OneNote and Education : Curriculum

Cool examples of teachers using OneNote in education

Mike_Tholfsen — Sun, 22 Feb 2009 20:47:00 GMT

I wanted to use this entry as an opportunity to point out examples of some cool things being done with OneNote and education. These examples come from both people I've been emailing with or just blogs I've seen. Each example shows a creative use of OneNote by a teacher using OneNote in a more advanced way than just "note-taking".

How have you using OneNote education? Feel free to send me a mail and share or leave a comment.

Efficiency and Collaboration with OneNote

This is a great entry describing three different education uses for Onenote:

The Digital Plan Book - I've seen many teachers use OneNote as a digital planning book. Another great sample with have of this is our 3rd Grade Math workbook.

Shared Tech Notebook - I also know of many different schools using OneNote shared notebooks in a similar way described here, including Forest Ridge School of the Sacred Heart.

Curriculum Notebook - I've pasted an excerpt from the blog for the curriculum notebook.

Perhaps the most ambitious ways we have used OneNote is to create a notebook that will be used to document the English curriculum in our building. After doing a department training on how to use OneNote, I created a department notebook to use for some basic function. But when we began the curriculum documentation process, we thought this provided the perfect platform for collaborating on curriculum development. As a result, are beginning to use the OneNote notebook to create unit plans, brainstorm assessments and activities, and, eventually, create lesson plans for each unit. We used tab sections to break up the grade levels and to separate Honors curriculum from the standard units. Tabs divide up the units and the pages contain all the pertinent information for each unit.

OneNote and the Count of Monte Cristo

Kelli Etheredge, a teacher at St. Paul’s Episcopal School in Mobile, Alabama, sent me this description of how she is using OneNote to teacher her World Literature class. Kelli gave me permission to post this on the blog:

I do not have a textbook in my class (World Literature) and so students either read paperbacks or I provide them with copies of excerpts from works. Because it is World Literature and we have an emphasis on the classics, I do not have a problem with copyright issues. I simply download the excerpts to OneNote and we share the texts on the class’s notebook. Any notes (notations about alliteration, figurative language, etc.) I make on the text with my tablet, are then saved to the notebook and the students have them at home. Recently, however, we moved to a more collaborative project where the students added information to the class’s notebook. After reading the Count of Monte Cristo, we conducted a mock trial of the Count for murder. Students were assigned roles and they were expected to work together to prepare the case. The witnesses all had to submit letters and character charts to OneNote, which served as affidavits for the trial. The prosecution and defense teams had private sections that were password protected so they could work together at school and at home. One group conducted a live session one night to work on the project. Additionally, I was in Mesa, Arizona at Peer Coaching Facilitator training for part of the trial preparation time, and while I was away I recorded instructions on the types of questions asked at trial and how to draft questions for the trial. The power of the program made all of this possible.

The Live Answer Key - My tablet, Camtasia, and OneNote

You don't get better thinking from a student then when they are taking a test. Even if they miss the problem - they probably thought hard about it and really made their best attempt. So after the test it is very beneficial to go over the exam with the students...but who has the time??? There is more material to cover and barely enough time for that. My solution - make a video of myself working the key. I always provide a copy of the key to my exams to the students - now I use my tablet, OneNote, and Camtasia to record myself working through the key so the students can see a step by step demonstration of each problem. After I have made the video I select "publish as pdf" under the file option in OneNote and wahlah the students have both a hard copy and a video copy of the key. I gave my college algebra students an extra credit opportunity where they had to watch the video and then email me 3 questions that they missed and describe what the did wrong - this was very beneficial...the students loved being able to hear and see me working the problems.

New OneNote eLearning case studies available

Mike_Tholfsen — Wed, 24 Sep 2008 17:05:00 GMT

We recently published a few new OneNote case studies that I wanted to share. As I've mentioned, beyond the education world, OneNote is finding success as an eLearning, training and on-boarding tool. Organizations such as the US Coast Guard and Job Start, shown below, are finding success using OneNote in this way and agreed to have a case study done. There are other companies also trying out OneNote in this new way.

Internally at Microsoft we are continuing to use OneNote to replace binders, handbooks and other training mechanisms. We've already realized a great deal of cost savings at Microsoft and we've also reduced paper consumption, substantially in some projects. And the best part is, the overwhelming majority of users are very pleased with having digital, annotatable, sharable copies of their work. Instead of tossing the folder full of training or learning materials, people retain digital copies that are quickly searchable. And they don't take up all that space on the shelf! To see exactly what I'm talking about, I encourage you to download a sample New Employee Handbook in OneNote. You can also watch a video blog of me discussing why I think this concept is so powerful for customers.

Here are a couple of case studies on OneNote as an eLearning tool

Job Start

Nonprofit Employment Agency Uses Interactive Training Tool to Help Teens Succeed

Based in Toronto, Ontario, JobStart is a nonprofit United Way member agency that helps participants gain the skills needed to achieve economic self-sufficiency. In December 2007, the agency received Microsoft® Office OneNote® 2007 through a sponsorship from Microsoft Canada and began testing the software in its youth program. JobStart anticipates that using Office OneNote 2007 will reduce costs while increasing collaboration between students and instructors.

