As a High School Teacher & Tech Person…MS is so close...

Ten years ago I used a Tablet PC at my first school, and enjoyed a bunch of the functionality, but jumped at the chance to pick up a Macbook Pro and slowly but sure convert all the teachers at my school over to Apple Products. Since then, we installed numerous SMARTBoards and were humming along with our usual problems and as teachers flipped their classrooms, I helped them work on Explain Everything and utilize an iPad. After a recent school visit, I was impressed by the use of recording full lessons, and with our Office 365 license I decided to give Notebook a try because I dealt with multiple devices and computers everyday (Home computer, School Computer, Laptop, iPad & iPhone). It’s suprisingly capable in numerous ways: the infinite whiteboard space, the ability to sync within a couple of minutes, the truly cloud based saving of whole notebooks, and ease at which I could share days worth of notes with all my students.

The full OS X version of this app is about two upgrades away from being the reason we (as a school) move away from SMART Technologies prepackaged interactive whiteboard software and move to MS OneNote. The Mac Version would benefit immensely from a “Drawing” tab on the ribbon which enabled used to draw using whichever method necessary (Wacom tablet, Interactive Whiteboard Pens, etc…). Another ideal upgrade would be to allow for multiple instances (windows) of OneNote to be open at the same time, so that cutting/pasting items and preparing lessons would be that much easier. It would be nice if they clarified their permissions, and allowed for memory in password protected sections of the notebook. Small features that are missing also include “paper style” or “page templates" on the view tab.

Overall hugely beneficial because of the collaborative experience and the relatively low “lag” rate (about 20 seconds) between multiple devices. For schools this could be the linchpin of their online Microsoft Classroom experience, they just have to follow through and enable a number of features that make it awesome on other devices. All of that said, I’m converted and piloting the experience for our school. After a week it seems to be well worth the effort, and I’ve already convinced my partner, who doesn’t have the same patience with technology as I do to trying out some of the features.

tallmantutor about Microsoft OneNote