OneNote and Education : Freedom Writers

Another webcast with FreedomWriter Founder, Erin Gruwell - Tuesday, May 6th

Mike_Tholfsen — Fri, 01 May 2009 05:25:00 GMT

For those of you who missed the first webcast, you have another chance! If you've been reading my blog, you'll remember that last summer I had the opportunity to work with Erin Gruwell and the Freedom Writer Teachers. For those of you who have never heard of former teacher, Erin Gruwell and the original Freedom Writers, check out the Freedom Writer Diaries book, the Freedom Writers Movie (2007 w/ Hillary Swank) or Erin Gruwell's excellent biography "Teach with your heart". There is also a foundation established with the same name - Freedom Writers Foundation.

Microsoft and HP donated a set of laptops and Office software to 150 Freedom Writer Teachers. These teachers have been chronicling their experiences with stories for an upcoming book, similar to the method used in the original Freedom Writer Diaries book. This book will be released by Double Day publishing later this year.

Erin Gruwell will be doing a Teacher Tech Tuesday on May 6th. I would encourage folks to sign up for either event and hear Erin speak. She is an amazing person and extremely passionate about what she does. Details on registration are below.

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Teacher Tech Tuesday: LIVE Webcast with Erin Gruwell, Founder and President of the Freedom Writers Foundation

Join Microsoft Education for a LIVE webcast with Erin Gruwell, Founder and President of the Freedom Writers Foundation, as she discusses her upcoming book Teaching Hope: Stories from the Freedom Writer Teachers launching later this year. Erin will discuss how she and 150 teachers across the US wrote and collaborated on the book using Microsoft and HP technology.

Teacher Tech Tuesday: LIVE webcast with Erin Gruwell

• Tuesday, May 6th, 2009 at 4:00 PM Eastern

Erin Gruwell and the Freedom Writer Teachers

Mike_Tholfsen — Fri, 10 Apr 2009 19:14:00 GMT

Hi folks - we've been heads down working on OneNote14 so I haven't had the chance to blog very often. In the meantime, I wanted to share an upcoming event that many of you might be interested in.

For those of you following my blog, you'll remember that last summer I had the opportunity to work with Erin Gruwell and the Freedom Writer Teachers. For those of you who have never heard of former teacher, Erin Gruwell and the original Freedom Writers, check out the Freedom Writer Diaries book, the Freedom Writers Movie (2007 w/ Hillary Swank) or Erin Gruwell's excellent biography "Teach with your heart". There is also a foundation established with the same name - Freedom Writers Foundation.

Erin Gruwell will be doing a Teacher Tech Tuesday on April 14th and May 5th. I would encourage folks to sign up for either event and hear Erin speak. She is an amazing person and extremely passionate about what she does. Details on registration are below.

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Teacher Tech Tuesday: LIVE Webcast with Erin Gruwell, Founder and President of the Freedom Writers Foundation

Teacher Tech Tuesday: LIVE webcast with Erin Gruwell

• April 14th, 2009 at 4:00 PM Eastern

• May 5th, 2009 at 4:00 PM Eastern

The Freedom Writer Teachers, OneNote and the Long Beach Airport

Mike_Tholfsen — Mon, 21 Jul 2008 23:02:00 GMT

Last night I was sitting in the Long Beach, CA airport waiting for my Seattle return flight that was delayed four hours. Great excuse to write a new blog entry! For those of you who have never "experienced" the pleasure of the Long Beach airport, it probably wouldn't be high on my sightseeing lists.

Why was I in Long Beach you ask? Well this weekend Erin Gruwell and the Freedom Writer Teachers had a multi-day conference getting together to prepare to write their next book . For those of you who have never heard of the former teacher, Erin Gruwell and the original Freedom Writers, check out the Freedom Writer Diaries book, the Freedom Writers Movie (2007 w/ Hillary Swank) or Erin Gruwell's excellent biography "Teach with your heart". There is also a foundation established with the same name - Freedom Writers Foundation.

I had the chance to meet the amazing Erin Gruwell a few months ago through a Microsoft Public Sector Education employee named Karla. Erin and her group of Freedom Writer Teachers hail from states across the country and have a diverse set of backgrounds and experiences. These teachers are going to chronicle their teaching experiences with stories, similar to the method used in the original Freedom Writer Diaries book. This book will be released by Double Day publishing next August in 2009. And the tool they are going to use to collaboratively write this new book? You guessed it - OneNote! Karla had been working with Erin and her foundation to coordinate this event, amongst other partnerships with the Freedom Writer Teachers and Microsoft over the next year.

The Freedom Writer Teachers had a four day conference from Friday-Tuesday at the Newport Beach, CA Marriott. HP donated 150 Mini-Note laptops to the group of teachers and Microsoft donated 150 copies of Office 2007 Ultimate, MS Student 2009, and Windows Live tools. The teachers were surprised with a Friday night “Oprah” moment where Erin made the announcement about the free HP Mini-Notes + MS Software to the entire group.

I was invited to the Newport Beach Marriott on Sunday to do a 4 hour workshop on using OneNote. I was also accompanied by Sara, a 7th Grade Forest Teacher and Tony Franklin, the Philadelphia School of the Future SSP. I hopped on a plane on Sunday morning and flew in for the day. The workshop covered everything from the basics of OneNote, to OneNote education scenarios, and all the way to shared notebooks and collaboration. Sara and Tony were my "Teacher's aides" as we went through the exercises with the teachers.

It was an amazing experience and the group of teachers are very tight knit and passionate about the work they do. I also observed a lot of teachers having a blast using OneNote in both personal and collaborative ways. We started out with OneNote basics including organization and the flexible page surface. We also covered embedded files, search, audio/video recording, screen clipping, tagging, and drawing tools as well as other education-focused scenarios. Towards the end of the day, we did a test run of the entire room using a deeply structured shared notebook where each teacher had his/her own section. For the most part it worked well, although we quickly sucked up all the bandwidth in the conference room and things slowed to a crawl by the end of the exercise :-) It was great to see the level of spontaneous creativity that quickly appeared across the entire notebook.

Here's me on the right with a Freedom Writer Teacher.

I felt honored to be able to work with this inspirational group and I look forward to helping them with their journey. I'll be posting updates on this blog as the Freedom Writer Teachers move forward with their book and how OneNote helps the process.