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ChromebooksGoogle Tips and Tricks

Google’s Note-Taking Tool: Cursive

by Miguel Guhlin
written by Miguel Guhlin

Do you and your students have a touch-friendly Chromebook device? Then you’ll want to take advantage of a new, web-based note-taking tool. Cursive makes it easy to take handwritten notes and edit them with simple gestures. In this blog entry, we will explore several ways Cursive works.

Wait, Is This Only for Chromebooks?

Worried that Cursive only works on Chromebooks? Don’t be. This web app works fine on other devices in a Chrome or Chromium-based browser.

A Visual Tour

When you visit the Cursive website, you will have the option to complete a visual tour that these components:

  • Scribble over existing content you would like to remove, then tap to delete it.
  • Draw a circle to select content, then drag the circle to move content.
  • To insert space between lines, draw a line then drag line down.
  • Select content to copy, then press and hold to paste it.

Cursive

Once you are into Cursive, you have a blank canvas to begin taking notes. If you are not on a Chromebook, you can use a tablet (e.g. Wacom Intuos). To be honest, I did find installing the app a bit of a challenge.

Did You Know?

Researchers have found that taking notes by hand involves “cognitive engagement in summarizing, paraphrasing, organizing, concept, and vocabulary mapping” (source). This manipulation and transformation of information leads to deeper understanding and retention. Read more about note-taking strategies that work.

Installing the App

“How hard can it be to install a progressive web app like Cursive?” If you’re like me, you may have missed the visible cues on the screen. For example, below is what happens when you first visit the Cursive app website. Note that you have to look for a specific icon to install the app. I found the icon was different on a Chrome browser than it was on Microsoft Edge browser (Chromium-based).

Chrome browser install icon for Cursive app:

Cursive

Microsoft Edge browser install icon for Cursive app:

Cursive

Once you select the install icon, you can make some more adjustments to options:

Cursive

I had to close out the Cursive Notebook window and launch it from my desktop icon. I was then able to create my own notebook for my notes:

Cursive

Without a touch screen Chromebook, I didn’t get too far with Cursive. On a Chromebook with a mouse, you only get so far as well.

A OneNote Competitor?

When I started up Cursive, I had hoped for a Microsoft OneNote competitor. In time, it may become that. For now, it reminds me of Jamboard’s early days: a few bare-bones features with little to commend it.

Cursive

That aside, it’s obvious that if Google spends a bit more time on the tool, it could have a Microsoft OneNote competitor at last. A few things I noticed include:

  • Notebooks sync with the Google account you log in with.
  • You can organize notes into notebooks.
  • Adding images is easy and you can write on top of them.

Areas for improvement:

  • Make this at least as good as Google Keep.
  • Add text boxes so typing is an option, not handwriting alone.
  • Make it easy to export Notebooks and Notes as series of images and/or PDFs.
  • Add shape drawing support.
  • Make Notebook access collaborative.

These are obvious suggestions and I suspect Google is working on them already. So even if you don’t want to use Cursive now, keep an eye out for when the improvements happen.

Cursive

Image Credit: 9to5google.com

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iPads
Special Needs

TCEA Responds: Remote Teaching for Speech Therapists

by Miguel Guhlin
written by Miguel Guhlin

Dear TCEA Responds:

Speech teachers are struggling to use remote learning to meet student needs. They have several priorities, including keeping their caseload confidential, as well as sending and receiving assignments. Each student requires individualized plans. Our district wants us using G Suite EDU tools, but Classroom isn’t working for us.

Is there any advice, app, or program that you can think of that would help with this situation? We have asked several districts, but everyone does their own thing. I would appreciate any direction you can provide.

Thanks, Teresa

Dear Teresa:

Thank you for sharing this question. While I’ll take a stab at responding, I hope TCEA Technotes blog readers will as well.

Clarifying the Challenges

In reading your email, I see you’re facing several challenges. Allow me to summarize them as I understand them:

Challenge #1: Confidentiality

You need remote teaching resources that protect confidentiality of student-teacher interactions. Solutions like Google Classroom fail the test. Speech therapists/teachers have needs for confidentiality that exceed Google Classroom. Is that right?

Wondering how to approach Special Education in remote learning and remote teaching ? Sign up for TCEA’s Special Needs Educator online course.

Challenge #2: Individual Interactions

You need to be able to manage a large number of students per speech therapist where every interaction is confidential. How do you put 80 students in one digital class without sacrificing confidentiality? Or communicate with each student in a separate virtual space?

Challenge #3: Participation

Participation is low when speech therapists rely on teachers’ websites. To me, it sounds like you want your own space. The only issue is, participation may or may not suffer.

