Microsoft
OneNote has a lot of features that are helpful for both teachers and students. I
knew that OneNote can act like a regular notebook for taking notes but I had no
idea how much OneNote can actually do. When I first bought this computer,
OneNote came with my Microsoft Office Subscription. My brother showed me a few
things within OneNote like making to do lists and how to create different
notebooks. Since then, I have not used it. At work, everything from email to
word processing to making slides is done through Google Apps. Now that I have
explored OneNote for teachers, I wish that my school district uses it.
There
are some features in OneNote that I think are really useful. I like how you can
send an article from the internet, for example, and place it right into a
notebook. There you can draw right on the article using the draw tool or click
on an area and type right on the article. As a teacher, I am constantly looking
online for different teaching ideas, worksheets, and other articles I feel are
important to what I am teaching. With this feature, I can send an article to
OneNote where I can access it while offline, take notes right on the article
and add my own thoughts. Below is a screen shot of an article that I found and
created notes on it with the drawing tool and by typing.
Screenshot Source: https://www.cnn.com
Another
feature of OneNote I think would be extremely useful is the Immersive Reader Tool. By using the Immersive Reader Tool, students can
change the font, the font size, the spacing of the words, the color or the background
or words, have the words set to spell it out by syllables, highlight different
parts of speech and can even read the text to you. This can help those students
who struggle with reading and different visual issues. For example, I once had
a student who struggled to read. After trying a bunch of different things to
try and help him, his classroom teacher and I were out of ideas. Around Christmas
time, I printed out some song lyrics on green paper. I passed this papers out
to the class and this student asked to read the lyrics out loud. I was very
surprised because he would never ask to read anything out loud. I said to the
student that if you want to read it out loud you can. He read the lyrics
perfectly. After class, his teacher and I asked him to read the same lyrics
that were printed on a white piece of paper. He could not read it at all. It turns
out he had a visual issue and could not make out the words if they were printed
on white paper but could see them on green or blue paper. OneNote would be
perfect for a student like this because he could change the background color
using the Immersive Reader Tool and still keep up with the rest of the class
without feeling singled out.
Screenshot
source: http://onenoteforteachers.com
