e-Ink Notebook in the Classroom: A Handwritten Wiki

I recently rediscovered e-Ink tablets, and ended up getting myself an A6 sized Supernote (Nomad). And I really like it. Despite being someone who has walked around with a gridded, pocket notebook for years, I’ve found that I quickly switched over to taking all of my notes on the tablet. It’s very similar to writing on paper, and the tactile differences are more than made up for by the ability to have multiple notebooks with me at all times, and have them all connected by links. It’s basically my own personal, handwritten wiki: something I wish I’d had for the last 20 years.

First page of my Makerspace Network notebook. Note the list of devices on the left that link to the specific note about that device.

Tech in the Classroom: An Argument for e-ink Tablets

My acquisition of this device has coincided with a renewed discussion at our school about the appropriated technology policy for the middle and high schoolers, that is a response to the current movement for retrenching on technology in the classroom, and indeed, banning devices like cell phones in schools. I think these e-ink devices are a qualitatively different category of device that warrant a different approach compared to phones, laptops, and even the more general-purpose tablets like iPads.

What I like:

The type of device I like are the ones specifically designed to be notebooks and not much, or very little, more. Specific highlights:

  • Links, links, links: The ability to easily make links from the text/drawing in one note to another page in the note, or another page is the feature that made me opt for the Supernote instead of the other e-ink tablets like the ones from Boox and Remarkable.
  • The handwriting and paper-like feel is not like the iPad and similar glass-surfaced tablets, with much less distance from the tip of the pen to the writing on the tablet. The difference between them and pen-and-paper is very small. The Supernote, in particular, foregoes a front light to minimize the pen-to-writing distance. There is evidence that handwriting is better for learning compared to typing (e.g. Ihara et al. 2021), and while they found no significant difference between pen-and-paper and writing on a tablet, I find that the tactile difference is important to me. I’ve not been able to use an iPad for note-taking, though a number of my high-school student do and have continued using them in college.
  • The ability to keep all of your notes in one place and on one device is enormous for my students who use the stuff-it-in-the-backpack method of paper organization. It’s not, to my mind, as intuitive and satisfying an organizational method as a binder with sections and color-coded tabs for each subject, but, there are significant number of students who can’t seem to make the binders work. Personally, I’m not using the device as a student, so I need a couple dozen notebooks to keep track of everything I’m doing, and I know, from years of trying, paper has some severe limitations.
  • The low refresh rate make them pretty useless for video. This is a big advantage when trying to create a distraction-free environment. This is a result of the way the e-ink technology currently works, and, I think that if this changes as the technology “improves” it will make these devices less appropriate for schools.
  • Few distractions, if any: no notifications and limited internet connectivity by design.
  • Black and white: This is not necessarily, entirely an unalloyed good, because I know some of my students make extensive use of highlighting in their notes.
  • No AI writing assistance: One of my students using the Goodnotes app on an iPad had the unwanted experience of the app trying to answer their math question for them, which I presume is because there’s now an AI in the program. The AI got the question wrong, but it would probably have been worse if it had gotten it right. It seems hard to overstate how problematic it is for the AI to be providing unsolicited answers to a student trying to learn by working through problem sets.
  • EMR styluses: These electro-magnetic resonance styluses don’t need charging or pairing with the device, so I’ve been able to use my stylus, which I was using to write on my Supernote, to make marks on my students’ Kindle without having to do anything (it was amazingly satisfying).

Caveats/Uncertainties

  • Not all of these devices have open formats for their notes, so there is the non-trivial concern about data loss as proprietary formats evolve or companies go out of business. This is the key issue I have with the Supernote. It is on their road-map, but I’ll continue to be concerned until I actually see it. That said, Max Mujynya has the excellent PySN library of python tools for working with Supernote notes.
  • Handwriting to text: This is less relevant in math, at the moment at least, but I’m unsure when this type of text conversion is useful to a student trying to learn English or History, and when it is not.
  • Printing and sharing: We’re still figuring out the best way to share notes between devices (especially different companies) given the closed note formats mentioned above.

Since I’ve been using (and gabbing on about) my device constantly, my students have noticed and one of them recently acquired a Kindle Scribe for math class. We’re still figuring out the details about the best way for them to do their and share it with me: right now they’re going to try using a different note for each chapter’s assignments, and submitting the file to me as a pdf. I should be able to mark it up on my device and send a pdf back.

A Note on the Supernote

I’m almost all-in on the Supernote specifically because of its ability to wiki (see above) with the one caveat about the currently closed note file format). But the other feature specifically designed to capture my attention is the fact that it’s built with interchangable parts. You can take the back off and change the battery and the motherboard, which means, hopefully, I can easily upgrade just the motherboard when a better one (X3 perhaps) becomes available. There’s even a slot for a Micro-SD card.

