UNLEASH

ED

Tag: Microsoft

Teaching Portfolios: How to set up a OneNote portfolio
I’ve been using OneNote to build my teacher portfolio for a while now.

Back in 2016 I wrote a quick how-to about building your teacher portfolio in OneNote. Back then, of course, there were 12 criteria, and so the template is no longer valid.

However, since that time, I’ve also been adjusting the way in which I use OneNote to collect evidence and artefacts for the portfolio and how they’re organised. This means two things:

1. Its okay to change as you go

Don’t feel like you have to keep your portfolio in the same mode for all three years of your registration. If something isn’t working, don’t feel like you have to stick with it just because that’s how you decided to do it before you had even started.

2. It’s flexible

OneNote is completely flexible to keep up with however you want to organise it. If you want to have the years along the top sections, go for it. If you’d rather have each of the six standards along the top, you can do that too. However it works for your brain, OneNote is flexible enough to cope with it.

Getting Set Up

1. Install Microsoft OneNote

Firstly, you will want to install Microsoft OneNote. Most Windows computers already come with it. However, there are TWO versions of OneNote. There’s the App Store version (which is an all-operating-system app for iOS, Android, and Windows Store), and there is the BETTER version that comes with Microsoft Office – OneNote 2016.

You will want to get the OneNote 2016 version and ensure you pin the icon on your taskbar so you don’t open the other version.

The main reason for this is the ability to install macros, and there is a LOT more control over things like tags, both of which you’ll want to utilise to make your portfolio.

2. Get an Account.

This isn’t a necessity to be able to use OneNote. However there are benefits to having an account, such as sharing, and accessing your portfolio on different devices. Luckily, Microsoft products are free for schools to use. Talk to your network administrator to get Office365 accounts set up for you and your staff.

3. Create a New Notebook

You’ll need to make a new notebook. I would call this something such as “Portfolio 2020-2022” or whichever year range you intend (I just use my registration years).

The reason for this is that as you add evidence into your portfolio, the filesize of your notebook will get bigger and bigger, and cause things to take longer to load the more you have in it. By setting it to just three years, it keeps everything nicely in one place for one round of registrations. You can then save it off and begin a new one when your new registration begins!

I’m not going to go into details on how to create a new notebook. You can find multiple tutorials for this online.

OneNote Tutorial

4. Set Up Sections

The first decision you will want to make is whether you’re going to go with a date-based portfolio or standards-based portfolio. You can read more about that here.

Along the top of OneNote 2016, you will see your ‘Sections’. Here you can see I’ve gone with a date-based section portfolio, but you could just as easily go with standards, or even types of evidence. Dates is just the one that made best sense to me, and it allowed me to try different things each year of the registration period without having to stick to one method of collecting evidence.
Adding a new section is as simple as clicking on the white ‘+’ tab. You can add as many sections as you like, as well as, have groups of sections. So – for instance – you could have a section group for each year, and within each of those groups, have each of the six standards as sections as well. This essentially creates two layers of sections at the top. Like I said, OneNote is pretty flexible for however you want to structure your portfolio.

5. Create Page Headings

On the right hand side of OneNote are your pages (although you can completely customise this so that it is on the left).

You can make up to three layers deep of pages by indenting them under parent pages.

Here you can see I have an “Admin” parent page which holds my index, summaries, job descriptions, release records and anything else pertaining to my registration for the year.

Then I’ve made an “Evidence” parent page which I dump all my pieces of evidence in it. I’ve gone through and put it roughly in chronological order, but this hasn’t always been the case. You could put it in subject order, or leave it in complete chaos. Once again – however your brain works!

Below that is a quick screenshot of another way of setting out the parent pages. You can see that these are expandable with the drop down arrows. You can have anything as parent pages – you could even set up each of the six standards as parent pages that you then put evidence within.

6. Create Custom Tags

OneNote comes with it’s own set of pre-made tags (and many of these are useful to keep). It also allows you to add in your own tags, and this is where comes the power of OneNote.

Remember: this is in Microsoft OneNote 2016 – not the App version.
1. Under the ‘Home’ tab at the top, go to the tags part and open the drop down list of tags.
2. At the bottom of this is a “Customize Tags…” button. In there, you can create six new tags, one for each of the six standards. You can select an icon for them – I’ve just used the six coloured squares.
3. You can then order them and see them within your list of tags. You could even move them to the top so you have the shortcuts for them (I’ve got other tags that I use for teaching in those slots…)
7. Macro It Up!

This step is a bit extra for those who like to have a list of their evidence somewhere.

