As the end of Term One nears, students from the two Year Nine eLearning classes at Christchurch Boys' High School are becoming experts at using Microsoft's OneNote. "Microsoft OneNote is an easy-to-use note-taking and information-management program where you can capture ideas and information in electronic form."
At the beginning of the year all eLearning class teachers used OneNote Notebook Creator to add students to their teachers Notebook. There are three areas in OneNote Class Notebook which allow for an ideal set up for teachers and students in a class. The Content Library (Teacher can edit, Students can view only), Student Notebook (Student and Teacher can view and edit), and Collaboration Space (all Students and the Teacher can view and edit).
Initially it was a very steep learning curve for students and staff at Christchurch Boys' High School to use OneNote. Only one of the 55 boys in the eLearning classes had any previous experience with OneNote and two teachers had only had brief experience. Staff and student feedback after two weeks revealed the steep learning curve: Student Z: “I enjoy the e-learning class just how complicated it can be is annoying” and student A “I enjoy the learning but onenote confuses me and I find hard to adapt. Teacher S: "OneNote will be great for the boys in the long run, at the moment they haven't even figured out where they can and can't type!" More time for professional development and learning is planned for next year.
After about six weeks teachers and students became more comfortable with using OneNote. As comfort ensued the advertised benefits of OneNote became more obvious. Teachers like not having to take home a class set of physical books for marking, while students feel their work is tidier and many prefer to work with technology. An advantage highlighted by parents was that their son can gain access to all teaching notes even when absent from school. Student B stated at a recent parents evening: "You don't even really need to come to school!"
Recently I attended the Future Schools Conference in Sydney and I showed a Microsoft Education Expert how we are using OneNote Class Notebook at Christchurch Boys' High School. She was very impressed and reminded me that we are among the world leaders in education to be using Microsoft OneNote Notebook Creator. She challenged me to use of the Collaboration Space in the Notebook more. She observed that many students and teachers in the eLearning classes are 'substituting' technology for pen and paper. OneNote is much more powerful than simply recording notes into an electronic notebook. The Collaboration Space allows all students and their teacher to create content which is shared to all members of the class. This is when really powerful learning and collaboration occurs. Recently students in one of the Year Nine eLearning classes have created screencasts of themselves completing Maths problems and sharing these in the collaboration space.
Fellow class members can see what their peers are doing and their thinking, therefore the learning is shared. I have found students are much more likely to ensure their work is accurate when it is shared. Students were also encouraged to comment on their peers screencasts.
This is a considerable advantage over students working on paper only. No longer is the student's work book kept hidden from his peers and only passed occasionally between the teacher and back again. The advantage of the Collaboration Space was also evident when students were revising for an upcoming exam. All students were asked to put their revision in to the collaboration space. All students could contribute to revision of the exam. Students no longer need to revise for exams alone.
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