Let’s take a look at two possible solutions.

Rounding Up a Few Solutions

Finding the right answer to a multi-headed problem can be tough. As you guessed, there is no one perfect solution that combines all those components. Here are two possible solutions you may want to consider.

Option #1: Seesaw for Schools

You could use a solution like Seesaw. Wait, I know what you’re thinking…”Seesaw? That’s for little kids, right?” Actually, it’s not only for young children; Seesaw works well with older students, too. Districts use it for professional development for adult learners. In fact, I use it with adults at many of my workshops without any problems.

Let’s review a few relevant points:

  • Seesaw offers excellent audio/video recording support across devices.
  • Seesaw keeps teacher-student interactions to one on one. Using it enables you to set up individualized groups so that each group could focus on specific students. What’s more, Seesaw makes interactions confidential by default.
  • Seesaw works on all sorts of devices. This includes iPads, iPhones, and Android phones and tablets. It also works with Amazon Fire, Chromebooks, and Windows/Mac computers.
  • Seesaw is free for educators. Many of the features you need exist in the free version (Seesaw Basic). If you wanted more, you could always get Seesaw for Schools. To assist you with the options, check the chart below.

tcea responds

Need to learn Seesaw? TCEA offers a $29 Seesaw Educator online, self-paced course. You get to learn from brilliant course developer Brittany Beaird. You also receive 12 hours of CPE credit, a digital badge, and a certificate. And, if you’re not already a TCEA member, you get a complimentary one year membership ($49 value). Learn more online at Seesaw Educator.

Seesaw is one of my favorite digital tools. It ranks up there as one of the best solutions to teaching and learning available.

Option #2: OneNote and Flipgrid

You mentioned you were using G Suite EDU. If you have access to Microsoft 365, that presents another option. You could set yourself and your speech teachers up to use OneNote and Flipgrid.

OneNote Class Notebooks can be password protected and assigned to individual students. You can embed Flipgrid Topics for each student, securing them with a password.

Those are two possible options. I didn’t mention G Suite EDU since it appears that solution is one you’ve considered already. I would go with Seesaw as the best option.

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Professional LearningWeb 2.0 Tool

Clip That Web Page with Joplin

by Miguel Guhlin
written by Miguel Guhlin

If you need to keep track of information off the web, you’re not alone. In this blog entry, we’ll explore Joplin, a new tool with rich features for web clipping and note aggregation. Before we do that and explore its use in education, let’s take a moment to review some statistics.

Internet Stats

Why is it important to be able to keep track of information you find on the web? While it’s easy to search for content, it’s difficult to find again that poignant quote or message or must-read article. Worse, given the amount of content that appears online, chances are, you won’t see it again. Consider these 2019 statistics:

  • People publish four million blog posts every day on the Internet.
  • People send five-hundred million tweets daily.
  • There are 1.94 billion websites in the world.
  • Hackers attack ninety-thousand websites per day.
  • WordPress blogs make up 83% of websites hacked.

In simple terms, that’s a lot of content to keep track of from a lot of different sources. What’s worse, it’s changeable and could disappear due to nefarious actions. When you find something valuable on the web, how do you save it for when you need it, even if it’s no longer online? The answer can be expensive, or not.

Solutions That Save Your Content

Some of my favorite content grabbers include Read It Later’s Pocket and Nuzzle. The magic of these tools is that they work great on mobile devices, as well as on your desktop (e.g. laptop) browser. They make it simple to save content to your device. Eric Curts (@ericcurts) writes:

Nuzzel is a free service that curates content from the people you follow on Twitter. When you sign up for Nuzzel, you give it permission to see who you follow. This enables Nuzzel to read all the tweets they post.

This can be valuable because you get to see what others are reading. Read It Later’s Pocket works in a different way. You can add blog entries, web pages, and online content to Pocket so that you can view each later (it provides a simplified look to a page such as what Reader View Chrome extension shows). You can even set Pocket to read the content aloud to you with its Text To Speech (TTS) option in mobile.

joplin

Many are familiar with note tools and web clippers, such as Evernote and OneNote. The former has lost much of its glory due to diminishing features and increasing cost. The latter, OneNote, continues to add features. As useful as MORE features are however, it does require committing to the Microsoft ecosystem.

