OneNote iPad App

OneNote for the iPad has recently been updated with the ability to draw! I'm excited about this opportunity for students, especially at the elementary level, as it will be a tool that will help them be more organized in all aspects of student life. Students can use it for research purposes, note taking, organizing writing, collaboration, and so much more. OneNote can be the "one man band" of iPad tools.

In this post, I have numerous videos breaking down the use of OneNote on iOS. Through these tutorials, users will get signed in, organize notebooks, input data, and share notebooks with others.

Sign In

Keep in mind that you need to have a OneDrive account either personally or through your organization. Most school districts considering the use of OneNote in the classroom will have an organizational account through Office 365. If you have an account, here is how to sign in: 

Notebooks, Sections, and Pages

In this video, you will learn how to create notebooks, sections, and pages in OneNote for iPad. Think of a notebook as a binder, sections as the tabs, and pages as well...pages. How would you organize a binder of information about your students or class notes? Plan on picking a specific project for which you want to start using OneNote. As you practice, you will get a better idea of how you want to organize your information. 

Basic Inputs

The basic inputs of OneNote are typing, images and drawing. These tools provide an incredible opportunity for students to merge together their physical learning materials with their digital items. I frequently take notes using pen and paper and snap a photo of the note into OneNote.

Handwriting

Now that you have learned how to place images into OneNote, it will be helpful to better understand how to input text and drawing in a manner that improves workflow. Students will need to be accustomed to the idea of switching between drawing and drawing mode in order to effectively zoom into a document. These same rules apply to drawing on files that can be imported which will be covered later in this blog post. 

Importing Documents

A great feature of OneNote is the ability to import a variety of files into your notebooks. Users can even choose to save a document as an icon or have the whole document printed out on a page. This feature will help users organize documents to match various topics that they are researching/utilizing. Users can import files from email, Safari, and a few cloud storage services. 

Email

Safari

Cloud Storage

Sharing

Users have a couple options for sharing in OneNote for iPad. When using an organizational account, users can share an entire notebook with full access. The process is slightly cumbersome as after a notebook is shared. The person it was shared with must request access. Then the user can accept the request. Once the notebook is shared, both users have editable rights to the notebook. This provides a great opportunity for collaborative notebooks. Another option is for a user to email an entire page as a PDF printout. This type of sharing is not collaborative but is a good way for teachers to send the lesson notes out to students. 

I plan on launching opportunities for students to utilize OneNote in the classroom in the near future. I also like the idea of using OneNote on an interactive whiteboard. Stay tuned for ideas.