Data Analytics Make Schools More Effective!

Is this program working? What about that software? Data tells the story of how successful the processes you’ve put in place are. A recent report from the Data Quality Campaign shows K-12 school districts need to invest in training administrators in data analysis.

Why Examine Data?

The report shows using data improves students’ academic outcomes and should be a goal for administrators as well as teachers, parents and even state policymakers. Administrators that can effectively use data can understand trends, examine professional development and personal needs, and marshal resources to support student achievement. 

To do this, administrators need to have the right tools including access, time, training and common understanding. Once they have the skills they need for data analytics, they can use their existing technology make the entire process come together.

Spreadsheets

Both Google Sheets and Microsoft Excel can aggregate data on student learning, administrative tasks and other types of classroom performance factors. The data can be sorted, divided, highlighted and filtered in an endless array of possibilities.

OneNote

OneNote can help teachers track all-important student data with Classroom Notebooks. Administrators can use it the same way with Staff Notebooks. Not only does OneNote put all the information into a collaborative space, the information can easily be shared with parents. Engaging parents in the story that data tells about the school, helps with both successes and challenges, according to the report.

Presentations

Providing teachers and district staff  with ongoing training on effective data use helps them recognize how valid it is for their schools. Microsoft PowerPoint and Google Slides were both made for presentations. Besides being able to easily add information into these programs, they make everyone – from novice to expert – look like a pro.

Security

When gathering all this student and staff information, it’s imperative to keep it safe. The privacy and confidentially of each student and adult is a priority that Microsoft OneDrive’s security measures can handle. It offers a two-step verification protect and support to help protect your information.

Schools and districts are most successful when adults have the data to see the full picture of their students’ learning needs, according to the report. It is suggested school and district administrators need to model and support effective data use at every level, including as part of classroom instruction. What are you doing to support data analytics in your school? Share with us below.

How OneNote Enhances Memory in Students

Technology has improved education in many ways, from immersive learning through augmented and virtual reality to improved communication between teachers, parents and students. But there are a few “old school” methods that have no substitute and one is handwriting. There was a study published in Psychological Science in 2016, authored by Pam Mueller of Princeton University and Daniel Oppenheimer of UCLA, that showed handwriting is the best way for students to recall what they learn. With Microsoft OneNote, your students can have the best of both worlds. 

OneNote is Handwriting-Friendly

It has been shown that hand-note takers tend to digest, summarize and capture the meat of the information better than typing it, leading to improved understanding and recall. In relation,  when we type, we try to notes every word we hear instead of what they mean, leaving our comprehension of the subject matter more shallow. Using OneNote’s stylus (or a fingertip) is like putting pen to paper so note takers get the recall advantage.

While using OneNote gives the traditional benefits of pen and paper, it goes above and beyond by giving you the ease of being digital.

OneNote Quickly Transfers Handwriting to Digital

Once you’re done taking notes you can convert your handwriting to text by choosing the Lasso Select button on the Draw tab. And, unlike the set pages of a notebook, there’s no limit on how many notes you can take in OneNote, except for how much storage you have. And with cloud storage options, you should be free to take a lot of notes!

OneNote Keeps Notes in One Place

Once you’ve recalled information you can easily reference it. Keeping track of scraps of paper and multiple notebooks is a thing of the past as OneNote is searchable. Took a note about ordering a new shipment of Chromebooks? Simply search by “Chromebook” and OneNote will pull up all your options. You can even pull up content from OneNote if you’re offline. And because you can create multiple tabs in each notebook and pages within tab, organization options are endless.

OneNote Allows You to Save and Store

Gotta run out on a lecture? No problem. OneNote allows you to stop, save and open your note at a different time, so you write some additional notes. Since OneNote goes with you, it’s always in the palm of your hand when inspiration strikes.

What do you love about Microsoft OneNote? Let us know.