US Coast Guard

United States Coast Guard Explores Potential to Enhance Training with Digital Note-Taking Solution

The United States Coast Guard is known for its impeccable standards and service. To maintain these levels of performance, USCG habitually goes above and beyond the call of duty to seek out new tools and resources that support the ongoing education of its members. In preparation for upgrading its computer system to the Windows Vista® operating system and the 2007 Microsoft® Office system, USCG began examining ways to gain maximum value from these new technologies. Curriculum Developers at the USCG Training Center in Petaluma, California, undertook an initial test of the Microsoft Office OneNote® 2007 digital note-taking program to evaluate how this tool could be used to complement USCG's comprehensive, performance-based training process. USCG was impressed by the dynamic presentation of course materials, the ease of use, and the potential time and cost savings.

If you want to browse all of the different OneNote cases studies, go here. There are both education and business examples of great ways people are using OneNote

Partners in Learning and a field trip to Forest Ridge

Mike_Tholfsen — Wed, 17 Sep 2008 18:16:00 GMT

In early September, Microsoft hosted a Partners in Learning (PIL) advisory summit for a diverse group of people involved with education. These people hailed from around the world and many continents were represented, including Asia, Europe, Africa , South America, and North America. The goal of this summit was for the Microsoft Partners in Learning team to have a dialogue with this group of education experts as well as share some of the technologies and plans Microsoft has moving forward.

I joined them for a "field trip" lunch to the Forest Ridge School in Bellevue, WA. Forest Ridge is a technologically advanced school and they are a 1:1 computing school. Forest Ridge uses tablets, and in addition, as I referred to on this blog previously, they use OneNote extensively. The Partners in Learning advisory group had the chance to observe OneNote in action for portion of a middle school math class, and they also had the chance to see OneNote live sharing and shared notebooks in action. Additionally, the students were given a math problem that involved inking, drawing and the use of color. After the class was finished, the visitors had the chance to talk with the students and ask them about their experiences.

I also had the chance to talk with a few of the students and I got some great feedback for the OneNote product. Things they liked best were the ease of use, the sharing capabilities the use of colors, and they ability to store everything in one place. I also learned that these were some of the students who had been doing a little bit of LiveSharing personal sessions in the library during lunch (Instant Messaging is banned) It's always great to hear how creative the kids can get with software :-)

In terms of areas for improvement, the two students told me about the problems they experienced when attempting to have a large number of students (e.g. - entire class) join into a LiveSharing session on Vista simultaneously on the wireless network. Sometimes people would get dropped. This is an area that the OneNote team is working on improving for O14.

After the class finished, we all ate lunch and had an interesting discussion between some Forest Ridge faculty and teachers. There were many interesting topics that came up around 1:1 computing environments, lessons learned, challenges. There was also quite a bit of discussion around whether or not technology had enabled better learning for the students over the last decade. That's the million dollar question at the end of the day. There were many great view points and I believe Forest Ridge teachers and faculty can point to some real benefits their students have accrued using technology in the classroom. There were examples discussed of students ability to not only adapting more quickly to technology, but in particular how technology and software has helped accommodate a wider array of learning styles that was previously not possible. There were numerous examples of students engaging the lessons in better ways than they had previously been able to. This aspect reminded me of the similar work and findings of Dr. Ole Lauridsen and his research at the learning styles lab at the University of Aarhus, Denmark. There was also discussions around curriculum being delivered digitially at Forest Ridge, whether via CD, email or in OneNote. During the digital curriculum discussion, envinromental benefits came up, as this is a particular area that students are very concerned about these days. The "green" aspect of digital curriculum has been a net plus for the students. After lunch, we all returned back to the main Redmond campus and I parted ways with the PIL advisory group. All in all, a great lunch and interesting discussion of technology in the classroom.

OneNote curriculum project in Ireland

Mike_Tholfsen — Sat, 26 Jul 2008 19:10:00 GMT

Tom Jackson of Microsoft has been working with some Irish schools on a fascinating project using OneNote to develop and distribute curriculum to students. To understand the background of the project, read his initial blog entry from February.

Tom recently posted a new blog entry summarizing what they did. He will be adding more detailed blog entries regularly so be sure to check back. I cited a few parts of his entry below.

Supporting documents:

For site visitors on Tom's SkyDrive site here
If you're interested in the Curriculum Mapping piece that was a core part of the Northern Ireland solution, you can see a great video about it here

Quotes:

From Niall- Dunshaughlin CC Student: “I do believe that given the right training and equipment, - OneNote is the future for learning!"

Kevin Reilly- Dunshaughlin CC History Teacher:“Excellent software to facilitate organisation in a student’s learning.Inspires inquisitorial spirit e.g. students organised a guest speaker, Kari Rosvall” (See RTE video for her background)

OneNote and Learning Styles - I found the quote from Neil below to be particularly interesting as we have been talking about OneNote and learning styles as well. This seems to support the research that Dr. Ole Lauridsen has done with his "OneNote and Learning Styles - A Perfect Match." paper. If you haven't yet read his pamphlet or watched the video of Dr. Lauridsen, I would highly encourage you to take a browse.

Neil Armstrong-Wallace HS History Teacher: “More pleasing to note, is the improvement of a couple of pupils who have shown an improvement in their essay mark, compared to earlier work this term. This includes Student A, Student B, Student C, Student D and especially Student E. Student E has really shown the true merits of using OneNote and UMPC in the classroom. He was previously underachieving, yet with the pilot he really showed what he was capable of. I believe him to be a kinesthetic learner; therefore he needs to be focused on completing a task using his hands. Otherwise his attention wanders. During the pilot he was very focused and really put the largest amount of effort into the OneNote module that I have seen all year to date!!. This means that the OneNote has the potential of helping to improve the work and grades of underachieving males and kinesthetic learners. It may have a larger field in helping pupils with SEN with organisation and producing work."

Are other educators experimenting with OneNote and curriculum? Let us know - share you story!

-mike