








































Georgia Journal of Literacy 
2023, Vol. 45(1), pp. 77–89 
https://doi.org/10.56887/galiteracy.24 
ISSN: 2833-7611 

Teaching Tips Article  

 

 

 

CONTACT Dr. Kathleen M. Crawford, Assistant Professor of Elementary Literacy, Department of Elementary and 
Special Education, Georgia Southern University, Statesboro, GA; email kcrawford@georgiasouthern.edu. Heather M. 
Huling, Clinical Instructor, Department of Elementary and Special Education, Georgia Southern University, Statesboro, 
GA; email hhuling@georgiasouthern.edu. 
 

Out with the Old, in with the New: Digital 
Interactive Journals in an Elementary Language 
Arts Methods Course 
 
Kathleen M. Crawford 
Georgia Southern University, Statesboro, GA 

Heather M. Huling 
Georgia Southern University, Statesboro, GA 

 
ABSTRACT 

In this article, two elementary literacy teacher educators provide elementary 
language arts content and methods through the implementation of digital interactive 
journals in a face to face classroom setting. The authors present how this practice 
evolved from traditional interactive journals pre-COVID to an innovative and 
engaging learning experience post-COVID. Interactive journals provide students 
with opportunities to explore and apply content and methods, while also learning a 
teaching strategy that pre-service teachers can implement in their own elementary 
classrooms. The authors describe the design and development of digital interactive 
journals along with student work samples and instructional steps to transfer and 
implement this strategy across disciplines.  

KEYWORDS 

digital interactive 
journals; 
instructional 
technology; 
student 
engagement; 
preservice 
teachers; 
elementary 
literacy 

 
ne of my students recently commented: “I’m so proud of my journal and how much I’ve 
learned in language arts this semester. I never knew how creative I could be with 
technology (thank you, Google Slides!). My journal is something I will keep forever and 

will go back to when I get my own classroom.” When I (Kathleen) first began teaching my 
undergraduate Elementary Language Arts Methods class in fall 2019 at a mid-sized university in 
the southeastern United States, there was not a laptop in sight. Rather, there were “old school” 
composition books, markers, scissors, glue, and pieces of colored paper scattered across tables. 
Pre-service teachers, mostly 19–24-year-old females, were actively engaged with the materials as 
they made sense of new literacy content and methodologies through various writing activities, 
many of these in the form of “functional writing” utilizing lists and graphic organizers (Fountas & 
Pinnell, 2017), to use with elementary aged students, as illustrated in Figures 1-5. Students were, 
in essence, “writing to learn” in order to enhance their own understanding and retention of course 
materials (Doğan & İlhan, 2016; Pinar & Yildiz, 2020). Writing to learn was a staple in my class, 
and my use of “old school” interactive journals was a way for students to document and capture 
their learning in one place. I successfully taught college level content in ways that mirrored the 
best practices of elementary teachers, and the feedback I received from students was 
overwhelmingly positive. I knew it would be critical to maintain this effective practice of writing 

O 

mailto:kcrawford@georgiasouthern.edu
mailto:hhuling@georgiasouthern.edu


78 Georgia Journal of Literacy 45(1)  
 

to learn with my students, and I was determined to find a way to mimic this practice in a virtual 
setting. 
   
Figure 1: Composition Journal Entry Matching Genres to Texts 

 
 
Figure 2: Composition Journal Entry Notes on Genres of Writing  

 



Crawford & Huling 79 
 

Figure 3: Composition Journal Entry Sequencing Steps of an Interactive Read Aloud 

 
 
Figure 4: Composition Journal Entry Making Connection to Elements of Language Arts 

 
 



80 Georgia Journal of Literacy 45(1)  
 

Figure 5: Composition Journal Entry Matching T-Chart Comparing “What’s Hot and What’s Not” 
with Interactive Read Alouds 

 
 
The Evolution of Digital Interactive Journals 
Then COVID-19 struck 2020 and changed everything my students and I knew as “normal” 
teaching in face-to-face classroom settings. This was quite the paradox, and just like K-12 teachers 
had no choice but to change their teaching modalities to best support the whole child (Chamberlain 
et al., 2020), teacher educators had to change as well in order to best support the whole teacher 
(Crawford, 2016). This incited the reimagination of “old school” journals and the evolution of 
digital interactive journals. I began to wonder about the ways I could adjust our class sessions and 
daily interactive journals in a fully digital world while maintaining some semblance of normalcy 
in an anything but normal world.  