What if you wanted a simpler solution that makes web clipping easier?

joplin

Source: Joplinapp.org

A Simple Web Clipper and Note-Keeper

One of my favorite note-keeping tools is Joplin Note Taker and To-Do application. The program can be set up (get installation programs) on most platforms. That includes Mac, Windows, GNU/Linux, and mobile (e.g. iOS and Android). It is, unfortunately, not available for Chromebooks. In essence, you combine the utility of tools like these shown below into one:

  • Google Keep
  • Microsoft To-Do (which is the old Wunderlist, discontinued in February 2020)
  • Evernote with Web Clipper
  • OneNote with Web Clipper

Joplin describes itself in the following way (slight edits):

Joplin is a free, open source note taking and to-do application. It can handle a large number of notes organised into notebooks. Copy, search, tag or change the notes. You can change them with Joplin or using your own text editor. The notes are in Markdown format (get a Markdown Editor for your computer). You can paste in HTML code as well.

The magic of Joplin is that it can save your notes to the cloud storage of choice. This includes spaces such as NextCloud, Dropbox, OneDrive, or a networked directory. Since the source files are text files, you can inspect them, back them up, or move them. This gives you the ability to grab your data and run, if you want to.

Joplin offers end-to end-encryption for your notes and saved content. This makes it a great solution for top secret notes. Or, if you’d rather use your own text encryption, you can paste that into Joplin’s note body without fear. Other GUI-oriented note keepers convert your text, adding hidden characters, which can hinder decryption.

Joplin’s Web Clipper

Joplin provides a web clipper (pictured above) that works with both Firefox and Chrome. And, if you’re wondering if it works with Chromium browsers, the answer is, “Yes, it does.” This makes it a versatile tool on your desktop browser.

Neat features that will appeal to some when you clip a web page include:

1-You can save a web page without images as markdown text.

joplin

2-You can clip a web page as an image, HTML with images.

There are several other options for web clippings. Compared to my experiences with Evernote and OneNote, Joplin does an outstanding job. You can organize your content in notebooks and sub-notebooks and add tags to make it easier to find. Of course, it works on mobile so you are never without your notes. Unlike other tools, it also saves a copy of your notes on your device. That’s great if you are somewhere and you need to view your notes with no internet.

Pet Peeve: One of my complaints with other note-taking tools is they are internet hungry. They are also resource heavy and sluggish on some devices. Joplin is neither.

Sharing Joplin Content

Wondering how you can share clipped content? You can take the notes Joplin has saved in your cloud storage and then serve them up. Even if you lack access to Joplin while on the road, you can view your markdown files. Navigate to a note and open it. Here’s the view:

You can open Joplin notes with the editor of your choice. On Windows 10, two of my favorites include MarkText and Typora. It works great with markdown and HTML conversions, but makes content easy to edit. Give it a try if you need a no-cost text editor with GUI aspirations.

If you’re wondering how expensive Joplin is, “No worries there, mate!” It is a free, open source tool available at no cost. Give it a try, you can’t go wrong with it. See their tutorial online at their website. You can learn more about Joplin at this TCEA blog.

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Content AreasGood Teaching

How to Create a Choice Board

by Miguel Guhlin
written by Miguel Guhlin

Creating a choice board has never been easier than it is now with digital tools. At the recent TCEA 2020 Convention & Exposition, my colleagues Peggy Reimers, Diana Benner, and I shared a little of what we know. We set out to curate a variety of resources and present examples with templates. Maximizing student choice remains an important tenet of learning. Come along, if you like, and learn more about choice boards. There’s a Wakelet of resources provided, too.

What Is a Choice Board?

A choice board is a graphic organizer that allows students to choose how they will learn a concept. Usually a choice board includes these aspects:

  • 9-square grid
  • Each square has an activity
  • Each activity might relate to one of the multiple intelligences
  • Level of difficulty can vary or stay consistent throughout the board

Hattie’s Mindset

One of the powerful aspects of strategies that work is how they connect to the ways humans learn. John Hattie (Visible Learning, 2009) says the following:

“Learning progressions ensure that appropriately higher expectations of challenges are provided to students…there is not one right trajectory of progress for all students.

Instead, it is more critical to analyse closely how students progress….there is also the question of how to move each student forward from wherever they start through these levels of achievement….”

The money quote here is, “There is not one right trajectory of progress for all students.”  Educational research clearly shows that choice leads to more confident, capable, and interested students. The classic article “Choices for Children” (Alfie Kohn) cites relevant findings that include:

  • Giving students choice in learning tasks led to greater task completion in less time. 
  • Students asked to write up chemistry problems without step-by-step instructions completed better write-ups. What’s more, they remembered the material better. This is no surprise given generative note-taking (d=.51) research.

Put in a simple way, student choice, when implemented in the right way, works. Choice boards are one way to do it right.