In Microsoft OneNote 2016, there is a ‘Macros’ part under the ‘Home’ tab. You can download a range of different macros which are like plugins for OneNote that carry out different tasks systematically. The one that allows you to create an index page like the one above is called ‘Tag Summary with Page Names‘.

Once you’ve installed it you can create a new page and then run it.

It will ask you for the ‘Scope‘. Select from Current Section, or Current Section Group, Current Notebook, or All Notebooks. I usually just select the ‘Current Section‘ option.

Under ‘Filter‘ make sure you select ‘All‘. The unchecked only and checked only are for the ‘To-Do’ tag which can be marked as checked or unchecked. Our tags are just tags.

Click ‘Ok‘ and it will go through and create a list of the pages that include the different tags.

It could take a while depending on how many pages are in the Current Section. It’ll go along and show you the progress and page it is up to, and eventually be all finished and show you a page like the one above.

Now, bear in mind, you selected ‘All’ for the tags it would look for, and so it will also list the other tags as well. You can go through these and delete the list of pages under these tags, leaving you with just the six standards and the pages that include that tag on them somewhere

Other Macros

Another good macro to get is a TOC (Table of Contents) called TOC in Current Section and TOC in Current Notebook. Both of these will build a linked list of pages within your section or notebook and display it on its own page. It’s not dynamic, so it won’t update as you add pages, but is good to have at the end of the year for example.

Some Examples

And that’s it. Add your evidence as a page in the section, organise it and add it in a parent page, and you’re away laughing!

Below are some examples of evidence I have added into my OneNote portfolio.

A great thing about OneNote is it is quick and easy to add evidence. Just create a new page in the right section, move it under a parent page if you need to, and then start typing. The date of creation is added at the top (I believe you can edit this if you’re adding evidence in retrospectively) and then you can add in an explanation or annotation of the evidence. It is easy to add screenshots or images, photos, or other media. If you have an iPad you can even write and draw in the page with Apple Pencil or a stylus.

In this example, you can see at the top of the page I’ve added in the tags for the standards I believe that the piece of evidence links to. This is the strength of using tags, is that you create the evidence ONCE, and attribute the tags to that one evidence. There’s no copying it to different sections and organising it everywhere making multiple copies or anything. Just add the tags at the top. You can see the star one, which is my icon for PB4L stuff, which this also pertains to.

In Conclusion

I hope that is enough to get you started in using OneNote to house your teaching portfolio. It is the best system I’ve found for keeping your portfolio, and I’ve tried most of them. In my opinion it is the best for because of the following:
- Adding evidence is easy, with the ability to copy and paste images and text into it. It also saves automatically.
- It fits with my other OneNote notebooks that I keep for my other teaching work, allowing me to quickly copy work I’ve already done over into my portfolio as well.
- Tags. Need I say more?
- Flexible organising to suit my needs. Whichever way I need to structure my portfolio, it has a way of making it work with different layers of sections, section groups, pages, parent pages, and more.
- Being able to draw, take notes, and annotate evidence with my iPad and Apple Pencil in OneNote has been awesome. These are at an additional cost, but add to the whole experience, and part of the reason why I use OneNote for all the other areas of teaching as well.
January 28, 2020
Practising Teacher Criteria and Microsoft OneNote

As we move further into tighter and tighter regulations around registering as a teacher, the need to keep track of and collate evidence of our ability as teachers to teach becomes more and more important. The Practising Teacher Criteria requires teacher to collect evidence and artefacts and keep track of these to show how we meet each of the 12 criteria.

Over the last few years I have developed a couple of models with which to do this.
One involves using Google Sites and Google Drive, which I prefer.

The other involves Microsoft OneNote.

If you already use OneNote, you may wish to keep your evidence and artefacts of your teaching to the 12 criteria in a Notebook within OneNote.

PTC Template

Thinking ahead, before I built my own notebook, I made a skeleton outline to save as a template.

In the template, I have made 12 folders, each representing one of the criteria. I have also included an “Administration” folder for bits and bobs associated with the PTC, but not necessarily part of it. Each of the 12 folders have a “Welcome page” that outlines the criteria.

Once created, you can go ahead and add pages, documents, items into each folder to build your collection of evidence for your PTC. It’s all fairly straight forward.

Privacy & Security

One common and important question about these methods is the privacy of students that are being used as examples of evidence etc.
Both Google Sites and Google Drive have a full range of permissions, from full editing to view only, to completely private (Only Me) modes.
Microsoft OneNote package operates more like a Word doc, where only those with access to the file will be able to see it. Naturally, you can share this over OneDrive, or by email, but ultimately, the privacy is in your control with who can view the files.