I selected Google Slides as a substitute for the traditional handwritten interactive journals 
as the platform because all students have access to Google Workspace through the university, its 
commenting feature allows for dialogue between student and instructor, and can be accessed on 
any device through Google Drive. 

Over a two-year period, my classes slowly transitioned from traditional face to face classes 
to fully virtual classes to a hybrid of face to face classes and virtual learning and, finally, to the 
return to fully face to face classes (Figure 6). Even though my students and I found ourselves 
learning in a fully face-to-face setting once again, I quickly realized there was no going back to 
the “old school journals”; digital interactive journals were a welcomed change and were here to 
stay. 
 
 



Crawford & Huling 81 
 

Figure 6: Timeline of the Evolution of Digital Interactive Journals 

 
 
Digital Interactive Journals in Practice 
Digital interactive journals have become the heart of our classroom on campus. Journal entries 
each day consist of a wide array of activities. Students often critically research and hyperlink 
teaching ideas related to content covered (Figure 7), jump into a class Jamboard for collaborative 
work and brainstorming (Figures 8 & 9), complete Google Forms to showcase class data sets of 
school experiences, read and reflect on articles (Figure 10), blogs, and videos (Figure 11), and 
embed their own videos, images, and gifs to make blank slides, their empty canvas, in their journals 
come alive. In essence, their journal entries look more like an artistic scrapbook of learning and 
learning to teach, as opposed to more traditional college projects and papers. While the majority 
of journal entries are digital, I have been able to preserve some of the traditional practices of 
interactive journals where students are able to cut, glue, draw or color, and hand write reflections. 
Upon completing these in-class hands-on activities, students use their devices to take photographs 
of the products they create and upload the images into their interactive journals (Figures 12 & 13) 
or create a combination of these more traditional practices digitally (Figure 14). It is also important 
to note that while the students’ writing is more condensed and presented in more of a non-
traditional manner, I have seen growth in the depth of their written reflections and in their writing 
skills (Clark et al., 2020). The students are incredibly proud of their journals and often tell me how 
much creating them has helped them grow as teachers. They are elated when they are able to teach 
their peers and even their own cooperating teacher in their field placement new “tricks” and 
shortcuts to use. So, not only are they learning essential methods to teach language arts, they are 
also learning essential digital tools that are enhancing their own teaching skill set and the skill sets 
of others. 
 
 
 
 
 



82 Georgia Journal of Literacy 45(1)  
 

Figure 7: Student Journal Entry in Slides: Hyperlinking Phonological Awareness Activities 

 
 
Figure 8: Class Jamboard: Pictures, Images, and Clipart that Start with /s/ 

 
 
 
 
 
 



Crawford & Huling 83 
 

Figure 9: Class Jamboard: Sticky Notes Representing What Students Learned in Class 

 
 
Figure 10: Student Journal Entry in Slides: 3-2-1 Reflection over Assigned Text to Read 

 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 



84 Georgia Journal of Literacy 45(1)  
 

Figure 11: Student Journal Entry in Slides: Text Messages to a Friend after Watching a TED Talk 

 
 
Figure 12: Student Journal Entry in Slides: Uploaded Images of Assessing Writing Three Ways 

 
 
 
 
 



Crawford & Huling 85 
 

Figure 13: Student Journal Entry in Slides: Uploaded Images of Planning for an Interactive Read 
Aloud 

 
 

Figure 14: Student Journal Entry in Slides: Uploaded Image of Graphic Organizer and Bulleted 
Reflection 

 
 
 
 