How to Create a Choice Board

Now that you’re convinced, let’s revisit the choice board creation process. The process you choose reflects what you know and how you connect ideas and information. Some steps you can follow:

  1. Choose the target concept/standard .
  2. Outline or draw out your concept map.
  3. Make a list of discrete ideas/skills/strategies.
  4. Connect those to modalities that meet the needs of different students.
  5. Design the choice board in your tool of choice.

Ready to give it a try?

Some Examples and Templates

Here are some examples with templates, where appropriate.

Google Slides

Templates

(Source)		Google Drawings

Template		Wakelet
Example
Microsoft OneNote

Take advantage of digital tools to empower self-directed learning choices for students. No child follows in another’s footsteps. The changes exist, even if we can’t see them. Choice boards are one way to scaffold their learning journey.

References and Resources

All references and resources for links above appear in the companion Wakelet collection.

Choice Board Resources

Want to learn even more about Choice Boards? Take the TCEA course: Choice Boards for Educators.

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software updates
Educational TrendsTechnical Support

Summer Software Updates from Adobe, Google, and Microsoft

by Andrew Roush
written by Andrew Roush

In a world of digital software, it seems as if patches, updates, and upgrades are happening constantly. For educators, it can be nearly impossible to keep up. Sometimes we know about the updates, and sometimes apps and programs are updated automatically. Ever feel behind the times? TCEA is here to help.

Below are some recent updates for popular educational software. Just because it’s summer doesn’t mean you can’t stay up to date.

The Spark of Creativity

Adobe updated its Spark family of graphic-design products for social, web, and video. The updates include features targeted to educators. According to Campus Technology:

The latest release added functionality of benefit for education users. The program, which is free for students and schools, whether K-12 or higher ed, now supports live collaboration through the web. Students and instructors can begin a project and invite others to work on it by adding their email and sending an invitation to make edits. Shared projects appear in a new tab in the project organizer, and edits made to the project will be visible to collaborators.

Notably, these changes only apply to desktop and laptop versions.

Noteworthy Updates

Microsoft has released a number of recent updates for various programs. In June, it announced 30 updates for OneNote and Class Notebooks, including the ability to pair OneNote with TurnItIn and a way to create math quizzes right in OneNote. You can check out all 30 updates here.

The company’s Teams for Education digital hub is also getting a major facelift, according to a Microsoft announcement. You can read about new features, and see a few in action, at Microsoft’s Education blog.

Searching for New Features

Google has also heralded a number of updates for Google for Education, including rubrics, a new grades page, and changes to Google Forms.

From Silicon Angle:

“Instructors enrolled in the beta program can create a rubric and attach it to an assignment, giving students full visibility into how their work will be evaluated,” Brittany Mennuti, a Google Classroom product manager, wrote in a blog post. “Instructors can then use rubrics while grading to select rating levels and give consistent and efficient feedback.”

 

Meanwhile, Gradebook, a feature previously available in beta that allows teachers to track student’s grades over time and evaluate their performance, is now generally available.  …

 

Google is also making available a “locked mode” in Google Forms… With locked mode, students are prevented from being able to navigate away from the quiz until all of their answers have been submitted, helping them to focus on the task in hand.

What software updates have you been watching? Which changes would you like to see explored in TechNotes? Let us know in the comments.

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wakelet
Educational TrendsMicrosoft Tips and TricksSpecial NeedsWeb 2.0 Tool

Twitter Takeaways: Wakelet for Content Curation

by Miguel Guhlin
written by Miguel Guhlin

Content curation gets easier with Wakelet, a tool that’s kicking up a twitterstorm. Let’s take a quick look at some of the exciting ways it is being used.

Explore the buzz on Twitter with these quick takeaways. Be sure to catch up on past Twitter Takeaways.

Get Up to Speed

Are you new to this tool? If that’s the case, you can get up to speed quick. First, get an account and then the Wakelet Chrome Extension. You can also watch this video intro to the extension. If you want more videos,  check out the how-to’s in Wakelet’s tutorial videos.

wakelet

Photo Credit:Rachael Mann (@RachaelEdu)

Kristie Matthews makes connections between Wakelet and content curation. Be sure to peruse Paul West’s Wakelet ebook. It’s the A to Z guide on Wakelet features, extensions, collaboration tips, and more. And, if you enjoy using Wakelet, you may want to become a Wakelet ambassador and share all the Wakelet goodness with others.

Did You Know?

If you are a Microsoft OneNote user, you should be aware that you can now embed wakelets into OneNote pages. This makes it easy for students to access Wakelet content. See how it works below. All you need is to copy-n-paste the address to your favorite wakelet into a OneNote page!

