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Farewell Docs.com, Hello Enhanced OneNote, Forms, and Flow

by Miguel Guhlin
written by Miguel Guhlin

Did you catch the news updates about an enhanced OneNote, Microsoft Forms, and Microsoft Flow? Just as Microsoft works hard to enhance its classroom offerings, it is also shuttering existing services like Docs.com. This morning, I woke to the news that Docs.com, which Tom Grissom highlighted in this TCEA Podcast, would disappear and be replaced by Slideshare.com as the preferred sharing platform. Some other updates in this blog entry include changes to OneNote 2016 and OneNote. We will also take a look at Microsoft Flow and Microsoft Forms (Microsoft’s IFTTT.com type service).

Farewell, Docs.com

If you’re not familiar with Docs.com, it offered a simple way for Microsoft users to share their resources online. It described itself as a way to “showcase and discover Microsoft Word, Excel, PowerPoint, OneNote, Sway, and PDF documents for free.” Docs.com community members shared quite a bit of incredible content online, including Marjolein Hoekstra’s OneNote and Minecraft resources. The service proved invaluable as I began learning about how others were using Microsoft products like OneNote and Sway, giving me access to fantastic creations from the K-12 space and more. Here’s an excerpt from the email I received this morning about the update:

Thank you for using Docs.com. We would like to let you know that we are retiring the Docs.com service on December 15, 2017, and need you to take action to save your files. Please make sure to migrate all your content to other storage and/or sharing services on or before the retirement date to avoid losing any of your data.

As I look forward to Slideshare becoming the new sharing space, I hope that the migration process will be as smooth as suggested above. Find out about the migration process online. Some important dates to keep in mind include June 9 as the time when new Docs.com accounts will no longer be allowed; August 1 when publishing and editing of Docs.com content will stop; and December 15 when Docs.com will be completely inaccessible.

OneNote Turbo-Charged

enhancedJust a few weeks ago, I recorded two video walk throughs of OneNote 2016 (now sporting a new name, OneNote Desktop) and the OneNote app on Windows 10. In that time, Microsoft has rolled out incredible changes to the OneNote app, making it my preferred OneNote tool.

That means, yes, I’m no longer using OneNote 2016 and instead, prefer the free OneNote app. The latter has a more nimble interface and responds faster to commands.

Some of the major features now available in the OneNote app include:

Be sure to update your OneNote app to get these revised or new features. Unless you are using some esoteric feature (e.g. copy text from picture, Onetastic macros, high-end table customization, insert Excel spreadsheets), the improved OneNote app may meet your needs.

Microsoft Forms Improved and Flow Sports New Integrations

If you’ve been using Microsoft Forms, you’ll be delighted to note that it now has a new interface featuring Form thumbnails, as shown below. MS Forms also now supports a total of 68 languages.

enhanced

If that wasn’t enough, Microsoft just made this announcement about Forms integration with MS Flow.

Microsoft Forms is a new part of Office 365 Education that allows teachers and students to quickly and easily create custom quizzes, surveys, questionnaires, registrations, and more. Currently in preview, the connector enables you to act whenever a new form response is submitted.

If you are accustomed to using If This Then That (IFTTT.com), Microsoft Flow offers another tool that interacts specifically with Office 365 tools (e.g. OneDrive). IFTTT is one of my favorite tools to automate the flow of information from one location to another. Introducing these connectors will make it much easier for MS Forms to get work done.

Some examples of the work that can get done include (source):

  • Using Forms and Flow, you can receive email, push, or text notifications when new survey responses are submitted. You can also notify your team by posting the response to your channel on Teams, Yammer, or Slack.
  • You can route the response to your favorite database service or create a new record in Google Sheet or Excel.
  • You can create workflows to automate tasks based on the information received from a user (the responder).

Wait, There’s More!

If you are like many Office 365 educators, you are waiting for the biggest announcement of them all. That is, the availability of MS Classroom components into the more robust MS Teams. Having seen some of the integrations possible with MS Teams, I can only wait with anticipation to see what’s coming next. Stay tuned to the TCEA TechNotes blog for the latest updates.

 

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Microsoft
Microsoft

Enhancing Learning with Microsoft

by Miguel Guhlin
written by Miguel Guhlin

Microsoft continues to delight educators with updates and changes to its suite of learner-centered offerings. TCEA makes it possible for you to learn how to use these tools (watch the MS Classroom: Explore! video series) to maximize teaching, learning, and leading in your school and/or district. Whether you are an Office 365 expert or just beginning your learning adventure with Microsoft Education tools, you will want to take a quick look at these powerful updates.

