Using Google Keep for Student Research

Hi Teacher Friends,

We have been doing a TON of research lately in my fifth grade classroom. Our latest Guided Inquiry Design (see more here) research project is all about Energy Transfer in the Life Sciences. Most of the lessons in the Immerse stage (leading up to student research) were related to food webs, ecosystems and biomes, and animals (dissecting owl pellets- ick!).

One of the first mini-lessons that my team wanted to teach during our explore phase was all about how students can use a Google App called Keep to curate their resources throughout the process. We had seen a need for students to have a digital tool in previous units. Additionally, I LOVE {puffy sparkly heart love} using Keep in my personal and professional life. I can share my lists (mostly with my teammie and husband), label them, and change the colors. Keep has lots of great features and since we are already a Google Apps for Education district, the kids are familiar with all of the functions within Google Mail, Drive, Classroom, and a few other handy extensions.

Here is a preview of how Keep looks within the browser window. 

First we reviewed our school library's available databases, search engines, and encyclopedias. After that, we jumped right into the assignment. Students would use Google Keep to curate a variety of quality resources about biomes. We shared a list of biomes to get them started, helped them add the extension, and gave a quick demo of how to use it. They were off!

Watch this video to see how we set up our extensions and some other features of Keep that I use. I apologize in advance for the coughing fit at the end of the video!

Thanks for checking it out!