This document discusses how Microsoft OneNote can be used in the classroom to build better thinkers and encourage collaborative work. It describes how OneNote allows for individual student login accounts so work can be tracked. Students create notebooks organized into books and pages. OneNote allows for live collaboration where multiple students can edit a file simultaneously. Comments are automatically tracked by user. Videos, audio, and links can also be embedded for collaboration. OneNote covers a variety of curriculum areas and provides an open canvas for extending student thinking.

1. - Building better thinkers
- Helping to show student thinking
- Encouraging collaborative work
- Using technology in synchronicity with current learning (not as
something new, or in addition)
THE INTERACTIVE CLASSROOM
WITH
MICROSOFT ONENOTE

2. CREATING A ONENOTE FILE
• Students should have individual login accounts to access their
school server – in place of group or grade logins.
• This is because OneNote connects the current user account
to attach information regarding its open notebooks. This
allows users to see and track who is using the program,
when, and what comments etc have been made by what
individuals.

3. CREATING A ONENOTE FILE
Students should place their file into their personal
student drive, and then select ‘Create Notebook’
We refer to these as digital workbooks,
but you can call it whatever you like.

4. Across the top you can create your
separate books. We use subjects and
learning areas.
On the right-hand side, you can
create pages, and subpages within
your books. This helps the user to
organise all their work and thinking.
The title of your page or subpage is created by
whatever you decide to make as your page heading
You can simply click
anywhere on a OneNote
page to start typing.

5. USING ONENOTE FOR RESEARCH
OneNote is incredibly helpful for both teachers and students when it comes to researching.
Using Microsoft’s ‘screen clipping’ feature, you can have a website or file in the background,
and then place selected information or images from it directly into your open OneNote page.
OneNote will automatically include information with your screen clipping – such as
the name of the website, its URL, and the time and date it was accessed. All of this
information is required when referencing – and OneNote supplies it all
Beside any research, students can
directly paraphrase to show you their
thinking.
Students can directly highlight passages of
text that show information they want

6. OneNote is a ‘live’ document. This means several things within a classroom:
LIVE SYNCHING
• OneNote autosaves (no more accidentally losing work because you forgot to save)
• Teachers can access student work from their own computer at the same time as the
student and edit, revise, comment, etc (no more ‘read only’ issues)
• Students can’t access the work of other students because they have individual
logins and only have permission to see and edit their own work.
• If students are using their own devices, they can continue to make changes to their
OneNote files at home (without network access) and when their device reconnects to
the school network, their file will automatically update on the server.
• Students can still select the ‘save as’ function to save their OneNote file onto a
USB and continue to work from home on a separate device, and update their
school file manually from their USB when they return to school.

7. BEING COLLABORATIVE
You can create a separate OneNote file in a public area that all students have access to. This
can be a special area where all students can manipulate the same file, at the same time. These
‘live’ documents automatically synch every minute, but can be manually synched at any time.
Students can add thoughts directly to the
ideas of others.
OneNote
automatically
tracks who is
making what
comment. It
shows the initials
of the user, and
mousing over
them will show
further
information, such
as full user name,
and the date that
comment was
made, etc.
If multiple students accidentally type into the
same area, they can simply drag their ideas to
a new location.

8. BEING COLLABORATIVE
If your school utilises SkyDrive or some other form of cloud or virtual space, then
you can create a OneNote file there as well.
Doing this means that students can access and contribute collaboratively from
home. Teams of students working on projects together could organise times to
access this OneNote space together, or simply add to different pages in their own
time.
Homework tasks can be set in a similar fashion, and encourage conversation
between students rather than each person individually responding to set tasks or
questions on their own.
You can also lock pages with different passwords, giving access to different
sections to different groups, etc. Or to simply have a unit of work or homework
already set up, and simply unlocked each week.

9. BEING COLLABORATIVE
You can track comments by specific users too – if students are interested in what a particular
person might have to say, they can deliberately search for them. This can be handy for teachers
too, of course, and save a lot of time. You can search by recent edits too.
You can also create and add your own tags as well, so if you’re focusing on a specific type of thinking, you can
tag when you make such thinking, and then search all entries that have also been tagged. Tags will span the
entire notebook. This can help teachers and students focus in on certain aspects of a collaborative notebook.

10. BEING COLLABORATIVE
Students can add video or audio directly into OneNote, allowing them to put their ideas
forward in ways other than text. All users can then play, listen and add their own
recordings or text comments, etc.
You can also add links and files for other users to click on for further sharing of ideas.
OneNote really helps show evidence of student thinking – and they can be as creative as
they like while providing it. It helps give them the chance to build on the ideas of others,
and as a class have the opportunity to develop their thinking off one another.

11. BEING COLLABORATIVE
Students can link notes from different programs and files to help show examples of their
thinking to others. They can also link notes from collaborative OneNote files to their own
personal notebooks, showing where they think others have displayed great thinking, so they
can link back to those examples for assistance when performing similar tasks.
All Microsoft software now comes with
the ability to ‘link notes’.

12. ACCESSING THE CURRICULUM
The use of Microsoft OneNote, both individually and collaboratively, can cover a wide
variety of curriculum areas, including, but not limited to:
• Personal Learning
• Interpersonal Development
• English
• Mathematics
• Communication
• Design, Creativity and Technology
• Information and Communications Technology
• Thinking Processes

13. • OneNote pages are like an open canvas – you can extend your thinking in any
direction. You are not limited to what you see on the screen.
• OneNote pages can be printed - you can select to print either a single page, a whole
book, or the whole OneNote file.
• OneNote incorporates the scripting of other Microsoft programs, such as Word and
Excel – so it will automatically spell check, and calculate sums (inc bodmas), etc.
• Because there are so many options within OneNote, students can shortcut features
they use regularly to the ribbon for immediate, easy access.
• OneNote is fully manipulable. So, for example - if you accidentally place a new page
into your reading section and put work into it, when it was supposed to be in your
writing section, you can simply move the whole page. You can reorder your pages at
any stage. As a teacher with full access to all student files, you can copy or move
pages from one student’s file to another. You can never really make a mistake –
because everything can be moved or altered at any stage.
• OneNote is not available on Mac computers
SOME THINGS TO REMEMBER…

14. WANT FURTHER INFORMATION?
While nothing can really replace experience, and playing with
technology yourselves to help discover all that you can do within a
program – if you would ever like assistance with OneNote, please
don’t hesitate to contact me:
Simon Judkins
Greythorn Primary School
judkins.simon.b@edumail.vic.gov.au