Image Source: https://techcommunity.microsoft.com/t5/Education-Blog/Immersive-Reader-is-now-available-in-Wakelet/ba-p/746538

Connecting the ISTE Standards

At a recent TCEA Lunch and Learn, free for TCEA members, I highlighted the Wakelet wonder. Why? There’s a clear connection between content curation and the ISTE Educator Standard, Learner: “Create and take part in local and global learning networks.” In this way, you will pursue professional interests. Content curation is one of the ways you can use global learning network (a.k.a. social media) and Wakelet fits the bill.

wakelet

Get a copy via Paul West’s ebook

What you may not know is that the ISTE Student Standard, Empowered Learner, is similar. It advises students to build networks. This includes making online connections with other learners and experts. One way that learners of all ages can show the power of their connections is via content curation. As an educator, you’ll want to check out some of the ways you can use Wakelet.

Takeaway #1: Wakelet Works with OneNote

Fans are discovering that this powerful tool has made OneNote embedding its collections easy. Watch this dramatic video that captures the new experience:

Tip for Chrome and Edge Chromium users

1) Copy the Wakelet collection website URL/address.

2) In OneNote, right-click your mouse and use the Paste > Keep Text Only.

You may have already seen how OneNote works as a great tool for students to capture and share content. Now students can continue to embed even more content in the form of Wakelet collections.

Takeaway #2: Immersive Reader Support in Wakelet

A July, 2019 development now means that Microsoft’s Immersive Reader enjoys support in Wakelet. Not familiar with Immersive Reader? Here’s a quick overview:

Students with learning differences such as dyslexia using text decoding solutions. It includes support for emerging readers through features like Line Focus and Picture Dictionary. Immersive Reader support is included in all Microsoft tools, such as OneNote. Learn more about it online.

Here’s what Immersive Reader looks like in Wakelet:

Takeaway #3: Gamification and Scratch

With content curation efforts, we often miss the great content others are gathering. Here’s one such set of awesomeness from Carol McLaughlin (@missmac100). See her collections on gamification, Scratch, math visuals, and more.

wakelet

Takeaway #4: Microsoft Learning Tools

The incomparable Mike Tholfsen gives us yet another Wakelet collection. This one focuses on Microsoft Learning Tools. It is a “collection of training, PD, blogs, and videos to learn about Microsoft learning Tools.” It also includes information about the ever-changing Immersive Reader.

Takeaway #5: Effects of Climate Change

In this enthralling Wakelet, you will see the work and images relevant to climate change. It’s incredible what you can learn from primary sources. Consider Ogunyemi Olakunle Joshua. He is a geographical information systems (GIS) speaker and forest biometrician. Joshua shares the image below.

wakelet

Reading the curated collection featured in Wakelet, you’ll learn exciting statistics and assertions such as the one below:

We lost 150 billion work hours world-wide due to heat exposure in 2017. The cost of keeping people safe will increase as heat increases.

Takeaway #6: Twitter chat Archives

As you may have seen from the Effects of Climate Change example above, it is archived a twitter chat on the subject. Many are turning to Wakelet as an easy way to save their twitterchats. For example, David archives the #K12PRchat using the tool. The focus of the twitterchat was visual storytelling.

wakelet

Bonus Use

Another way some are using Wakelet includes as a campus or classroom newsletter. See this example summing up the week at Donalda School with images and PDFs embedded. Since Wakelet makes it easy to add Google Docs in a collection, it’s no wonder that many are flocking to it.

This blog entry was updated on July 12, 2019 with new content.

 

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woman's eyes
ChromebooksMicrosoft Tips and Tricks

Protect Your Eyes with Chrome Extensions

by Miguel Guhlin
written by Miguel Guhlin

“A high percentage of learners with Dyslexia are complaining about the white background in the new look Google Classroom – is there any way this can be changed?” asks United Kingdom educator, Scott H. There are several ways to “dim” the brightness of a screen and to protect your eyes. How do you accomplish this? You use a Chrome extension.

An example of “Care Your Eyes” extension effects applied to your Chrome browser

Why Adjust the White Background?

“Dyslexia is a learning disability that impairs a person’s fluency or accuracy in being able to read, write, and spell,” says Anthony (Source).  Anthony points out that putting black text on a white background, or white text on a black background can result in a “blur” effect.  He puts it this way:

Another kind of visual distortion effect that can occur among dyslexic users is the blur effect [1]. This is when dyslexic readers see their text blurring or swirling or together [5]. This can significantly affect a dyslexic user’s reading ability, and make reading tiring for them [7]. You can lessen this effect by avoiding a couple of bad practices.

Contrast sensitivity comes into play, as you can see in the image below:

Read more about contrast sensitivity

To avoid the blur effect that comes from a white background on a website like Google Classroom, you have several options to minimize the impact on dyslexic students. Let’s review them.

