mini-lessons and activities, and examples all in one place. This allows all students, regardless of where in the lesson they currently are, to be responsible for their own learning by ticking off the hyperdoc activities one by one.

Google Docs allows teachers to create persistent hyperdocs. A “persistent” document means that when the teacher makes a change to the hyperdoc—fixing a typo or adding another resource a student has found, for example—that change is immediately recognized and shown to all devices with the hyperdoc open. This both places the onus to get work done squarely on the student and cuts down on potential confusion around changing due dates in longer units. Google Docs also allows teachers to create forms for students to turn in their lesson work, allowing students to learn, produce work, and submit self-directed work with minimal teacher interaction.

Want to see Google Doc hyperdocs in action? Check out the embedded hyperdoc lesson I created based around cyberbullying and ethical usage of technology. Want to read my process reflection instead? Just keep scrolling!

Reflection:

In a nutshell: hyperdoc lessons created with Google Docs increase student agency and accountability, decrease the amount of time a teacher spends on technological minutiae, and allow teachers to more easily pull together a vibrant media collage to effectively teach a lesson.

At first I was somewhat wary of the idea of a hyperdoc—somehow the thought of essentially leaving students to their own devices (literally) and trusting them to complete assignments in a timely and effective manner seemed dead on arrival to me. The more I thought about it, however, the more I realized striking similarities between the agency and trust afforded by hyperdocs and the trust of physical paper-based work and teaching. There’s this preconception in the educational community that tech-based learning is inherently detrimental to student success—look no further than the negative teacher and student responses to distance-based learning forced on education by the Coronavirus pandemic.

I think that much of my own problems with technology in the classroom stem from my own tendencies to avoid work as a high school student. I can remember playing video games, going on social media websites, and talking with friends during almost every single quiet solo work time. Hitting [Cmd] + [Tab] to switch windows between school related and non-school related content became second nature. I just couldn’t bring myself not to procrastinate with a screen in front of my face—the dopamine hits of just one more Reddit post and one more message on Skype before I do my work were simply too strong to ignore. In retrospect, I see this proclivity as a manifestation of one singular aspect of my procrastination: the inability to begin. Once I got started on an activity, I could work on it for nearly a full hour at a time, oftentimes longer. But there were too many distractions around me and too little scaffolding for assignments for me to feel comfortable starting an assignment, and I relied on the terror-filled kick of a due date to force me to complete work.

Hyperdocs fix this problem by breaking up a lesson into many manageable 5-10 minute pieces. By the time a student looks at the hyperdoc, they’ve already started the assignment, and by clicking a link they’re already in the thick of things. The true magic of a hyperdoc lies in its ability to keep students munching away at bite-sized portions of a lesson. It’s no longer two full periods of uninterrupted work time, it is five minutes of work, thirty seconds of reading, a five minute video, and a small response that all feel like four separate small assignments. Even better—students can make their own guided hyperdocs for things they care deeply about and share that learning in a non-stressful form with colleagues. In its most basic form, a hyperdoc is a page of words formed into a table with chronological instructions.

My hyperdoc lesson on cyberbullying, as well as hyperdocs in general, accurately and efficiently meets the ISTE Standard 2: Digital Citizen, particularly focusing on article 2a and 2b: “digital permanence” and “legal/ethical behavior online.” Not only does my lesson clearly ask students to work on increasing their understanding of cyberbullying and what constitutes the “real world,” but the act of bringing hyperdocs into the classroom engages students by appreciating their agency and breaks lessons down into bite-size chunks to keep students engaged and in a learning headspace.