Download

So, as I am doing with a lot of my teaching things at the moment, I am making this template freely available for you to use for your own use. It is protected under creative commons, meaning you can’t go on to sell copies of this, but you can feel free to edit it, modify it for your own use, develop it further, and use it.

[su_button url=”http://res.cloudinary.com/alingham/raw/upload/v1462773574/PTC-TEMPLATE.onepkg” target=”blank” style=”flat” background=”#39aa29″ center=”yes” icon=”icon: cloud-download”]Download .onepkg (30.9 KB)[/su_button]

May 9, 2016
Microsoft OneNote – Teacher Planning – Part II
Part 2 – How do I set OneNote up as my Planning Folder

As mentioned in Part I of Microsoft OneNote – Teacher Planning, every teacher, every school, plans differently. The method that follows is just one way in which teachers could use Microsoft OneNote to plan. It is not necessarily my prefered method, but is one that I can see working well with how OneNote operates, and therefore is a good example of how OneNote can be used to enhance and organise teacher planning and paperwork.

Below, I will outline how I have set up Microsoft OneNote as a planning folder for unit plans, lesson plans, and subject based information.

Step 1: Create Notebook

However you like to, create a Notebook. Clicking on the existing Notebook reveals a drop down list in the Mac version, with a grey plus (“+”) button in the top. This will allow you to open or create a Notebook. I called mine “2016 Planning”.

Step 2: Create Plan and subject folders

Along the top I clicked the tab with the “+” sign to create a new tab and labeled each one accordingly. I had a generic “Plans” folder, along with a folder for Mathematics, Literacy, and Inquiry; which make up the three blocks in my day. I added P.E. and Health as there are additional plans that do not fit under inquiry that I will be using. In turn, there may also be additional plans in the other curriculum areas, such as The Arts, which don’t fit under any of the Inquiry units. I changed the colour of each to match the colours I associate each with thanks to previous curriculum documents. These also match the colours that I used in Google Sheets last year.

Step 3: Plans folder

In the plans folder I created a series of pages on the right hand side. These are as follows:
- Yearly Overview
- Term 1 (menu holder)
  - Long Term Plan
  - Weekly Overview
    
    Week 1
*Note: The menu holder is a blank page that reads Term 1. This is merely to organise the sub pages into Terms, so within this folder, there will be Terms 1 through 4, and under each, a Long Term Plan, Weekly Overview, and the Weekly Plans. Two of these are school requirements that may or may not be necessary in your school. You’ll also see that Week 1 is a sub-page of “Weekly Overview”, though Weekly Overview is not a menu holder, in that a generic plan outline is included in this plan, with the sub pages sitting under it.

Step 4: Including existing plans or planning templates

There’s little point in throwing out the baby with the bathwater here.

Instead of creating plans and units within Microsoft OneNote, you can insert or “attach” existing documents; much like you would be able to insert plans, notes, or newspaper cuttings into a clearfile folder.

For the long term plan, rather than attempt to create the complex table in OneNote, (especially seeing as I’ve developed this plan to automatically shade in particular subjects if they are not being covered) I have merely “attached” or inserted the excel spreadsheet into the OneNote page called “Long Term Plan”.

Another option, and great feature, is Inserting a PDF printout. OneNote will go and open the selected file, print out a PDF copy of it as it is, and then insert that PDF as a page in your folder for display. A very useful feature that I am sure I will make the most of throughout the year.

Step 5: Creating Unit Templates

Initially, I thought about doing the same for Unit Plans, but quickly realised this would become tiresome as the year goes on. Essentially I would not be using OneNote at all, merely gathering files, which I may as well use Google Drive for.

So to use OneNote a little more, I decided to copy the Unit template from Google Docs and paste it into OneNote.

Seamless; aside from the superfluous Drawings/Shapes I had added as additional flare for the unit plans. These were quickly inserted by using screenshots and entering them into OneNote separately. I was amazed at how accurately it copied the table from Google Docs and added it into OneNote without any formatting issues.

I then used Onetastic to create a number of custom headings and font formats, and went through and edited the template using these. This is not a necessary part of the process, but one I like to do as a designer.

Creating Page templates is very easy in the Windows version of OneNote. I have yet to find if the OS-X version has this capability. Visit here to find out about creating page templates. Essentially, I created a blank Unit Template with the relevant headings and sample content. Saving these as templates then allows me to open them up as pages for following terms, and following years.