Option #1 – Use Care Your Eyes

The Care Your Eyes Chrome browser extension, available for free,  allows for several options.  You can see them in the screenshot below:

You have the choice to “Disable at this site,” which turns it off for certain websites. That means, that you could enable Care Your Eyes for Google Classroom but leave Care Your Eyes extension off for others.

Option #2 – Visor

Visor describes itself as a “screen dimmer and reading aid.” It suggests that the extension may help with fluency and eye-strain. What’s more, during reading, Visor improves concentration and comprehension. Per its website:

Visor’s overlays and point of focus feature may be assistive to users with visual perceptual difficulties such as Dyslexia, Scotopic Sensitivity Syndrome and Visual Stress. Whilst research shows results vary from person to person, some users may find that the use of overlays can help with fluency, eye-strain, concentration and comprehension whilst reading.

The options it has appear as a simple slider color scale:

The focus feature reminds me of OneNote’s Immersive Reader, which has a similar feature. You can see Visor’s in action below, focusing the reader on a line of content:

As you can see, a line of content appears in normal colors while the rest of the visible screen is dimmed. You can see OneNote’s Immersive Reader, which works just fine in the Chrome browser with content in a OneNote notebook, below:

The only reason I share OneNote’s Immersive Reader is that it is the gold standard for accessibility right now. Watch this video to learn more.Read this blog entry for updates announced January, 2019.

Option #3 – Eye Protection

Boasting similar features as Care Your Eyes and Visor, Eye Protection makes it a simple affair to replace the white background that leads to blur effect. You can see the options available via its Chrome extension drop-down:

And this is what a web page looks like. The light green color fills the white space of the background.

Option #4 – High Contrast

Like the other solutions, the High Contrast Chrome extension makes it a simple matter to “invert the color scheme to make web pages easier to read.” All that is black becomes white, and white becomes black. Only photos are not inverted. You can see the options available:

Here’s what a web page looks like with High Contrast enabled:

 

Protect Your Eyes with Chrome Extensions

You don’t have to be dyslexic to seek to minimize brightness and improve readability on websites. These Chrome extensions should provide you with some options.

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Microsoft Tips and Tricks

Remote Work with Microsoft Tools

by Miguel Guhlin
written by Miguel Guhlin

Work from home? If you teach in K-12, probably not. But remote work is a growing trend. Let’s explore Microsoft tools that make it easier.

Let’s review statistics about remote work.

Remote Work Statistics

Here are a few studies  on people who work from home:

  • Eighty-six percent of those asked said they “hit maximum productivity” when working at home alone.
  • Thirty percent said it allowed them to do more in less time.
  • Twenty-four percent surveyed said they could do more in the same time.
  • Eighty-two percent of workers reported less stress.
  • Researchers observed a fifty percent decrease in employee turnover.
  • Eighty-seven percent of remote workers felt more connected via video chats.
  • Twenty-three percent of employees (2015) reported doing some work at a remote site.

Without technology, this kind of work would be difficult.

Remote Work with Microsoft Tools

If you work in an Office 365 environment, here are some essential tools for you.

  • Get Feedback with Microsoft Teams: Now that Teams is available for free, just like Slack, give it a try. Use Microsoft Teams to get feedback on work projects, shared documents, and more. Add tabs to Microsoft Teams to pull data from anywhere (e.g. Dropbox, Google Drive, Flipgrid). See TCEA Resources for Teams.
  • Make Your Digital Workspace with Microsoft OneNote: If you are not using OneNote to organize yourself, you need to start soon. Educators, take advantage of OneNote’s power. Use integrated Class or Staff Notebook functions. OneNote is the “one-stop shopping” solution to creating curated content, and more resources. View TCEA Resources for OneNote.
  • Be Mobile-Friendly with Microsoft Sway: With responsive web design, you can work alone or together. Create mobile-friendly presentations and newsletters. A clear interface makes placing audio, images, and videos a cinch. Open TCEA Resources for Microsoft Sway.

Keep It Organized

If Teams, OneNote, and Sway make teamwork potent, Forms and To-Do serve as organizational helpers.

Is Remote Work in Your Future?

Chances are, you will find yourself working from many places. Some may be your office or classroom. Embrace these tools. Lower your stress, connect with the team. In short, get more done.

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OneNote hacks
Microsoft Tips and Tricks

Five OneNote Hacks for Your Classroom

by Miguel Guhlin
written by Miguel Guhlin

If you are using OneNote with your students, you’re probably already aware of how powerful it is. But just like any program, there may be some special features that you don’t know about or haven’t started using. In this blog entry, I’ll share some of the most common ways you can manage OneNote in Class Notebook.

