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Notebook and Sketch Pad in an Online Class: Private Notes Guide
In this article
- What is the Educastic Notebook?
- How do you open and save the Notebook?
- What is the Sketch Pad for?
- How do you put the board into your notes?
- Who can use the Notebook, and who sees it?
- Where do you find your notes after class?
- How can teachers build a note-taking habit?
- Frequently asked questions
- Give your students a place to take notes
To take notes during an online class without leaving the lesson, open a notebook window beside the shared board, write in it, add sketches and screenshots of the board, and save. In Educastic each signed-in participant has a private Notebook for every session, with a Sketch Pad for quick drawings, and saved notes stay available from the dashboard afterwards.
Note-taking is the habit that falls apart first online. Students watch the board, nod, and leave with nothing written down. On paper they would copy the key example; on a laptop they need a place to do it that does not mean switching windows and losing the lesson. That is what the Notebook is for.
What is the Educastic Notebook?
The Educastic Notebook is a private text editor that opens in a window on top of the whiteboard, one notebook per person per session. It has the formatting students expect: bold, italic, underline, strikethrough, subscript and superscript, bulleted and numbered lists, alignment, font size, font colour, font family and highlight, plus undo and redo.
The important word is private. What a student writes in their notebook is saved to their own account and is not shown on the board or to the teacher. The teacher's notebook is private too.
How do you open and save the Notebook?
You open the Notebook from the right panel and save it with the Save button. Step by step:
- Students: click the Notebook icon on the right panel. Teachers: open the + menu on the right panel and choose Notebook.
- Write your notes. The window can be dragged anywhere and made wider or narrower, so it does not cover the part of the board you need.
- Click Save. Educastic stores the notebook for you and this session.
- Open it again later in the same session and your saved notes load back in.
Cancel closes the window without saving, so save before you close. A good routine is to save at every natural break in the lesson, not only at the end.
What is the Sketch Pad for?
The Sketch Pad is a small drawing window that adds your drawing to the Notebook as a picture. It is for the diagram you want to keep in your own notes, not on the shared board. Click Sketch Pad next to Save in the Notebook, draw, then click Save in the Sketch Pad to insert the drawing into your notebook.
The Sketch Pad has its own small toolbar:
| Button | What it does |
|---|---|
| Pencil | Draws in the board's current pen colour |
| Fountain Pen | A calligraphic stroke for neater writing |
| Eraser | Rubs out part of a drawing |
| Select | Moves or resizes what you drew |
| Undo / Redo | Steps back or forward |
| Clear | Empties the pad |
| Upload Resources | Places a PNG or JPEG image on the pad so you can draw over it |
| Save | Adds the drawing to your notebook |
Closing the Notebook also closes the Sketch Pad, so insert your sketch first.
How do you put the board into your notes?
Right-click the board and choose Attach screenshot to notebook. Educastic captures the visible part of the board, opens your notebook if it is closed, adds the screenshot at the end and saves. This is the fastest way for a student to keep a worked example exactly as it appeared.
Teachers can always do this. Students can do it when the teacher allows them to send attachments; otherwise Educastic tells them they do not have the right to send attachments.
Who can use the Notebook, and who sees it?
Every participant who is signed in to an Educastic account can use the Notebook: the teacher and students. Guests who joined without an account do not get the Notebook, because there is no account to save it to. The Notebook is also not available when you use the whiteboard inside the Google Meet add-on.
| Question | Answer |
|---|---|
| Who sees a student's notebook? | Only that student |
| Is it shared on the board? | No, only what you choose to put on the board yourself |
| How many notebooks per session? | One per person, which you keep adding to |
| Where are notebooks kept? | On the Notebooks page of your dashboard |
Where do you find your notes after class?
Your saved notebooks are listed on the Notebooks page of the Educastic dashboard, one card per session with the session's name and date. View Note opens the notebook so you can read it, keep editing and save again; Edit Title renames it, for example to "Algebra: quadratic equations". If the teacher has session reports emailed after class, the Summary PDF also includes notebook notes.
How can teachers build a note-taking habit?
Teachers build the habit by making note-taking a step in the lesson rather than an optional extra. Three routines that work:
- Copy the key example. After each worked example, give students one minute to attach a screenshot of the board to their notebook and write one sentence about it.
- Sketch from memory. Clear the board and ask students to redraw the diagram in the Sketch Pad. It shows quickly who understood the structure.
- Exit note. In the last three minutes, every student writes "one thing I learned, one thing I am unsure about" and saves.
For more ways to see what students understood, read How to check for understanding in an online class.
Frequently asked questions
Can the teacher read a student's notebook? No. Each notebook is saved to its owner's account and is not shared with the teacher or the class.
Do guests get a notebook? No. The Notebook needs an Educastic account to save to, so guests do not see the Notebook button.
Does the Notebook save automatically? Mostly no. Click Save in the Notebook; only Attach screenshot to notebook saves for you.
Can I keep editing my notes after class? Yes. Open the Notebooks page of your dashboard, choose View Note, edit and save.
Does the Notebook cost extra? No. Educastic includes all of its teaching features in the free version.
Give your students a place to take notes
Open the Educastic online whiteboard, start a session and ask every student to save one screenshot and one sentence in their Notebook before the lesson ends.
