OneNote Learning Tools

My experience of these learning tools after a few weeks has been amazing. I wish I had this support for students many years ago. I can see these just getting better and better and have found the Microsoft team really proactive in replying to feedback and wanting to improve their product (no, I don't work for Microsoft...).

I was very excited when they first turned up and immediately started using them with individual students.
The first student I worked with is a visually impaired student in my class. He carries a magnifying glass with him and uses it to read documents on his laptop. I helped him to download the Learning Tools addin and showed him how to magnify the text in his OneNote for our class. He has found this to be a fantastic tool and it has meant he can read the handouts and collaborative work easily and quickly without having to magnify every word .

Another student in my class has dyslexia and uses a lot of spoken commands wherever he can. Being able to have the example and the handouts read out to him has meant a lot. He is keen to get this feature on the phone app as well. He says it would be great to scan something with OfficeLens while he is out and about, then have the OneNote Learning Tools read it for him while he follows the text. I know this is something OneNote is keen to implement - we can't wait!

Another girl I have in Year 11 (age 15) cannot read. She is now using OfficeLens and OneNote to enable her to access the work from all subjects at school. Rather than teachers having to read work to her, she now is becoming independent by scanning the handouts herself in OfficeLens and then using the Learning Tools to read for her.

I love the way it becomes full screen in the immersive reading mode so that there are no other distractions apart from the text. This is huge for many of our students.

I have been working with our Learning Support Department to start to implement these tools so they can help students. Initial feedback is excellent, with staff keen to learn to use OneNote so that in the future they can start using these tools.

Things I think need to happen before we can really roll this out over the school:
It needs to work online. Many of our students do not have their own devices and so online is their only option.
Would love it for iOS so all students can access it.
I would like dictation to work on more than just Windows10. Not everyone is up to date yet.
As students have said, they are keen to also have it on their phones, so they can use them anytime, anywhere.

Links to excellent articles/resources:
Office Blog
Technet Blog
And the most important, the Suggestion Box for OneNote. I only found this in the last week. It's  a great idea and I will be making more suggestions either through here or on the Feedback tabs in the addins.

Looking forward to using this more and more.

OneNote hints and tips

There are some really useful little hints and tips I have picked up on my OneNote journey so far that I thought I would share. To put them in context, I use a Surface Pro3 (Windows 8) for work so it is mainly based on the desktop version on there and I am using Firefox. I have an Android phone, so mobile comments are related to that.


Tags - use tags!! I can't believe I didn't use tags. So much easier to find things and to group all the same thread together.


Pin your task bar to the top - saves many clicks!








Sending an email to OneNote - great for putting all those emails somewhere and then keeping everything together and tagging it!

OneNote for Classroom is my teaching lifesaver. See my inquiry blog about how I have used this in the classroom.

Looking forward to being able to embed video when I finally get OneNote2016

Using quick notes - open then drag to the section you want it in.

Did you know there was a built-in calculator? You can do any simple calculation - for example: 35.9*12.19 = and press the space bar for the answer.

Install a clipper in your browser to send a page, region or article directly to your OneNote. Unfortunately, this doesn't work in Edge yet!! It works best with IE as you can clip a selection, not just an article or page as for Chrome and Firefox.

I love using Office Lens on my phone to send photos straight to OneNote. Very useful in lectures or for documents I want to add without having to scan and attach.

And as a bonus for the Windows users - 12 shortcuts every educator should know....

More to come as I do more....