Good teachers are always on the lookout for teaching tools and tricks to save time, stay organised and help them better engage with their students. At Microsoft, we know how important it is to be at the top of your teaching game, and we’re excited to be rolling out the new Office 365 Education experience.
In the meantime, to whet your appetite, we’ve released the customer preview of the Class Notebook add-in for OneNote. It’s localised and is releasing in 43 languages across 61 worldwide markets, so teachers all over the world can go head and try it out.
What’s the big deal about the Class Notebook add-in?
Since June 2015, OneNote Class Notebooks have been used by 400 000 teachers and 3.5 million students. They came directly from working closely with teachers, listening to how you were using One Note in the classroom and what you wanted to do more easily.
Now, we’ve again worked closely with a virtual group of teachers to help us build the add-in. It’s designed to save you time and improve your teaching methods using your Class Notebook.
Organised, engaged and collaborative
There are several key features that help you do this, such as page and section distribution to students, and quick and easy review of student work. Let’s explore these:
Quick and easy distribution of pages
We heard you when you told us that you want to be able to easily distribute a OneNote page to your students. With the add-in, you no longer need to send students to the Content Library to copy the page themselves – you can simply distribute it in two clicks. And, if you need to copy something to the Content Library from one or more Class Notebooks, we’ve made the quicker and easier too.
Individual and group distribution
To individualise the work you give to your students, you can now distribute a page, chunk of text, image or ink selection to specific students rather than everyone in the class. You can also define your own groups of students to differentiate distribution.
Rapid review of student work
While the ability to look into each student’s private notebook is wonderful, the time it takes to review and give feedback is not always efficient. Now teachers can review student work (homework, assignments, quizzes, etc.) in one or more classes with the Review Student Work pane that pops up. Clicking on a student brings up the student page without having to navigate back and forth in the Notebook pane.
Quick links to useful professional development and community resources
Part of being a good teacher is keeping your ideas and teaching methods fresh. The best way to do this is through professional development and being part of a community. We’ve added a button to the Class Notebook add-in for you to easily access professional development resources, as well as the new Microsoft Educator Community.
One-click launch of Class Notebook
You told us that you wanted an easier way to launch the Office 365 Class Notebook app from within OneNote. Thanks to the add-in, you can now launch the app with just one click. This makes it easier to create a Class Notebook, invite or remove students and add or remove teachers.
Enhancing the Office 365 experience for teacher and students
Our goal with the soon-to-be-launched Office 365 Education is to help you and your students achieve more in the classroom. We believe the Class Notebook add-in is the first step to succeeding in this, by giving you tools to manage classes and assignments, engage with your students in new ways and enhance collaboration.
We’re still on the journey to make this product the best it can be for you, so we welcome your feedback. Share your thoughts by emailing [email protected].
To learn more about the Class Notebook add in, visit the user guide and watch this Office Mix by a teacher. And don’t forget to try it out for yourself here.
