Day 16 – The Best Application You Probably Have Never Used for Teaching and Learning - OneNote
Teaching and Learning with a Windows 8 Tablet
30 Days with a Surface RT for Teachers
Yesterday, I asked the question if the Surface RT was worth it? For me, the answer is definitely yes for a number of different reasons. The Surface RT makes a great companion device and is excellent for what it is designed to do.
The other big plus for the RT is the current education price of $199 that makes this device appealing to those interested in learning more about what this new class of device offers schools. I think many will be surprised if they just give the Surface RT a chance to prove itself.
The biggest strike against it however, is the ARM processor that is at times a little under powered for certain tasks. The flipside to this lower power processor is that the battery-life is extended for all day use.
The Surface RT comes with the Office 2013 applications of Word, Excel, PowerPoint, and OneNote included. The free Office 2013 applications are a second reason the Surface RT is worth considering for schools. These are the “Big Four” applications that teachers and students routinely need to get work done.
Wait, what was that last application you mentioned, OneNote? What is OneNote?
For teachers and students OneNote is one of the best kept secrets of the entire Microsoft Office 2013 Suite. OneNote is an absolutely fantastic program for keeping notes (something that teachers and students do often) but it can be so much more. OneNote is a natural fit for keeping ePortfolios that can be shared with others easily using SkyDrive.
The premise of OneNote is a digital 3-Ring Binder that you store and access information from any device that has the OneNote app installed. If you have an Internet connection you do not even need the installed app, just use the free Office Web App version using only a browser to access notes stored to your SkyDrive using your Microsoft account.
OneNote is organized into Notebooks that have Sections, and within Sections you can have Pages, just like the analog equivalent. The power of OneNote comes with its Search capability including the ability to search handwritten notes. It even has Optical Character Recognition (OCR) built-in that will search text within images. You can store your Notebooks locally or to the cloud using SkyDrive so your Notebooks can be available to you on any device with Internet access, including your mobile phone!
You may think this all seems a little familiar and you would be right if you have ever used Evernote. The Evernote app offers similar functionality and shares some of the same features available in OneNote. The main difference between the two is that OneNote is a little more structured than Evernote using the digital 3-Ring Binder concept. OneNote also pre-dates Evernote by five years as OneNote was introduced with Microsoft Office back in 2003, Evernote did not exist until 2008.
I have used both Evernote and OneNote in the past so I am familiar with both. Since I moved to using Windows 8 with the Surface Pro and the Surface RT tablets I have switched exclusively to using OneNote for all my digital note-taking needs. I am finding advantages to staying within the Microsoft ecosystem as it simplifies account access and offers me easy access to my data across multiple devices.
Why OneNote?
First, the digital Pen input on the Surface Pro is the best inking experience I have ever used on any device, bar none, it really is like writing on paper. The Surface RT also supports inking but the capacitive touchscreen is not nearly as good as the active digitizer on the Pro model. You can ink with the Surface RT it is just not as pleasant of a writing experience for me after being spoiled by the Surface Pro’s digital Pen. The other great feature on the Surface Pro is Palm-blocking technology that allows me to rest my palm on the Surface Pro’s glass and write in a more natural way, just like using paper.
Second, SkyDrive. I store some of my Notebooks to SkyDrive so I can access them anytime when an Internet connection is available. If I so choose I can also save my Notebooks locally or on a company networked shared drive. SkyDrive has the added benefit that my notes are available to me immediately when I sign into the Surface Pro, Surface RT, or other Windows 8 device using my Microsoft account.
If you use an iPad you first sign-in with your AppleID, then into your Google account if you are using Google Drive, then finally into Evernote if you are using Evernote for your note-taking. Three different accounts just to begin your workday, this all gets a bit messy quickly. The Surface RT together with Office 2013 applications and SkyDrive streamline this workflow all under one Microsoft account.
Third, OneNote is now available as an app for Android, iOS, and other Windows 8 devices. The OneNote app, called OneNote MX, is a bit watered-down (like most apps) and the features vary from operation system to operating system but the different apps do allow you to access your OneNote Notebooks on different types of devices. This is a big plus for me as I like having a choice of devices as I may change my mind in the future. For me, I have currently switched to primarily using Windows 8 devices as I can access the full-features of the OneNote application on both the Surface RT and Surface Pro tablets.
Fourth, you can share your Notebooks with students. This one takes a little bit of planning on your part but I know teachers that share their daily class notes with their students by giving them read-only access to their Lesson Notebooks.
Below is a video (this is from 2011 but well worth watching) of a Physics Teacher that uses OneNote to share class notes and homework problems with his students. He uses the digital Pen to solve problems in class and makes them available to his students by sharing his class notebook to SkyDrive and making it available to his students. Back then he was using a Gateway Tablet PC but just imagine what you can do now with the Surface RT. Using OneNote in this way essentially becomes a photographic memory to access everything the teacher does on the Whiteboard. All of this can be immediately available to all students as soon as the lesson is over, pretty cool!
Below is a video (this is from 2011 but well worth watching) of a Physics Teacher that uses OneNote to share class notes and homework problems with his students. He uses the digital Pen to solve problems in class and makes them available to his students by sharing his class notebook to SkyDrive and making it available to his students. Back then he was using a Gateway Tablet PC but just imagine what you can do now with the Surface RT. Using OneNote in this way essentially becomes a photographic memory to access everything the teacher does on the Whiteboard. All of this can be immediately available to all students as soon as the lesson is over, pretty cool!
There are many other features to tell you about OneNote and it will take a couple of additional blog posts to do so, but if you are a teacher or student you owe it to yourself to learn more about this amazing program.
OneNote Rocks!
Until next time...
Keep on Learning,
Keep on Learning,
Tom Grissom, PhD
Follow me on Twitter @tomgrissom
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