Make Your Worksheets Work Digitally

Do you have a copy limit at your school? This is a common obstacle for teachers, so this blog post provides a tutorial for how to make your worksheets work digitally. The steps in this post share how to turn printables into PDFs so students can edit them digitally. Click through to get the tutorial!

I realized an important truth recently–I have been hopelessly spoiled for the past sixteen years. I did not have a copy limit in my school system. It took moving to a school system with a strict copy limit for me to realize the unabashed luxury of my former situation.

I call this an important truth because overindulgence, and well, waste are often byproducts of luxury and being spoiled rotten. I hated making copies, but I never truly tried to conserve them.

I’ve written a lot about going 1:1 and blending my classroom, but I would sometimes make copies because they were there and it was easy. Now I truly have to live up to my own advice, “If paper works best, use it. But all things being equal, choose digital.”

I love the SAMR model for adding technology. What I’m going to discuss today is straight up step 1–substitution, something I didn’t do a ton of in the past but that copy limits have forced me to increasingly do. So, here’s how I

Make My Worksheets Work Digitally

Do you have a copy limit at your school? This is a common obstacle for teachers, so this blog post provides a tutorial for how to make your worksheets work digitally. The steps in this post share how to turn printables into PDFs so students can edit them digitally. Click through to get the tutorial!1. All you need is to have your worksheet in PDF format. You can do that with phone apps that enable you to take a picture of a sheet of paper, save it as a PDF, and email it to yourself. You can also do this by scanning your worksheet. Most school copiers these days also have a feature that enables you to scan a worksheet and send it to your email as a PDF.
 
2. Once your worksheet is in PDF format, you will need to visit the Google Chrome Store and pick up the free DocHub app. Have your students add DocHub to their Chome accounts, as well.
 
3. Assign your students the worksheet via email or an online platform (if you use Google Classroom, make sure to select “make a copy for each student,” they will open the PDF in Classroom with DocHub).
 
4. With DocHub, students can write, draw, and insert images onto a PDF. They can save it, and share it with you.
 
Do you have a copy limit at your school? This is a common obstacle for teachers, so this blog post provides a tutorial for how to make your worksheets work digitally. The steps in this post share how to turn printables into PDFs so students can edit them digitally. Click through to get the tutorial!
 
Do you have a copy limit at your school? This is a common obstacle for teachers, so this blog post provides a tutorial for how to make your worksheets work digitally. The steps in this post share how to turn printables into PDFs so students can edit them digitally. Click through to get the tutorial!
Download the Cheat Sheet HERE
PDF from THIS Package
As a side note, if you are using a PDF with fillable text boxes, they can use the text boxes for typing, but if there is a button on the PDF to insert an image, that won’t work. No worries, though. They can insert an image in DocHub from the toolbar. 
 
Don’t forget to download the Cheat Sheet!

And check out the video tutorial:

    Email
    Facebook
    Pinterest
    Twitter

    You might also like...

    Colorful cut paper shapes including a pink circle, purple octagon, and green rectangle connected by yellow arrows on a teal background, representing graphic organizers for high school students and the digital graphic organizers vs paper debate for note catching strategies in the classroom.

    Graphic Organizers for High School Students: Should I Use Tech for This?

    You’ve heard of note-taking. Note-catching is something a little different. And that distinction is at the heart of this post. We’re looking at graphic organizers for high school students, and as part of the Should I Use Tech for This? summer series, we’re asking whether digital graphic organizers or paper serve high school students better, and the answer circles back to the same research that guided our note-taking post way back at the start of the series. We’re also covering the folded paper technique, standard annotation graphic organizers, and the one digital tool, NotebookLM, that does something for note-catching strategies that paper simply cannot replicate.

    Read More »
    A high school student giving a technology-enhanced presentation to classmates, illustrating creative student presentation ideas for high school and transformative technology use in the classroom.

    Student Presentation Ideas for High School: When Technology Genuinely Transforms the Work

    The best student presentations I’ve seen in my classroom came from a Theory of Knowledge class that turned their exhibitions into Saturday Night Live-style comedy sketches. They couldn’t have done it without technology. And they couldn’t have done it with AI alone either. In this post, part of the Should I Use Tech for This? summer series, I’m sharing what transformative student presentation ideas for high school look like, why creative student presentations go so far beyond the standard slideshow, and the one condition that makes technology work for this task rather than against it.

    Read More »
    Image of a magnifying glass over a dictionary for the post "Should I Use Tech for Vocabulary Practice Strategies?"

    Should I Use Tech for Vocabulary Practice Strategies? What I Learned the Hard Way

    I once built an elaborate digital vocabulary practice system, complete with drag-and-drop checkboxes and instructional videos, and I was so proud of it that I started selling it. It was a complete waste of everyone’s time. In this post, part of the Should I Use Tech for This? summer series, I’m sharing what that failure taught me about vocabulary practice strategies, why digital vocabulary tools for teachers shine at the surface level and fall flat at the deep and transfer levels, and how Quizlet, Quiz-Quiz-Trade, and a stack of laminated task cards all earned a permanent place in my vocabulary instruction for high school students.

    Read More »

     


    Welcome! Stay a while and browse classroom-tested tips, strategies, and resources that will take your teaching to the next level!

    Learn More

    Want Access To The Free Resource library?

    Get access to 20+ classroom-tested resources!