Combine OneNote And Flipgrid To Make EdTech Magic

Learning today is digital, interactive and even 3D, so why shouldn’t it be social as well? Microsoft Teams, the digital hub that brings conversations, content, assignments and apps together in one place, has integrated Flipgrid into its Microsoft Teams for Education.

Flipgrid is a video discussion platform for educators and students. It allows students to share their ideas, wonderings, projects and questions in new and creative ways. This social learning app is now supported by OneNote, Microsoft’s digital notebook. Teachers add the topics, students respond with short videos, and everyone engages.

Why is this a magical match made in learning heaven?

Utilizing both Flipgrid and OneNote allows educators to use fun, engaging ways to help students retain and care about the information being presented, all in one place. It’s like throwing the best learning products into a cauldron to brew up the best edtech tools.

Flipgrid works like this:

• Grids are the communities built by educators. Once created, you receive an automated Flip Code which is shared with students. The students don’t create their own accounts, giving educators the ability to control what’s being posted and seen.

• Topics are discussion questions or prompts. These can be text-based or include images, videos, emjoi, attachments and more. Educators can add unlimited Topics to their Grids.

• Student-to-Student Replies allow students to respond to their peers within a Flipgrid Topic and participate in ongoing dialogue. Replies-to-Responses is controlled by the educator and can be toggled-on when the creating the topic.

• MixTapes can be created for student portfolios, semester showcases, project highlights, school yearbooks and student TED talks. You pick what goes on your MixTape (any Response from any of your Topics in any of your Grids) and you set the order you want the Responses to play. Your MixTapes are view-only and can be shared anywhere.

• Students can use the camera to capture and share their ideas, reflections, projects, creations, environments, experiments, imaginations and more. The app grants the user the ability to trim video, plus they work on every device, including desktops.

Because Flipgrid is supported by OneNote, all of the grids, topics and videos created will automatically appear as soon as an educator or student posts a link into OneNote. 

Since Flipgrid joined Microsoft Education, it’s completely free for every educator and student in the world. Try it out today and let us know what you think!

Why Administrators Should Use OneNote

Microsoft OneNote is changing the way students learn and teachers stay organized. But, did you know it is also ideal for administrators who need to keep everyone on the same page and make sure processes run smooth?

 OneNote has a lot of moving parts, but its main purpose is organization. It keeps everything in its place and has a place for everything. Once you use it, you’ll wonder how you ever worked without it.

Staff Notebooks Are Where It’s At

Throw the binders away. OneNote’s Staff Notebooks have everything you need to improve your school’s efficiency. It streamlines communication, keeps tracks of meeting agendas and minutes, and allows you to post faculty teaching assignments and professional development trainings.

Staff Notebooks contain three parts: a collaboration space, a shared content library and a personal workspace for every staff member.

• Collaboration Space: Everyone in your school or on your team has access to view and edit the content found here. This is a perfect place for to post staff meeting agendas, discussions and brainstorming. You can ask faculty to work together on initiatives and projects and to post their ideas for guest speakers and events.

• Content Library: Here you can add content for the staff leader to view. Add pages for professional development, data analysis workshops, school calendars and schedules - basically any information that would normally be sent out over multiple email attachments. It’s also organized and searchable.

• Personal Workspace: Use this space for communication between yourself and staff members. Parent communication notes, student support team information, lesson plans and evaluation and observation reflections can all be organized and kept here. You can also search and find multiple documents over multiple years.

OneNote’s Tools Make It All Come Together

Not only are OneNote’s features, like Staff Notebook and Class Notebook, awesome for educators, but the practical tools built into the design are mind-blowing.

• Add Any Content: Text, images and video can be added to any page and can be enlarged and minimized while presenting live, with a pinch and zoom. Plus, OneNote is an infinite canvas that expands at-will.

• Digital Inking: This is just one of the many ways you can add content to a page. You can project the device and annotate text, including highlighting words and lines. Plus, there are handy “Ink to Text” and “Ink to Math” options.

• Available On Everything: OneNote can be accessed on a variety of devices – PC, Mac, Linux, iOS, Android and even Chromebook. It updates in real-time, so multiple devices, i.e. a phone and laptop, and can used simultaneously.

