Continuous formation

Hi folks! Blogger got to be a bit confining so I've moved to Wordpress at http://onenoteschool.com   ... you'll be able to find new posts and this archive there.  I'll keep this archived here as long as Google will do so!

My school has an unproductive relationship with email; it's woefully abused and so no one really reads email since they're overwhelmed with it. If you didn't ruthlessly triage you'd never get through to the actual important ones. (A few good reminders are here: https://getpocket.com/explore/item/how-to-email ) Back when I did a leadership role, in order to make sure mine had the best chance of being read, I used to always include a cartoon so they would at least look at the email (and often they would refer to the cartoon when they wanted additional assistance on the content of the email!)   I no longer do that (leadership or cartoons!) and so when I want to make sure that people read my emails (especially students) I use the FOLLOW-UP option.  When I send my email, I click on FOLLOW UP on the main MESSAGE ribbon. While it gives you options for Today, Tomorrow, etc, I always click on CUSTOM so that I can set it for exactly when I want it.  For students, for exam...

Folks have been waiting a while to get Equation Editor into OneNote (Win10 version... it's been in 2016/Desktop for forever). Now, the funny thing is this won't make a huge deal for me. I tend to just write my equations out, and if it's for more serious distribution I tend to write it in Word.  But for others, this may improve the way they work in OneNote.  And I also think I'm not allowed to call it Equation Editor, but I'm going to ignore that. Make sure you've updated your OneNote (go to the Store and check for any Downloads & Updates). I recommend folks visit the Store regularly to get any updates. I'm never sure how often it looks for updates on its own and Microsoft has moved to a continual, if gradual update process for all of its apps. To start entering equations, click on the INSERT ribbon and then on EQUATION.  You may think, "why not just click on the Math button?" but that is to translate digital ink or text writing into a mat...

A little low-tech ... I use whiteboards a lot in class - fortunately all of my walls save the windows are covered in whiteboards.  Typically all of my students (~20) are up at the boards for at least part of each class and occasionally for the entire class. For example, today in my MCR3U class I put trig identities to prove on slips of paper and had partners pull one and solve it on the whiteboard, pasting images of the whiteboard solutions in our class OneNote (and then they pulled another question from the pile). What we need, though, is a way to clean the boards off quickly between questions. Now, we don't have a whole bunch of whiteboard erasers (they are costly, for sure, and plastic -- we don't have our own classrooms so every teacher would have to bring 10-20 erasers around with them) so I have always been looking for alternatives. Things I've tried: Old towels.  I would rip them into squares.  They work really well but they went missing all the time. In part,...

One of the handy things about having infinite storage in Office365 is that there are versions of every bit of your work stored continually.  So, when I worked on the Word document in my previous blog post on Restricting Editing (here) the Word Document had several Previous Versions, snapshots of my work in progress, stored in my OneDrive alongside the most current version.  And I can bring them back, or compare them with the current version pretty easily. Open up your document in the Word applications as usual, then click on FILE and choose INFO. You'll see a button called VERSION HISTORY... go ahead and click on that! You will flip back into the Word Application and see the list of the different timed versions along the left.  You can click the Open Version that is below each version and that version will open in a new application window so you can then edit, save under a new name, grab content you had deleted by mistake, etc. Now, what if your current version ...

One of the things I haven't seen mentioned in Word (in Office365) is "Restrict Editing".  As you likely know, when you share a document with someone, you can either give them Read Only (they can't make ANY changes or they get Edit (they can make any changes they want).  But what if you want a little more control? Open up your Word document in Word desktop (this is too sophisticated for Word Online).  Head on over to the REVIEW tab and in the Protect section, what we're looking for here is Restrict Editing. When I click on Restrict Editing, a side menu pops out and you have a few options.  The first option is to limit them to formatting (I've never had the need to do that -- I'm sure in a production environment, it may be useful).  In the 2nd section you can set it so that nobody can make any changes (which is really "Read Only" that we're used to) or you can define individuals or groups that can have rights to edit. Caveat : if you...

One of the neatest things to come along in a long while has been Presenter Coach, an AI app inside of PowerPoint.  It tries to give you helpful feedback on your presenting skills based on your own PowerPoint and the words, phrasing and elocution you use. First... make your PowerPoint.  You can make it in Desktop PowerPoint, iPad PowerPoint, Mac PowerPoint or Online PowerPoint (or whatever version of PowerPoint you have!) but to access Presenter Coach, you need to use PowerPoint Online (which is free and tied in to your Office365 or Hotmail/Outlook accounts). Store your PowerPoint in your OneDrive -- this is the important part -- and then visit http://office.com and click on PowerPoint. You're now in PowerPoint Online! It gives you the opportunity to make a new PowerPoint and shows you all the PowerPoints you have been working on recently (including those shared with you).  Click on the one you want to practice and it will open in a new browser window. You...

My poor colleague. She's an organizing freak and spent way too many hours clicking away inside the Teams app rearranging all the files into folders.  Then I showed her that she can Sync the Teams folder onto her Hard Drive (giving her offline-access anytime!) and use the drag&drop of regular Windows Explorer to keep things organized. Head  over to Teams and go into the Channel that holds your Files, then click on the Files tab.  Highlighting does not show on the app; that's me using Windows10 Snip . You'll notice that there's a SYNC option ... when you click on that you will get a pop-up letting you know that the syncing will start.  You can choose to sync everything within that Teams Channel or only select particular folders.  This can be handy if you want to avoid download all those old video files, say, but always have the textbook and last year's files available even if you're at the cottage without internet.  This creates a whole new SECTIO...

A nice feature now in Microsoft Forms : File Upload! (Remember that all of Office365 -- including Forms and OneNote-- are free to teachers & students ) This is a great option for both Forms and Quizzes... you can now ask people to do work in OneNote and then screenclip it ( using the built-in Windows10 Snip like here ) and then upload it alongside their multiple choice selection ... just for example.  It's also useful for asking folks for Word documents (recommendations?), PowerPoints, etc.  When you create a Form or a Quiz you can have your respondent give you a file (or files).  It's hidden under the "more" of the question type: When you choose File Upload, you get a pop-up that a folder will be created in your OneDrive; it's under the APPS folder (that may also get created the first time!).  The name of the folder is the name of the Form/Quiz.  You can specify the number and maximum size of the files -- and if you choose the 3-dot More you ...