86 Georgia Journal of Literacy 45(1)  
 

Launching Digital Interactive Journals 
Each semester I have modified the way in which I introduce the digital interactive journal. Upon 
initial implementation, I mistakenly made too many assumptions about my students’ familiarity 
with Google Slides and all of its functions. Therefore, I have learned the importance of beginning 
the first week of classes with in-class activities that involve the basics of Google Slides, including 
selecting a template for their journal using websites such as slidesgo.com and slidesmania.com. 
My favorite introductory activity in class has been a “scavenger hunt” where the students complete 
tasks, after I model them, such as using the drawing tool, inserting images and embedding videos, 
hyperlinking websites to images and text, adding animation, changing the background and slide 
layout, and, their favorite, inserting their personalized bitmojis. Each of the activities in the 
scavenger hunt involve getting to know you prompts, such as: 
 
 Insert an image of your favorite food and hyperlink a recipe to the image 
 Insert a shape of your choice and fill in the shape with your favorite color. In the shape tell 

me about your best friend or pet. Now, make the shape spin. 
 Make a bulleted list of your favorite restaurants. Now, right click the top bullet, select 

“more bullets” and change the bullet points to a food emoji of your choice. 
 Copy and paste Slide 23 from my slideshow into your journal. Change the font size, type, 

and color. Now, add in an image of a famous person you’d like to meet. Want to remove 
the background of the famous person? Go to remove.bg - it’s magical! 

 Using a combination of images, gifs, memes, and videos, create a digital collage of your 
go to Netflix, Hulu, Disney+, and HBO Max shows.  

 Go outside and take a selfie at your favorite place on campus. Now, insert the picture and 
a textbox to describe why it's your favorite place. 

 
Not only are students able to learn how to easily navigate Slides on their own, I am also able to 
spend this time getting to know my students and building our classroom community in order to 
give them a greater sense of belonging in a college classroom (Kirby & Thomas, 2021). Once 
students are able to easily and quickly operate the basic functions of Google Slides with minimal 
support, class sessions run smoothly, and students are able to place their focus on the content of 
the course rather than “stressing out” about not being able to figure out the technological tools and 
feeling behind or rushed during class.  

Through the implementation of digital interactive journals, I have learned how to 
effectively blend traditional hands-on practices with digital tools to maximize student learning and 
engagement and to capture the growth of my pre-service teachers’ understanding of best literacy 
practices with in-class activities and prompts such as the ones presented in the above figures and 
the additional examples listed below: 
 
 Insert a Venn diagram in your journal to compare and contrast interactive read alouds with 

shared reading. 
 Jump into this Jamboard and insert an image that has /ă/ as the medial sound. Now, 

copy/paste that same image into your journal and insert an additional picture. 
 As you watch this writers workshop video, create a bulleted list of key ideas and/or 

questions you have in your journal. Be ready to discuss. 



Crawford & Huling 87 
 

 Complete this planning for guided reading graphic organizer (hard copy). When you’re 
finished, take a picture and insert it into your journal. Add the title of your selected book 
at the top of the slide and insert a picture of the book cover. 

 Reflect on your experiences with spelling. What do you remember? Were your experiences 
positive or negative? Insert an image to match. 

 
As students submit their interactive journals throughout the semester, I am able to use the comment 
feature to provide immediate feedback that students can easily access in live time. The comment 
feature allows me to praise quality work, clarify any misconceptions, quickly answer questions 
students pose, provide additional resources through hyperlinks. I am also able to insert a variety 
of emojis to personalize my comments and make the feedback feel more like cognitive coaching 
(Costa & Garmston, 2002) and a conversation, rather than a “yes/no, right/wrong, here’s your 
grade” (Figure 15). 
 