1- Digitize Your Content

As an educator, you probably have pages of projects, activities, resources, and worksheets. When my wife invited me into her second grade classroom for back to school prep, I was astonished at the sheer volume of resources. “Have you thought about digitizing these?” I asked as I clutched an overstuffed manila folder in my hand, waving at even more crammed folders. The question of digitizing content always comes up at OneNote workshops. The best answer is to use a copier/scanner solution. You can drop several binders of content, scan it to PDF, and you are ready to go. FedEx/Kinkos have these awesome scanners at their locations if you don’t have one at school.

Why not carve out $20-$30 to scan your most precious resources? After all, you never know when the ceiling is going to drip a torrent onto your papers. “Wait, then how will I pick out that one page (page 52) of a 200-page PDF when I need it?” The easy answer is to use one of the PDF tools I discuss in my blog entry Top Five PDF Annotation Tools. These tools make it easy to extract one page or several from a large document. It’s so easy, you could show a third grader how to do it for you.

If you want to be more selective of what you digitize, or scan as you go, then take advantage of other Microsoft tools, such as Office Lens  (read Tip #3) or OneDrive (read Tip #4). When should you use one or the other?

Get Google Slides version | Powerpoint version of this infographic template

While either tool can make your work easier, Office Lens can make navigating text easier for your students with the built-in Immersive Reader.

2- Organize Your OneNote Master Notebook

Now that you have your paper digitized, what’s your next step? Organizing all your materials, units, lesson plans, and resources in one place. OneNote can make this difficult process easy. OneNote features sections and sub-sections. I like to organize my OneNote materials following an outline model. For example, consider the following:

  • Notebook Topic – Mathematics
  • Sections Group – This is an overarching idea or concept (e.g. Algebra I). Section Groups work as containers for sections.
    • Section – This is the actual section where you will add pages of content. If Algebra I is the overarching concept, then this might be Introduction to Algebra I.
    • Pages – Places resources, information, and lesson plans relevant to the Section topic in individual pages.
  • Example – In this example, we have tons of resources to keep track of. So our Section Group starts
    • Section Group Title: Algebra I
      1. Section #1 Title: An introduction to Algebra I
        • Pages:
          • Learning Not Performing
          • Making Sense
          • Conjectures, Creativity, and Uncertainty
          • The Beauty of Mistakes
      2. Section #2 Title: Modeling with Functions
        • Pages:
          • Rate of Change
          • Graphs
          • Functions

As you can see, a well-designed outline (I swiped, er, adapted this one from New Visions) can save you work. You can begin to move your content (e.g. digitized documents) into the appropriate section.

3- Curate Content For Placement in Your OneNote Master Notebook

Content curation is the process that you use to select, sift, save, and share content. Many educators use tools like Pinterest, Pocket, Evernote, Diigo, Flipboard, LiveBinder, or Wakelet for this. The drawback with using these tools to store content is simple. If you are in an Office 365 school district, you’ll have to figure out a way to copy that content into your OneNote notebook. Instead of relying on all these other content curation tools, just use OneNote.

In this screenshot, you can see OneNote WebClipper’s main options. With it, you can save to a notebook (e.g. TCEA Connect v4) to a section (e.g. Resource Roundup)

The OneNote Web Clipper will help you clip content (with website source for citation) straight into the notebook and section of your choice. It’s an extension for your Chrome or Firefox web browser. It makes dropping content into OneNote easy-peasy. However, the OneNote Web Clipper is not the only way to get content into your OneNote document. You can also use OneNote’s built-in INSERT menu, as shown below:

For those who are comfortable using social media, you could take advantage of IFTTT.com to automate saving of content into your OneNote notebook. Learn more about how to curate content in this way.

4- Manage OneNote Class Notebook

OneNote Class Notebook includes web-based management tools you can use. You can create, modify, and manage Class Notebooks via this link. After you log in with your Office 365 work/school account, you will see a screen like the one below.

If you click the “Manage notebooks” button, you will be able to select your Class Notebook. Here’s what that looks like:

From the options available, you are able to lock/unlock (off/on) your Class Notebook’s Collaboration Space. Need to share links to the Class Notebook with parents/guardians? You will have the option to select an individual student or generate links for all students. These links provide parents/guardians with access to their student’s individual notebook.

