In today’s education world, there’s a LOT of talk about using technology (and not using technology) to learn.
There are lots of strong opinions about using paper and pencil (or not using paper and pencil) to do learning activities.
Here’s what I don’t see …
How we can use the best of BOTH worlds.
With tech and with paper/pencil, it doesn’t have to be all-or-nothing thinking.
In fact, when we use paper and pencil to start the learning process, we can amplify / augment / extend it with technology in meaningful ways.
I’ve recently started offering a conference breakout session called “Tech + Paper.” I always tell people it’s a work in progress. I am experimenting with these combinations in my own high school Spanish class — and am trying to put my finger on what I like about it and why it works (when it does work).
Here are some of the conclusions I’ve found …
The flow: Make, capture, amplify
Most of my paper + tech activities follow this flow.
As I’ve experimented more and more with this concept, a pattern has emerged …
- Make: We usually make something in the physical / analog world.
- Capture: We capture what students have made digitally.
- Amplify: We use that digital capture to add, to transform, and to extend the activity.
It’s still somewhat early, so I’m sure there are probably other ways this can be configured, but this is the workflow that I keep seeing repeated in the work my students and I are doing.
Have any ideas for paper + tech activities?
Share them in our DTT community here — and see what others have posted!
Example 1: AI image flashcards + dry erase boards
We made picture flashcards, then did hands-on activities with them.
The students in my Spanish class were learning jobs/professions vocabulary. I liked the idea of using an AI image generator (like the ones in Google Gemini or ChatGPT) to make flashcards with illustrations and the terms.
Here’s the prompt I used to make them:
I'd like you to create an image of 12 trading cards depicting various careers. Make the cards in rows of 4, 3 total rows (a 4x3 layout). each trading card should have an illustration of the job and a little label at the bottom with the Spanish word for the job. For the illustrations, use modern animated movie style. image size 11" x 8.5". Make them like a perforated sheet where the cards are edge to edge.
The students cut the cards out … but what good are these cards if we don’t have anything to do with them?
I started brainstorming with AI to come up with games and hands-on activities students could do. I talked about some of them in this video, but this one was my favorite …
The two-by-two matrix. We drew a two by two grid (making four total squares) and ranked the jobs on our flashcards based on two criteria.
Here’s an example …
The top left would be higher salary / more outdoors …
the bottom left would be lower salary / more outdoors …
the top right would be higher salary / more indoors …
and bottom right would be lower salary / more indoors.
We changed the criteria around. It got students thinking, interacting with the cards and using the vocabulary words.
All in all, this wasn’t a perfect example of the “make, capture, amplify” workflow, but it was fun — and it was a blend of AI-generated images and hands-on activities.
Example 2: Paper writing + AI illustration
Sometimes, I have the students in my Spanish classes do “rotating stories” or “add and pass stories.” They start a story on a sheet of paper, then pass it to someone else. The story makes its way around the classroom and everyone has a part in creating it.
In the past, I’ve always thought: “These stories are amazing! It’d be a shame for this activity to just end when we finish the stories.”
Now there’s a new way for us to extend the fun — and use AI to reimagine the students’ work.
I’ll take pictures of some of the students’ stories and give them to Gemini or ChatGPT and ask it to make a comic strip of the stories they’ve written.
Then, I’ll put those comic strip images on a slideshow and show students so we can critique the AI-generated output (building their AI literacy skills!) and get more repetitions with new vocabulary words.
Plus, it’s just fun to see how students’ work is represented visually.
How else can we do paper + tech?
Have you tried something like this?
Does this paper + tech concept — or the “make, capture, amplify” workflow — spark any ideas?
We have a discussion thread in our FREE DTT online community about this. Share anything you’re thinking or something you’ve tried … or just jump over there to see what others are sharing!