Figure 15: Personalized Instructor Feedback in Digital Interactive Journal 

 
 

As a reflective practitioner, I consistently seek feedback from my teacher candidates when 
teaching or trying new strategies. I collected feedback through Google forms, and my teacher 
candidates had very positive statements about the digital interactive journals. Many indicated that 
the digital journals provided them with a resource that will be useful in their future classrooms. “I 
like that I will always be able to refer back to these when I'm creating lessons and even when I 
have my own classroom I'll be able to use this as a resource because of how accessible it is.” 
Students also enjoyed the personalization aspect of the digital journals and preparation to utilize 
technology to enhance learning. “I can make it MY way! It also has prepared me so much 
technology wise.” Given the positive feedback I received from my students, I have shared this 



88 Georgia Journal of Literacy 45(1)  
 

teaching strategy with other colleagues, and we have since embedded this practice in other 
undergraduate and graduate courses. Author 2 and I collaboratively plan and use digital interactive 
journals in multiple literacy courses within our teacher education program. In Table 1, we outline 
general steps to begin using digital interactive journals in other content areas and contexts. 
 
Table 1: Getting Started with Digital Interactive Journals 

Step 1 Familiarize yourself with the fundamentals of Google Slides, and avoid asking 
your students to try different functionalities without first having tried them 
yourself. For more information about the basic of Google Slides, you can 
access the following website: bit.ly/3XmWiRC 

Step 2 Baby steps. Start slowly and have patience; remember, the students are not 
only showing their understanding and acquisition of content, but they are also 
learning the fundamentals and functionalities of technology, even as digital 
natives. 

Step 3 Ensure students have equitable access to technological devices and 
connectivity. 

Step 4 Use the digital interactive journals each class session. For two sample class 
sessions, access the following links: bit.ly/3S4ROhP, bit.ly/3YnGyz9 

Step 5 Let students give peer technical support; they often have new and different 
ways of completing activities that they can share with other students. 

Step 6 Maintain your focus when assessing the journals and providing feedback. 
Remember that you are assessing the content of their journal entries and their 
learning, not their technological capabilities or aesthetic appeal.  

Step 7 When providing feedback using the commenting tool, make it conversational, 
rather than corrective, to help build and sustain relationships with your 
students. Some sample comment stems are as follows: 
 

 I like how you _____. 
 Have you considered _____? 
 I remember you saying this in class – what other connections can you 

make? 
 This reminds me of _____. 
 Yes! For more information, check out this link: _____. 
 LOL – so true. We’re going to talk more about this in class next week! 
 Try it out! Open one of your student’s assignments, and see where you 

could easily embed comments such as the ones above. 

Step 8 Insert hyperlinks or additional resources to build on or clarify student content 
knowledge when providing feedback.  

Step 9 Let students be creative - they will surprise you when given the opportunity to 
derail from the norm of paper and pencil in-class activities and assessments.  

Step 10 Reflect. What is working? What should be adjusted? Not sure? Go to the direct 
source. Ask your students for some feedback! 

 
Final Thoughts and Lessons Learned 
Digital interactive journals have been a game changer in my Elementary Language Arts class, and 
I am confident that these practices could easily be adapted by teachers across grade levels and 

https://bit.ly/3XmWiRC
https://bit.ly/3S4ROhP
https://bit.ly/3YnGyz9


Crawford & Huling 89 
 

content areas to keep students engaged (Gebre et al., 2014) and to ensure they are writing to learn 
throughout the semester. As with all teaching practices, it is important to remember to stop, reflect, 
and adjust when starting this strategy; digital interactive journals will not go perfectly at first, but 
the end result, their treasured digital keepsakes, is well worth the effort for both students and 
teachers. This classroom practice can be best summarized with one teacher candidate saying, 
“Thank you, Author 1, for introducing these journals to us. I’ve never done anything like this in a 
college class, and I feel like I’ve learned more in your class than any other. The journal has helped 
me stay organized, let me be creative (yay slides.go and bitmojis!), and taught me soooo much 
about Google Slides. I’ll hold on to this FOREVER, and I can’t wait to try this with students of 
my own!” 
 
