Ok, so I’m not gonna lie–it took me a bit to understand what HyperDocs were.

I had gone to conferences and skimmed by Twitter posts regarding HyperDocs and finally caved.  I wanted to see what all the hype was about.

Anyway, after reading a post from Shake Up Learning on Twitter, I stumbled across an example of one.  It was life-changing for me.

I decided to use the basic template and edit it for a HyperDoc of my own with my students.  We do something in my Resource Room called Adulting 101.  I wanted to do a lesson on credit, since I teach high schoolers.  I wish that I had someone spend even just 15 minutes with me when I was in high school talking to me about credit.  It would’ve saved me thousands of dollars and 7 years of financial agony.  You have no idea, guys……you have no idea.

But, I digress.

So, I researched different ways I could teach them about credit besides standing at the front of the class and lecturing them and/or having them fill out guided notes.  I had never created a HyperDoc before, so it did take me a bit of planning ahead of time. My biggest focus was, “what did I want my students to learn?”  The second question was, “how did I want them to learn it?” I finally decided on a mix of videos, articles, and infographics.  I also made a video of some of their teachers who were giving them advice on what they wish they knew when they were in high school.  Here is part of their HyperDoc.

As you can see, it’s not all just about what credit is, but also about how much adult life revolves around it.  The first thing that came to my students’ minds when I asked them what they thought credit was about was “credit cards.”  And although they know what a credit card is, they didn’t necessarily understand what it entailed.  This was not all the students had to explore.  The HyperDoc about was embedded in another HyperDoc via Google Slides.  You can take a look at that here.

I really liked how students were able to get their own copy of the Slides and work at their own pace.  Although each student was at different points of the lesson, they were all engaged.  And to make sure they weren’t just sitting and reading or watching videos only, I created slides where they’d have to give free responses to given questions.

Now that I have done this once, I would definitely do things a bit differently next time.  First, I would conference more with each student more than I did.  Sometimes, when students are given too much freedom, they can go a bit astray.  Not as in not doing the work or doing something else, but more spending more time than was needed on one section.  As you can see, this HyperDoc is jam-packed full of information, and I didn’t want them getting too far behind.

All in all, however, I’d say it was a success.  It was something different on a topic that was relatively new to them.  My only other regret was that I didn’t start this sooner in the school year.  There is so much more I could do with follow-up activities! I plan on doing more of these next year, adding their individual IEP goal work into them.  Super excited to plan them over the summer!

Hope this post gave you some ideas of what to do with your classes, special education or not.  HyperDocs have so much potential, the sky really is the limit with these! Feel free to share your own! I’d love to see how others use them in their classrooms!