An A6 Supernote Nomad, the A5 Manta, and a selection of EMR pens I experimented with. The pens are, from left to right: a Lamy AL Star (I like this one because it’s a nice solid, metal pen with a button), a Steadtler Digital Mars, which I really like because it looks and feels like a pencil with a felt nib, a black, unbranded stylus I got from Aliexpress for $15, which works quite well, two (blue and red) S-Pen type styluses that, I think, were intended for use with Samsung cell phones (they’re tiny, cheap–$5–but work well, have a button, and a little clicky thing that’s nice for fidgeting with), and finally a clunky black pen that I got for $10 on Aliexpress that has, for me, a horrible tactile feel, and clunky nib, but a button and a working eraser, though the eraser mode is not terribly useful on the Supernotes.

More to follow as we get more experience with the e-ink devices.

Craft Fair

Our table at the craft fair. Makerspace Business’ coasters and small binders are in the foreground. 3d prints in the middle, and Chicken Middle’s earrings and other items on the far end. There is a student sitting at our second, small table that we set up for people (kids) to paint items they bought.

This Saturday, the middle school business (Chicken Middle) and the high-school Makerspace Business Club set up a table at the craft fair run by one of the local high schools (Lafayette HS). This was our first time trying this (though we’d done a test sale a couple weeks before at our school’s Harvest Hoedown) and I think it worked out pretty well.

Items in one of the orders. Most of this order was of coasters and 3d prints from the Makerspace Business, with one pair of earrings from Chicken Middle.

The Stuff we Brought for Sale (and what did sell)

Most of the what the Makerspace Business brought to the fair were things that students had been working on recently.

  • 3d prints: One of our high schoolers has taken over our 3d printers over the course of the last year and decided in the last two weeks before the fair to test to see just how much he could fit on our printers’ beds. Turns out a fair amount. So he used up a couple rolls of irridescent fillament a parent had donated to us to crank out a bunch of fidget toys, tops, earrings, and little boats (the calibration benchys)
An order consisting of mainly 3d printed items, including (clockwise from the top) a star fidget, glow-in-the-dark ghost earings, an irridescent top, and a glow-in-the-dark ghost. There’s also a wooden coaster.
  • Makerspace Business brought a lot of epoxy resin coasters for sale. Mainly this was because we recently purchased a pressure pot to help eliminate the bubbles when curing epoxy, and we’ve been testing it by making coasters. We even made a rack to stack items so we could put multiple layers into the pressure pot at once. We had quite a variety of styles and colors of coasters, but our math and science ones sold out the fastest.
A coaster order, that included one of our laser-cut coaster holders. This order grabbed most of our more sciencey and mathy coasters. Clockwise from the top are a Fibonacci spiral, a triangle showing the circumcenter, a sinusoidal wave parameters, a caffeine molecule, a serotonin molecule, and a wooden periodic table.
  • Small, laser-cut binders were on display, but I believe we only sold one. Most of the ones we had had laser cut designs on their fronts, but we’ve also been experimenting with dye-sublimation.
This order cosisted of a small binder (left), a ghost, an epoxy cat, epoxy earrings and a fidget toy. The cat and earrings were created by Chicken Middle.
  • Earrings: Both the middle schoolers and the Makerspace Business Club made earrings. Chicken middle specialized in neat little epoxy earrings using the collection of silicone molds we’ve collected in the makerspace over the year. These include a lot of irregular shapes, but also things like butterfly wings. They’ve been selling them too, not just at this craft fair, and it has been neat to see kids and parents walking around wearing them.
A customer (Sra. Mingo) proudly displays her newly purchased earrings.
  • We also set up a small table on the side where customers could customize what they bought. There was a box of wooden, laser-cut designs people could purchase and paint, and acrylic paint and paint pens to do the designs. We only had a few kids do this, but I thought this has a lot of potential, especially because we had a number of our middle school kids at the table to supervise.
A small customer at our DIY table. We need to bring boxes or chairs next time so smaller kids have easier access to the table top.

Costs and Revenue

The Makerspace Business paid for the table ($100), but the middle schoolers got half of the table space because they committed to manning the booth from 9 to 4 on a Saturday. Makerspace had enough sales to cover the cost of the table ($100), and make a little profit (we still have to run all the numbers), and Chicken Middle had some decent sales as well. Since this was our first time doing a fair, both groups invested significantly in creating items for sale. So, I expect the Makerspace Business has probably not yet broken even when factoring in all the other expenses. Neither group, however, come close to selling out what they had, so they still have a significant stock remaining for the next time.

Entrepreneurship Program

From a pedagogic perspective, the craft fair table was part of our entrepreneurship program, which starts of with the upper-elementary kids who run the school store, then leads into Chicken Middle, which is required of the middle schoolers, and is rounded off with the Makerspace Business Club as an elective for high school students.

