OneNote has been great for students, having used it myself back in college, I can say from experience that it has completely changed the way I take, construct, and manage my class notes for the better. But it’s also great for educators to use too.
Microsoft has worked hard to optimize OneNote for use by educators, having spoken to a host of schools and education professionals such as principals, superintendents, department heads, as well as teachers to learn about their specific needs for a better administration and collaboration tool.
Today, Microsoft announces the OneNote Staff Notebook for Education, an app suited for managing educator collaboration at the school and district level. Similar to the OneNote Class Notebook, this is a free application for Office 365 which will become accessible on all platforms that support OneNote, including iOS, Android, Windows, and Mac.
“[OneNote Staff Notebook] lets an education staff leader quickly set up a personal workspace for every staff member or teacher, a content library for shared information and a collaboration space for everyone to collaborate—all within one powerful notebook.” – Microsoft
OneNote Staff Notebooks can be used in a range of different ways for a variety of different purposes. Educators can use Staff Notebooks for staff meetings, planning school initiatives and fundraisers, constructing a tide chart to track student highs and lows during their time at school, and developing cross-grade curriculums and lessons plans.
The private staff member notebooks could be used for professional development so that educators and faculty members can have a private way to monitor their feedback and improve themselves professionally, as well as to take notes from their classroom observations, which can be captured with images, audio recordings or pen input. Private notebooks could also be used to gather lesson plan feedback, capturing and sharing evaluation information and as an easy way to communicate with parents using the integrated Outlook features. Naughty children beware, teachers will now be sending audio recordings of you bad-mouthing them straight to your parents. “I didn’t do it” won’t work this time I assure you.
Last but not least, Staff Notebooks can be the perfect tool or establish Professional Learning Communities (PLC) in schools. Check out the embedded interactive guide above to get started with OneNote Staff Notebooks and head over to the download link below to get your hands on the app.