References 
Chamberlain, L., Lacina, J., Bintz, W. P., Jimerson, J. B., Payne, K., & Zingale, R. (2020). Literacy 

in lockdown: Learning and teaching during COVID‐19 school closures. The Reading 
Teacher, 74(3), 243–253. https://doi.org/10.1002/trtr.1961 

Clark, C., Picton, I., & Lant, F. (2020). “More time on my hands”: Children and young people’s 
writing during the COVID‐19 lockdown in 2020. National Literacy Trust. 

Costa, A. L., & Garmston, R. (2002). Cognitive coaching: A foundation for renaissance schools. 
Christopher Gordon Publishers. 

Crawford, K. M. (2016). Developing the whole teacher: A phenomenological case study of student 
teachers’ emotions in one teacher education program (Doctoral dissertation). 
http://digitalcommons.georgiasouthern.edu/curr_etd/ 

Doğan, Y. & İlhan, N. (2016). Prospective teachers’ views related to using writing to learn 
activities in a “science and technology teaching” course. Adıyaman University Journal of 
Educational Sciences, 6(1), 1–22. 

Fountas, I. C., & Pinnell, G. S. (2017). The Fountas & Pinnell literacy continuum: A tool for 
assessment, planning, and teaching. Heinemann. 

Gebre, E., Saroyan, A., & Bracewell, R. (2014), Students’ engagement in technology rich 
classrooms. British Journal of Educational Technology, 45(1), 83–96.  
https://doi.org/10.1111/bjet.12001 

Kirby, L. A., & Thomas, C. L. (2021). High-impact teaching practices foster a greater sense of 
belonging in the college classroom. Journal of Further and Higher Education, 46(3), 368–
381. https://doi.org/10.1080/0309877X.2021.1950659 

Pinar, E., & Yildiz, A. (2020). The effect of journal writing, one of the “writing to learn” activities 
on achievement and science attitude in the fourth-grade science course. Journal of Current 
Researches on Social Sciences, 10(1), 179–196. https://files.eric.ed.gov/fulltext/
ED605813.pdf 

 
 
Received: September 2, 2022 | Accepted: September 9, 2022 | Published: April 3, 2023 

http://digitalcommons.georgiasouthern.edu/curr_etd/
https://doi.org/10.1111/bjet.12001
https://doi.org/10.1080/0309877X.2021.1950659
https://files.eric.ed.gov/fulltext/ED605813.pdf
https://files.eric.ed.gov/fulltext/ED605813.pdf

	Figure 1: Composition Journal Entry Matching Genres to Texts
	Figure 2: Composition Journal Entry Notes on Genres of Writing
	Figure 3: Composition Journal Entry Sequencing Steps of an Interactive Read Aloud
	Figure 4: Composition Journal Entry Making Connection to Elements of Language Arts
	Figure 5: Composition Journal Entry Matching T-Chart Comparing “What’s Hot and What’s Not” with Interactive Read Alouds
	The Evolution of Digital Interactive Journals
	Figure 6: Timeline of the Evolution of Digital Interactive Journals

	Digital Interactive Journals in Practice
	Figure 7: Student Journal Entry in Slides: Hyperlinking Phonological Awareness Activities
	Figure 8: Class Jamboard: Pictures, Images, and Clipart that Start with /s/
	Figure 9: Class Jamboard: Sticky Notes Representing What Students Learned in Class
	Figure 10: Student Journal Entry in Slides: 3-2-1 Reflection over Assigned Text to Read
	Figure 11: Student Journal Entry in Slides: Text Messages to a Friend after Watching a TED Talk
	Figure 12: Student Journal Entry in Slides: Uploaded Images of Assessing Writing Three Ways
	Figure 13: Student Journal Entry in Slides: Uploaded Images of Planning for an Interactive Read Aloud
	Figure 14: Student Journal Entry in Slides: Uploaded Image of Graphic Organizer and Bulleted Reflection

	Launching Digital Interactive Journals
	Figure 15: Personalized Instructor Feedback in Digital Interactive Journal
	Table 1: Getting Started with Digital Interactive Journals

	Final Thoughts and Lessons Learned
	References