I consider this aspect of our effort to have been the most successful. We had about eight middle and two high school students at the table at some point during the day. They took informal shifts, though some of them were there for the entire day. All of our middle schoolers participated in some way at getting ready for the fair. They got a great experience figuring out the logistics as they prepared for the sale, and then learning how to run the table. Mr. Kickham, who is the faculty advisor for the middle school business this year, was a really excellent role model of how to talk to customers and how to pique their interest by giving the story that ours was a student-run-business.

Finally, the students did a good job at keeping track of what was sold, so we’ll be able to spend some time in math class this week graphing and doing data analysis. They also took written notes on customer requests, such as more birds, and musical notes in the sale items that should help inform our future preparations. I am quite looking forward to our debrief.

Conclusion

This is definitely something we should do again. In fact, since a business program should be something the kids do repeatedly, so they have time for analysis, reflection, and improvement, it would be nice to do something like this each quarter, or even more often, at a farmer’s market perhaps, during the warmer months.

Wooden Spoons (and other Cutlery)

Oiled cedar spoon.

Of the trees that were blown over in March’s storm, one was a beautiful old cedar, which, based on the ring count, was over 60 years old. The team clearing the downed wood and brush were kind enough to help secure some of the wood for the Makerspace.

One afternoon, a couple weeks ago, we lost wifi, and it just so happened that I’d recently found a set of small carving chisels on sale, so I suggested to a couple of the bereft students wondering around the lab that maybe they’d like to try doing something purely by hand–like carving spoons. To my utter amazement they were all in. And it snowballed from there. Right now I think 75% of my students are making some type of spoon or wooden cutlery.

It helps that the cedar wood has the characteristic gorgeous red and white banding.

Sawing blanks.
Chiseling.
Using a carving knife.
Bowl carving with a Dremel.
Sanding.

Most of the spoons and spatulas thus far have been hand carved. Seeing the students’ sustained interest in woodworking, I decided to pick up a nice set of carving tools that included a hook for excavating the bowls of spoons.

Student carving the bowl of a spoon.

I have to thank Mr. Seddon for his advice on tools and working with wood that has not been fully dried, aka green woodworking. I had not even heard of green woodworking before, but it has a long history, and a little research directed me on to things like the fully manual pole lathe (I’ve been wanting a lathe in the Makerspace for a while, so I may try to build one this summer).

Woodworking with green wood and hand tools requires close attention to the shape and structure of the wood. Chiseling with the grain is much easier than working against it. Knots can provide elegant features in the handle or bowl of a spoon, but are hard, and much more challenging to carve. Thus certain artistic choices did lead to discussions about woodcarving and metaphors for life.

While most of the work has been done by hand, it would not have been the Makerspace if we hadn’t experimented with some of the computer-controlled machines. One student used the CNC to cut spoon blanks of their own digital design. They were able to just do the outlines of the blanks, since we’re still trying to figure out how to carve objects with three-dimensional relief on our machine. Coach Lancaster suggested we use the laser to etch a tornado on all the pieces as a hat-tip to their provenance, so I’m trying to get a student to make us a simple design.

Cutting a spoon blank on the CNC.

We do have other plans for the rest of the wood that we salvaged. For one thing, I’ve been cutting slabs using a chainsaw. It still has a lot of moisture, and will take some time to dry (a few years it we leave it to air dry), but that will be necessary for some of our bigger, future projects. However, it has been nice to be able to start putting the unfortunate felling of the trees to good use. 

Spatula.

What is Style?

Style or taste is knowing who you are and knowing what you like, and then being able to look outside of yourself, see the world around you, and then pick out the one thing from around you that does resonate with you, that makes you feel like you are who you are or that you can incorporate into your mindset and worldview.
I mean, it’s a process of collection, almost. Like you’re grabbing on to the little voices and artists and touchstones that make you who you are and give you your sense of self. You’re drawn to something without knowing why.

Kyle Chayka during an interview on the Ezra Klein Show

I did not expect to find this interview as fascinating as I did. It starts with the idea that taste/style is a personal feeling–intrinsic not extrinsic–that resonates with you, then explores how the internet has made for more niches of styles but shared those niches globally so we are, perhaps, loosing some of those fascinating hyper-local niches. Both increased diversity globally, but still some genericization as the algorithmically generated recommendations, of search engines and the like, help direct us towards the niches we like yet blinker us to discovery of others.

[A] feeling I’ve been having a lot lately is that scarcity is often what creates meaning. When you’re surrounded by infinite possibilities, when you know around the next corner is another video that might be funnier or more to your liking, you’re never going to sit with the thing that’s in front of you. You’re never going to be forced to have the patience, or the fortitude maybe, or the kind of willpower to fight through something and figure out if you truly like it or not.


Whereas, I think fighting that generic quality and figuring out at least one thing that brings you joy and you’re passionate about and that makes that change happen in your brain makes you have this encounter that you never expected. That’s the only thing that’s worth doing in life, kind of. Or at least in the field of culture, why would you want to have the generic experience? Why would you want the lowest common denominator result of recommendation?

Kyle Chayka during an interview on the Ezra Klein Show