Using OneNote in the Classroom

My inquiry project for school this year was about using OneNote in the classroom. This is a short summary of what I did and how it worked out. My focus question was:

Does OneNote help students with organisation, note taking and collaboration?

I noticed that students often lose paper, have left notes at home or say they cannot find or access documents. For the School of Apps this year I set up a OneNote classroom notebook and wanted to see if this was a better way for students to be organised and also collaborate together.

I used this as the sole resource document for the class and was trying to have no paper resources where possible. All their resources and their written work was done within the notebook.

I also trialed this in the School of Music, although I was only in there part time.
See my blog on Schools within Schools for how these schools are set up.

My Findings:

I kept a track on how students used the OneNote and what they were using it for as well as putting in resources for them to use.

I surveyed the students from both classes to get feedback on how they found it and what worked well for them over the year. I spoke with students about if they felt it was useful and if they thought it helped with collaboration.

School of Apps:

We used OneNote exclusively as our resource base and also for all collaborative work, and for the students work. From the beginning of the year students were told all their work would be in that one place and that they would use this exclusively. This was for the full 20 hours a week that they were in class.

I found it worked really well in this class. Students were focussed and positive about it and some are now using it for their own personal notes and organisation.

Positives:

•              It gave me a central area to store resources for students. This included video, links, audio – anything I wanted to put there.
•              They had a space to organise work and also to collaborate with each other.
•              I was able to see work they had done at any time and it wouldn’t get lost.
•              I could see what they were doing in English and Business Studies as well – giving an overview of all their subjects, not just technology.
•              Students enjoyed seeing what others were thinking about and what resources they had found and were sharing. They all felt it helped them work productively together.
•              They said it was easy to keep organised titled pages and easy to find. All of them felt it made a difference in the organisation of their schoolwork.

Negatives:

•              Sometimes they felt it was frustrating to navigate, but that it got easier as the year went on.
•              One student felt it needed a better offline version.

School of Music Yr 12 and Yr 13:

My main use for OneNote in Music was for supplying students with links and resources for music theory. Everything I gave them to do was linked into OneNote and all the flash cards and theory sheets were there as well. Answer sheets were loaded on to save on paper and to give them 24hr access.

 I found that OneNote was great in some aspects but not in others within these classes. Some students used it and others didn’t bother. Many just used GoogleDocs and were not motivated to check the theory notes online. Those that used Google Docs said they found it difficult to navigate, while those that just used OneNote said they found it easy and they enjoyed using it. Because I wasn’t using it as frequently with them, and other staff weren’t using it either, I think that they weren’t as used to it as my Apps class were.

Positives:

•             It gave me a central area to store resources for students. This included video, links, audio – anything I wanted to put there.
•             They had a space to organise work and also to collaborate with each other.
•             I was able to see work they had done at any time and it wouldn’t get lost.
•             I could see what they were doing in English and History as well – giving an overview of all their subjects, not just Music.

Negatives:

•       Getting students to write music notation was best done by hand, so resources had to be printed out, although I put most docs online so they could access them if they lost them.
•       Some of the students used the collaborative area in English but said that students were sometimes making silly comments. This would need to be monitored by staff to enable this to work well.
•       A couple of students said they lost work which I found interesting as I haven’t had that happen to me, or to students in the Apps class. I’m not sure that students had a full working knowledge of the application.  
•       I don’t think it will fully work unless other staff use it for all their notes and assignments. If the School of Music is going to go this way, then all staff have to be on board.

Where to from here?

The students who used it frequently and embraced it got a lot from it. It definitely worked in the School of Apps and I will be using the same format for 2016. I will continue to use these with any class I teach and look forward to using it in a different Music class next year to see if it works for all areas of Music, not just theory. I want to use it for reflection of their performances and compositions and also look at other online ways of storing data for students.
I am absolutely certain it helped the Apps students with organisation, note taking and collaboration and believe it could also work in the Music class if more staff were on board.

Using Office365 and OneNote in particular is something I believe we should be using in all classes and with all teachers. Using the student’s school email, using OneDrive to store work, using OneNote for classes and getting students to use all the amazing apps (Video, Sway etc) in Office365 would be great. I am starting this process next week by providing our department with PD in using OneNote so they can all get on board for next year. I am also planning to run PD sessions each week next year to support staff and students.