• Saving Is Automatic: Everything is always saved when you work in OneNote. There are no buttons to click; ideal for teachers and staff who need to refer to the information later.

Do you love OneNote as much as we do? Tell us in the comments!

Professional Development 101

Professional Development is hardly one-size-fits-all because every one of your teachers has different needs that must be met. Tackle professional development in a new way by thinking outside of the box. Try these ideas, based on what districts across the United States are doing: 

• Unconferences
  An unconference is a grassroots conference where the content is provided by the attendees, not outside experts. Don’t think of them as unofficial events, rather bring unconferences in-house as the official professional development.

TIP: Have the MIEE and GoogleEIs at your institution do the talking, not the administrators. Have breakouts using Google Sheets and Google Hangouts.

• Personal Learning Community

Personal Learning Communities, or PLCs, are a group of teachers with a shared interest or mutual commitment. Administrators can choose the focus, like hybrid teaching models, and allow teachers to sign up for the PLCs they align with most.

TIP: Use Google Team Drive, to keep everyone in the loop. You can drop information in about each PLC and share with your team.

• Choice Boards

Choice Boards offer a menu of professional development options for teachers to pick and choose from; the amount would depend on your district. This method allows you to meet your teachers’ individual needs, instead of addressing them in a group setting.

TIP: Create a DIY bingo board with Google Sheets or Docs. Or, go old school and draw it up on a white board then use Microsoft Office Lens to digitize it. This app trims and enhances to make notes on whiteboards and blackboard readable on your mobile device.

• Personal Action Plans

Personal Action Plans allow individual teachers to set their own learning goals, including an action plan to achieve them.

TIP: Try Microsoft Sway. This digital storytelling app helps create professional, interactive designs with images, text, videos that can be easily shared with just a link.

• Peer Observation

With peer observation, your teachers take advantage of the best source of professional development available to them, each other. Teachers shadow then follow up with colleagues about applying what they’ve learned in their own classrooms. The best part is if they have questions, the answer is down the hall. 

TIP: Suggest Microsoft OneNote to take notes or draw up quick ideas. This tool has a variety of ingenious uses and each note is stored on a phone, pad or laptop and accessed from anywhere

Got some great professional development ideas? Share them with us and include which tech tools you used to knock it out of the park.

Five Onederful OneNote Tips for Teachers

Microsoft’s OneNote is basically today’s version of a Trapper Keeper; it organizes topics by subject, has a place to store the pictures, videos, and freeform ideas may otherwise fall through the folds, and, bonus, it can be duplicated, shared, locked, and loaded anywhere. For teachers, it means being able to pull every component of a lesson plan together, from quizzes and writing prompts to resources, reading lists, and class notes.

One thing is for certain, the more you learn about OneNote, the easier it becomes to teach. 

Make Note-taking a Team Sport

OneNote gives teachers the ability to frame out a lesson and let their students fill in the gaps with the note-taking. By sharing a note with the entire class, students can access, contribute, and collaborate in real time--and long after the class bell rings. Password protection for notes makes it all the more secure.

Go beyond typed notes.

OneNote allows you to “make a note” of something in almost any medium. Video, images, audio, digital ink--all of it can be noted, recorded, linked, saved, and shared in the OneNote platform. You aren’t limited to an 8.5” x 11” sheet, either; its infinite canvas ensures you’ll run out of ideas long before you’ll ever run out of room to put them on. Creating new sections is easy--and you can even color code them by subject, note type, or student.

Teach in the moment.

Have you ever had an “aha!” moment in class and wished you could share it more readily with your students? Enter OneNote. With its immediate syncing capability across devices, you can take a picture with your mobile phone and add it instantly to your presentation, allowing you to teach and collaborate with your students in real time, just in time.

Embrace your own teaching style.