Did you know that you can get Office 365 Online tools and one terabyte (TB) of cloud storage for free as an educator? This includes Word Online, PowerPoint Online, Excel Online, and Outlook Online. Visit this website to claim your free storage space and access. Or, if you prefer, pay $69.99/year ($6.99 per month) for Office 365 Personal. Not sure how to get started with Office 365? Check out these free online videos and Join TCEA MIE Facebook Group.

Powerful Microsoft Enhancements for Your Classroom

Improvements to the Office Suite

  • Edge Internet Browser now supports extensions, such as the Office Online extension (e.g. Chrome or Edge). This extension provides direct access to your Office files and enables you to create and open Word, Excel, Powerpoint, OneNote, and Sway documents right from the browser.
  • PowerPoint now has an automatic navigation link creation tool known as Zoom, as well as a new text highlighter tool. PowerPoint and Excel also take advantage of shape recognition, allowing you to convert drawings into shapes.
  • MS Word now features Researcher, a tool that helps you find relevant quotes and citable sources and images without leaving the app.
  • Boost your curriculum and lessons with Office 365 lessons available at the Microsoft Educator Community.

The future is bright, and options exist. Why not explore?

 

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Microsoft

Steps to a Tech-Powered Classroom with Office 365: Part 2

by Miguel Guhlin
written by Miguel Guhlin

Note: This is part 2 of a two-part series on Ten Steps to a Tech-Powered Classroom with Microsoft. Read Part 1 here.

6. Digitize your print documents.

Tired of dealing with paper? Your students are as well! Take advantage of MS Office Lens app (available on Android, iOS, and later this summer, Windows) to digitize documents and go paperless with OneNote. You simply start the app, take pictures of the paper, and it organizes it into pictures or a PDF file or enables you to save it to OneNote for easy sharing with students. Or alternatively, use the built-in capture of OneNote app on your mobile device of choice. Make it a goal to digitize your documents during the summer and avoid the time sink during the school year. Once you have a digital copy, you can easily annotate (draw/write on it) in OneNote.

 

Office

7. Convert your multiple choice assessments to paperless Microsoft Forms or Excel Online Surveys.

Did you know that Microsoft Forms features an assessment component? Students submit responses to an online assessment and Forms takes care of scoring it for you. Watch this video for a quick introduction to Microsoft Forms.

 

8. Explore MIE Expert videos to fuel your learning and spur classroom innovation.

You have access to a global cadre of Microsoft Innovative Educators and Experts, all eager to coach you on how to transform teaching and learning in your classroom. This means you are not alone in blazing  a trail in your teaching, learning, and leading environment. Our children are learning directly from YouTube, so why not get inspired in the same way to make your classroom learning environment even more engaging than it is now? For example, you can see tutorial videos for MS Sway, Office 365 in the Classroom, OneNote Class Notebook, and many more.

 

9. Manipulate Portable Document Format (PDF) files to save paper.

OfficeAre you accessing materials from Lead4ward and other online PDF documents? Instead of printing everything, you can quickly split PDFs, printing only what you need. Use the no-cost PDFSAM Basic.

After you split PDF files, you can insert them into your OneNote Class Notebook’s Content Library as a file printout. This means you can then distribute those PDFs to students, and then they can use their Surface or iOS tablet device to fill things in by interacting with the PDF.

 

10. Create Podcasts with OneNote audio recordings on your mobile device.

Are you doing awesome things in your classroom? If you and your students are learning, then the answer is “YES!” Why not record audio into a OneNote, describing a picture or screenshot of a student artifact?Then,students, parents, and others can access that OneNote Online to listen to student reflections about that artifact.

Teaching in a Microsoft-empowered classroom can be much more than just being about the technology. It really is about the transformations your students can accomplish with information, converting it into knowledge that is useful and meaningful to them.

Note: This blog entry was inspired by Tom Mullaney’s blog entry at Sustainable Teaching, Ten Things You Can Do This Summer To Prepare for Teaching in a 1:1 Classroom with Chromebooks. Thanks, Tom!

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Microsoft

Steps to a Tech-Powered Classroom with Office 365: Part 1

by Miguel Guhlin
written by Miguel Guhlin

“What’s Office 365?” asked a second grade teacher last week at a casual meeting. “My district is moving from what we have now to that.” The transition, of course, was from MS Exchange and web-based email to Office 365. For the school district, moving to Office 365 will result in much greater efficiency and functionality than they have ever enjoyed. But that means this large urban school district has a lot of professional learning to engage in.