5- Manage OneNote Class Notebook in Microsoft Teams

Just announced in August 2018, teachers using Teams have the ability to access the management component of OneNote from within Teams. Here’s the text of the announcement:

To help save teachers more time when using OneNote Class and Staff Notebooks inside Microsoft Teams, we’re releasing a few key updates. Teachers will enjoy the new and improved Class and Staff Notebook settings directly inside Microsoft Teams – just select “Manage Notebooks” in the tab menu. Plus, we’ve improved the Class Notebook toolbar and added a new Staff Notebook toolbar, specifically for staff teams. In addition, page distribution is now fully supported in the Teams desktop app!
Read more

Using OneNote Class Notebook as a part of Microsoft Teams has other benefits. Be sure to explore Microsoft Teams.

Five OneNote Hacks for Your Classroom

There you go, five OneNote hacks for your classroom. What are some OneNote hacks that you have used or developed to make your work easier?

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Cornell note-taking
Microsoft Tips and Tricks

Go Digital with Cornell Note-Taking and the OneNote App

by Miguel Guhlin
written by Miguel Guhlin

Back in September, 2016, I had just begun working with Microsoft OneNote to setup a Cornell Notes type page in OneNote Desktop (a.k.a. OneNote 2016). Since then, Microsoft has made tremendous updates to its free OneNote app on Windows 10. The popular app, which works on iOS, Android, and Mac, has a different way of getting things done. As a result, my earlier guide to Cornell Notes is now a bit dated. To reflect the new OneNote app on Windows 10, I’ve created a whole new guide. Since OneNote 2016 is still in use in many districts, I’m leaving my earlier step-by-step online.

Learn More About Cornell Note-Taking

Don’t know about Cornell note-taking? I know I hadn’t heard about it until I attended AVID training a score of years ago. Here’s a bit of history about it as an approach that’s been around since the 1940s. Wikipedia shares the following:

The Cornell Notes system (also Cornell note-taking system, Cornell method, or Cornell way) is a note-taking system devised in the 1940s by Walter Pauk, an education professor at Cornell University. Pauk advocated its use in his best-selling book How to Study in College.

The Cornell method provides a systematic format for condensing and organizing notes. This system of taking notes is important as a high school or college level student. The student divides the paper into two columns: the note-taking column (usually on the right) is twice the size of the questions/key word column (on the left). The student should leave five to seven lines, or about two inches (5 cm), at the bottom of the page. Learn More

Ready to see the Cornell note-taking template in OneNote? Before I show you that, did you know you can customize pages in OneNote, as well as insert tables to help organize your content?

Customizing Pages in the OneNote App

As wonderful as the OneNote app on Windows 10 is, you won’t find templates like you did in OneNote 2016 (a.k.a. OneNote Desktop). The most you will find is the ability to customize the number of ruled lines on a Page. You can do this under the View menu, as shown in the screenshot below:

Note that you can also change the color of a Page. This is, so far, the sum total of Page customization in the OneNote app. OneNote Desktop/2016 templates are just a feature not (yet) present in the app. That raises the question, how can you create your own templates for students?

Creating Your Own Templates for Students

Creating your own Pages in OneNote is easy. To make your own template, you will need to get comfortable with inserting tables. What’s neat is that you can shade different cells in the table to reflect information.

Need Directions? Want to add a shade of color to an individual table cell? Click in the table cell you want to shade, then go to the Table tab in your OneNote navigation bar. Click on Shading, then pick the color you want the cell to be shaded as.

In the OneNote app, you are able to create a page (or copy and paste) with the format of a Cornell Note-Taking page. To accomplish that, you will need to open an existing notebook with the template, then copy and paste the frame that has the template. Once you have customized the template the way you want, you can use OneNote Class Notebook to distribute that page to all students.

You may choose to place the template(s) in your Class Notebook’s Content Library so that students can copy and paste a blank copy. The video in the next section below will take you step-by-step through the process.

Get a Cornell Note-Taking Template or Two

To get you started, I’ve placed a completely editable OneNote notebook with Cornell note-taking templates online for your use. You can navigate to this notebook, then copy and paste the frame of the page from my pages to your OneNote Notebook. Here’s a video that models the process:

That’s pretty much all there is to it! Have questions? Don’t hesitate to leave them as a comment below and I’ll get back to you with an answer.

Did You Know?

Want to share a OneNote notebook with others? Marjolein Hoekstra (@OneNoteC) says “It’s no longer necessary to give people edit rights to a notebook. Place the notebook on OneDrive.live.com (using a free Microsoft account). Follow these steps:

  1. Share the READ ONLY link to the notebook
  2. Sign in with a personal Microsoft account. This will make a button available labeled “Open in OneNote”
  3. Once the notebook is open on the OneNote app, they can copy the Cornell template pages to their own notebook

This approach will NOT work with Office 365 accounts.

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