One of most empowering aspects of OneNote is that it’s not just one thing, nor does it confine its use to one tool. “Learning is messy,” says Tom Grissom, the Director of the Instructional Technology Center at Eastern Illinois University and contributor to the Microsoft Education blog. “OneNote provides the free-from tools to help you--and your students--think through it.” he notes that OneNote excels at “gathering artifacts for learning” while also allowing the information to be redistributed and assimilated. 

Get it all down and get it all done.

OneNote is the perfect bucket in a brainstorm. It speaks Google tools as a first language; you can toggle between Google Docs, Google Sheets, and even Google Forms as part of your lesson planning and classroom management practices. And, since you can take it with you wherever you go, you never have to worry about losing a great idea or missing an opportunity to interact with a student because you aren’t at your desk. OneNote lets you check notes, grade papers, send assignment reminders, share videos, and inspire a new generation of learners with a few clicks. 

How do you use Microsoft OneNote in the classroom, along with other Microsoft technology? We've got a few ideas.

How To Password Protect Notes In OneNote For Windows 10

The password protection utilized in OneNote keeps your notes safe. Whether used in a scholastic, corporate, or business setting, the encryption and versatility of OneNote will give you control over who, and when, specific sections in your notebook can be accessed. 

OneNote is an incredible tool for getting organized and creative. The ability to lock, and unlock, specific sections within a notebook lends itself to many educational applications. Teachers can sharing the entire semester’s notes in one Notebook and unlock one section at a time. They can also place different versions of tests, quizzes, and study guides within each section, and then alternating between them and a new section to prevent hacking. 

If you haven’t used this capability before, it’s a relatively straightforward process. Locking down sections of your notebook is the easy part; coming up with a password you won’t forget, on the other hand, may be a bit more difficult.

Adding a section password:

When a notebook section has been protected with a password, all of its pages are locked and hidden from view. For additional security, password-protected sections will automatically lock after a designated period of inactivity.

1. Right-click the name of the notebook section that you want to protect.

2. Choose “Password Protection “

3. Choose “Add Password”

4. Type the desired password into the Enter Password box.

5. Retype your password into the Confirm Password box. Press Enter, and you’re set.

How to lock all password protected sections

If passwords have been applied to one or more sections in your notebook, they can all be locked simultaneously.

1. Right-click on any protected (but currently unlocked) section, choose Password Protection

2. Choose Lock Protected Sections. All protected sections will be locked immediately. 

In order to unlock a protected section:

Protected sections will be locked automatically when you exit OneNote. To unlock, simply:

1. Click on the section you want to unlock.

2. Type the password into the Password box

3. Press Enter. 

How to change the password for a protected section:

1. Right-click on any protected (but currently unlocked) section whose password you want to change.

2. Choose Password Protection

3. Choose Change Password. (If this option isn’t available, then you must create a password for that section.)

4. Enter the current password into the Old Password box.

5. Enter the new password in the New Password Box.

6. Re-enter the new password into the Confirm Password box. Press Enter.

NOTE: Each section in your Notebook is independent of the other sections. Changing a password for a section will only affect that section. The above steps must be repeated in order to change passwords for all other sections.

Removing the password from a protected section:

1. Right-click on any protected (but currently unlocked) section whose password you want to remove.

2. Choose Password Protection.

3. Choose Remove Password.

4. Enter the current password in the Remove Password window, and press Enter.

Important notes about passwords:

• Passwords cannot be applied to entire notebooks, only to sections within notebooks.

• All passwords are case-sensitive.

• Protected sections will not be included in notebook searches. Sections must be unlocked in order to be searched.

OneNote uses 128 bit AES encryption to secure password-protected sections. This is the same level of encryption that banks and the government use to protect military intelligence and personal banking records. If you forget any of your section passwords, no one will be able to unlock those notes for you (not even Microsoft Technical Support). Use caution when adding passwords to your notebook sections and when changing them. It is strongly recommended that you write down all passwords and store them in a secure location.

This is one of the many features that Microsoft offers. Want to learn more about what OneNote and what Windows 10 can offer for your classroom? Click below.