If you are a teacher in a district that is launching Office 365 in August, you have some time to get ready. Take these ten steps (five in this blog entry, five more in the sequel) to ensure you are successful in supporting blended learning opportunities that the new federal Every Student Succeeds Act (ESSA) requires.

Office1. Ask your administration for a MS Surface tablet or Windows 10 computer to use this summer.

The Windows 10 operating system boasts many powerful features, among them access for educators to a free Office 365 account. That means you can start learning how to use Microsoft Classroom, OneNote 2016, and Class Notebook tools, which are easy ways to blend learning in your classroom. You can find a wealth of resources online, and, of course, TCEA is offering one-day Microsoft Innovative Educator (MIE) professional development sessions around the state of Texas at no charge.

2. Become a Microsoft Innovative Educator.

If you want to successfully use blended technology into classroom learning, the TCEA Microsoft Innovative Educator (MIE) training sets you up with the tools and skills you will need. This process (watch this overview video of how to become an MIE Expert) involves you getting a free Office 365 account, which comes with free copies of MS Office 365 Online and OneNote 2016 for Windows (OneNote works on all mobile devices as a program you install or via the web with OneNote Online). You will also get access to Microsoft Education, a website with free professional learning activities that are 100% online. Register for this free training today!

Listen to this podcast by Jeffrey Bradbury (@TeacherCast).

3. Create a OneDrive and Docs.com account.

When working with students and colleagues, you will need to be able to create and share content online. Office 365 grants you free access to Word Online, Powerpoint Online, and Excel Online, as well as OneNote Online and one terabyte of cloud storage in OneDrive. This enables you to share and collaborate with students and colleagues (e.g. teachers working on lesson plans). Once you have completed the MIE training, you will be able to easily interact with content online for creation and sharing.

What’s more, with Docs.com, you can easily share documents (e.g. books, newsletters, presentations) you create (e.g. Word, Powerpoint, OneNote, Excel, Newsletters) with others. Listen to this podcast featuring Dr. Tom Grissom on using Docs.com (http://docs.com/mguhlin).

4. Get to know Microsoft Classroom.

Need a quick overview of Microsoft Classroom? Watch this short video about how a school in Spain is using Microsoft Classroom. Then ask yourself how are you doing this in your classroom?

As you can see, MS Classroom provides an actual environment where you can interact with your students online. What’s more, through the use of tools like OneNote Class Notebook, you can create a Content Library to which you can add class learning resources. Students can then copy items from the Content Library to their OneNote notebook, where they can begin interacting with documents. Microsoft Classroom comes with a Class Notebook built-in, and you can see the main components of a Class Notebook in the image below.Office

 

5. Learn from the experts.

“An expert is someone who isn’t afraid to share how they mess things up while they are learning.” That’s my personal definition of what an expert is. While there are many people you can learn from online, consider adding these individuals to your professional learning network (PLN). What’s more, take advantage of TCEA resources listed below. In addition to following the Twitter hashtag, which does not require a Twitter account, #MIEExpert, you can also add these folks to your PLN:

Robyn Hrivnatz @RobynHrivnatz

Mike Tholfsen ‏@mtholfsen

OneNote Central ‏@OneNoteC

@OneNoteEDU ‏@OneNoteEDU

Pip Cleaves ‏@pipcleaves

Anne Mirtschin ‏@murcha

Jennifer Mitchell ‏@jenemitchell

 

And, of course, follow @mguhlin on Twitter, as well as check out the TCEA Connect! OneNote Online notebook where I share my learning experiences. You will also want to follow the #tceamie hashtag online.

Be sure to come back to read the second part of this blog entry, sharing five more steps you can take!

Note: This blog entry was inspired by Tom Mullaney’s blog entry at Sustainable Teaching, Ten Things You Can Do This Summer To Prepare for Teaching in a 1:1 Classroom with Chromebooks. Thanks, Tom!

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Microsoft

Five Microsoft Tools You Haven’t Heard Of

by Miguel Guhlin
written by Miguel Guhlin

Have you heard about these Microsoft tools? When I first heard about them, I was shocked. I had spent so much time looking in one direction that I failed to realize the rich ecosystem of tools that Microsoft has built that can enhance teaching, learning, and leading.

Tool #1 – Docs.com

Docs.com enables you to keep organize and share your creations with others. Those creations can include Word, Excel, Powerpoint, and Office Mix, as well as Sways, PDFs, and OneNote notebooks. Once you publish them, anyone can see them and get them. Docs.com also allows you to create “journal” entries that are actually Sways, featuring images, videos, and text.

Microsoft

You can organize anything you publish on Docs.com, as well as stuff from other people, as “collections” and make those available. And after publishing a certain amount of documents, you can get your own web address. What’s more, Docs.com also includes analytics that track how many views/visitors you have had to your content. For an example, check out mine.

Learning application: Publish templates for OneNote notebooks or Sways for students/staff to get and modify, then re-publish those via Docs.com for others. Or publish a Sway as a newsletter that anyone can read online.

Tool #2 – Microsoft Snip

While video reigns supreme for screencasting, there are times when you simply want to capture a screenshot, annotate it, and record audio about that annotation. If that is the case, then MS Snip may be what works best for you.

Learning Application: As students turn in more work in digital format, use Snip to annotate (write on, highlight in various colors) and record your reflections. And invite students to do the same with each other’s work.

Tool #3 – Skype Translator

With Skype Translator, the world becomes more understandable. Skype’s online translator can “help you communicate in 7 languages for voice calls, and in more than 50 languages while instant messaging.” It works on Windows 7 and above. With it, you also have access to Skype, which enables you to contact others around the world at no cost. You can also have group calls with a maximum of 25 people, although the Skype for Business/Education version allows for more.

Learning Application: In a second language class, encourage students to use Skype Translator for multi-language interactions with other classrooms around the world. You can rely on Mystery Skype to make connections with diverse cultures in distant locales.

Tool #4 – Microsoft Edge Browser

Looking for uncluttered, white space-friendly web pages? Or maybe you want to save items for reading later or annotate the site, highlighting key ideas? While today’s web pages often pack a ton of content into each pixel your students look at on their devices, the MS Edge browser makes it easy to turn off superfluous content, save it for later reading, and annotate it. In addition to reading view, you can also save web pages for later reading, which are synchronized across all Windows 10 devices like MS Surface tablets and computers.

Need to take notes on a web page? Not a problem! Whatever annotations you make can be saved directly to your OneNote notebook (such as a Class Notebook you are using with your students), Favorites, or Reading List!

Learning Application: Encourage students to publish their creations online, then interact with the content other students have created, adding their feedback and annotations.

Tool #5 – OneNote’s Digital Ink to Text Conversion

At a conference earlier this year, I experimented with handwriting my notes directly on my Surface tablet, then converted the notes to text using the “Ink to Text” option in OneNote. What an incredible feeling to see my hastily scrawled notes find expression as typed text!

Across multiple experiments, students who wrote out their notes by hand had a stronger conceptual understanding and were more successful in applying and integrating the material than those who took notes with their laptops.
And, since my Mom introduced me to the idea of a “pilón,” which means in Spanish to throw in an extra one for free, allow me to offer one more:

Tool #6 – Get Office 365 Free for Teachers and Students

If you are a teacher or student, even if your school district has not yet adopted Office 365 tools, you can get Microsoft Office Suite, online version plus one terabyte of storage, for free! All you need is your school district email account to get started. This is great since OneNote 2016 is available for free and you’ll need the Microsoft account to get take advantage of other special offers. And, of course, this will also give you access to the Microsoft Education portal.
What learning applications can YOU imagine with Microsoft Education tools?
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Docs.com
MicrosoftPodcasts

TCEA MIE Podcast #1 – Doc-casting and More with Dr. Tom Grissom

by Miguel Guhlin
written by Miguel Guhlin

Listen to the TCEA MIE SkypeChat #1 featuring Dr. Tom Grissom

via SoundCloud or Get MP3 file

Thank you for listening in on the TCEA Microsoft Innovative Educator Podcast! This is the first in a series of  conversations with movers and shakers, educators blending Microsoft technologies into teaching, learning, and leading. My name is Miguel Guhlin (@mguhlin) and I am your host for the TCEA MIE SkypeChat. You can find more information online in the notes for this show at www.tcea.org/blog, as well as here.

On May 26, 2016, Dr. Tom Grissom (@tomgrissom) took a few minutes out of his busy schedule preparing teachers at Eastern Illinois University. Tom serves Eastern Illinois as the Director of the Instructional Technology Center (ITC for short). If his voice sounds familiar, you may have heard him via the TechTalk4Teachers podcast. You can access his podcasts on a variety of topics online here.

I approached Tom about one of his presentations, Exploring Doc-casting. Now, if you’re not familiar with Docs.com, a relatively new service from Microsoft, which Tom points out is about a year old from the time I recorded this conversation in May, 2016, it is a great service that allows you to publish resources there. I encountered Docs.com purely by accident while trying to share resources with TCEA Microsoft Innovative Educators (TCEA MIE – http://ly.tcea.org/tceamie1) and was immediately impressed with its features. Consider Pip Cleaves, an educator who shares her perspective on Docs.com:

I work in a middle years school in Inner West Sydney that is running a successful BYOD program. I wanted a way to share a student diary with our student population of approximately 900 students. I didn’t want to share; rather, I wanted to deliver a stand-alone OneNote notebook to any platform.

Earlier, in 2015, I came across the wonderful Liberate Genius resources from Angela Maiers. I was keen to find out how she had delivered the stan- alone OneNote notebook in this resource section. Source: Pip Cleaves, Microsoft Blog

If you haven’t seen Angela’s Liberate Genius resources, you should definitely check them out. They stretch your mind about how to use tools like OneNote and Docs.com together. In our conversation, Tom and I explore some of the actual uses he has for Docs.com, OneNote.com, and Microsoft Sway.

Let’s go back in time to when Tom first began exploring Docs.com…

***

Thanks for listening in to this SkypeChat with Dr. Tom Grissom. I hope you will join us for TCEA MIE SkypeChat #2 featuring Marjolean Hoekstra, the voice behind @OneNoteC and OneNote Microsoft Valued Professional (MVP). Absolutely incredible information and ideas will be shared by Marjolean and I’m looking forward to chatting with her.

In the meantime, if you have some thoughts about how you and your students are using Microsoft Office 365 tools in your teaching/learning environment, I hope you will contact me via Skype at @tceamg or Twitter @mguhlin!

Docs.com Notes

 

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LeadershipMicrosoftProfessional Learning

Learner? Leader? Innovator? Attend the FREE MIE Academy!

by Miguel Guhlin
written by Miguel Guhlin

Are you a…learner? Teacher? Leader? Innovator? Take advantage of the no-cost TCEA Microsoft Innovative Educator (MIE) academies taking place throughout Texas over the next few months. TCEA and Microsoft have partnered to make these professional learning opportunities available to anyone, member or non-member, FREE! Find a location near you at the list appearing at the bottom of this blog entry.

What is the TCEA Microsoft Innovative Educator Academy?

The newly re-designed TCEA MIE one-day academies provide participants with specific instructions and suggestions for blending technology into the classroom curriculum. Some of the topics include:

  • Create narrated slideshows, digital stories, and information-rich slideshows that enhance teaching, learning, and leading.
  • Organize classroom lessons for students that allow them anytime, anywhere access to embedded videos and content, great for flipped learning opportunities.
  • Develop web-based forms to capture real data from respondents and then aggregate data for analysis.
  • Connect with educators, students, and others via international connections using tools like Skype.
  • Explore a wealth of lesson plans and ideas that help you meet ESSA expectations for blended learning using technology.
  • Learn how to create resources and easily share them with others via the web.

Attendees will have the opportunity to craft powerful conversations about learning in a hyper-connected world, as well as receive hands-on practice and modeling with Office 365 for Education tools like OneNote, Docs.com, Sway, Office Mix, and Office Forms.

Note: Did you know that when you attend the TCEA MIE one-day academy, you receive access to a OneNote Notebook, which you can read on any device, chock-full of curated content, video tutorials, articles, and more?

But wait, there’s even more! AFTER the TCEA MIE session, you will have the opportunity to join the TCEA MIE Diigo Community, an online group open to all regardless of whether you are a TCEA member or not.

And, if that wasn’t enough, you are also invited to participate in the upcoming TCEA MIE SkypeChats that will begin in August 2016 with special guests. In the meantime, join the TCEA MIE SkypeChat and get access to sneak previews of audio interviews with MIE practitioners.

Opportunities to Take Your MIE Innovation to a Whole New Level

Session Date

City

Location

Registration Link

7/18/2016

Abilene

Region 14 Education Service Center

Register

8/2/2016

Killeen

Killeen ISD Career Center

Register

8/4/2016

Lumberton

Lumberton Performing Arts Center

Register

8/8/2016

Austin

TCEA Conference Center

Register

8/19/2016

Kilgore

Region 7 Educational Service Center

Register

9/9/2016

Arlington

University of Texas at Arlington, College of Education

Register

9/19/2016

Pittsburg

Region 8 Educational Service Center

Register

9/23/2016

Edinburg

Region 1 Educational Service Center

Register

9/28/2016

Victoria

Region 3 Educational Service Center

Register
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