Step 5: Weekly Plans

Early in my teaching career I separated all my plans out, so I had a weekly overview, a mathematics weekly plan, a reading weekly plan, a writing plan, as well as an afternoon plan. I know many teachers who plan like this, and it hasn’t been difficult to go back to this after collating all those plans into one Google Sheet last year (Read here).

By creating a folder for each subject, I have somewhat forced myself to return to this system. In each subject folder, I have created a “Term 1” menu holder, much like the page structure in Step 3. This is a blank page. I then made two sub-pages; “Unit Plan” where I inserted the Unit Template from Step 5, and a “Week 1” plan, which is displayed above.

This is essentially a table copied from my Google Sheet from last year to show what happens in Literacy each day of the week, according to the Weekly Overview in the “Plans” folder (See Step 3).

Step 6: Linking to OneNote Pages

As I explored more and more of Microsoft OneNote, I needed to make sure I made use of its many facets. One of those is linking to the different pages from within OneNote, so that when I have my planning folder open, I can quickly click once on a particular part of the weekly plan and jump straight to the related week plan for that subject.

The screenshot above is the “Week 1” page within the “Plans” folder (See Step 3). As you can see, I have made five “Week 1” links under Whole Class Maths for the week.

These link to the Week 1 plan in the Mathematics Folder. This allows me to view the week overview, and directly click once on “Week 1” to automatically go to the Week 1 plan for Mathematics, rather than having to click on the Mathematics folder, and then find the corresponding week.

Next week, in the Plans folder > Week 2 page, I will change these links to point to Mathematics folder > Week 2 page.

In Conclusion

And that’s about as far as I’ve got. I’m sure that there is much more to learn about Microsoft OneNote that I will no doubt come across throughout the course of the year.

I am also very aware that there may be other ways of using OneNote for planning, and in teaching. If you do, please share these with us in the comments below. I would be more than interested in seeing how others use it and see whether such methods I could incorporate into my own planning.
January 31, 2016
Google Drive vs. OneDrive

Sorry. Did I say versus?

I meant AND.

About four years ago, our school made a shift to using Gmail as our email client. We’ve never looked back.

This year, we began delving into Google Drive, and Google Docs as a staff. We moved our Documents from My Documents to our Google Drive without so much of a hitch. We developed an Integrated Unit Plan to use in Google Docs that we could share and collaborate with our colleagues.

But three terms on, and the full extent of Google Apps has yet to be fully embraced.

Why?

Quite simply, it comes down to one thing.

Familiarity.

Change is hard. Change is often unwelcome. And unless that change demonstrates it is a better option to the point where you can’t do without it, reverting back to your old ways is almost inevitable.

Unfortunately, Google Docs, Google Sheets, Google Slides can all be done without by teachers. All because of one thing.

Microsoft Office

Ever since its release, teachers (and other professionals) have begun using Microsoft Office for everything. I know myself, that I very rarely turn to any other solution when needing to use a word processor, layout, A4 print, or anything else.

Now don’t get me wrong; I have made every effort to convert myself into a Google App user. I’ve used it in almost ever faucet of my teaching computer use, including analysis of data, collection of data, unit planning, weekly planning, student collaboration, and more.

Obviously my use of Microsoft Office continued, with report templates, data sheets, and pre-existing templates being used by the school still in Word or Excel. Other teachers avoided Google Docs because of its limitations, because it looks and feels different to Word, and because they prefer to use what they know, rather than spend a lot of time converting over to Google Docs. And I can’t blame them at all either. It requires a lot of time tweaking, adjusting, moving, changing, to completely adopt Google Apps and have a perfectly working Google Doc rather than an existing Word version. (And yes, I’m well aware you can open a Word document in Google Docs, but it doesn’t always get it right, and it always tries to save it as a Google Doc afterwards.

The Switchback

There is a new player on the court.

It’s name?

OneNote.

It’s being heralded as a game changer and I can instantly see why.

Yes, I’ve used Evernote. Then it became too mainstream and clunky with its high-brow graphics. It began doing too much, like food reviews and becoming social.

Google’s version, Google Keep, is little more than a gimmick, imitating post-it notes. Don’t get me wrong; teacher’s do love a good stack of post-it notes. But guaranteed, when the rubber hits the road, and a teacher has to run out of the class in a fire; are they going to save the stack of post-it notes, or grab their planning folder and diary?

Microsoft OneNote has that potential to become the central hub of everything a teacher does. Much like a ringbinder, I can see it becoming a filing cabinet, a student profile book, a manila folder, and a clearfile all in one.

And one thing that makes OneNote a game changer is it’s ability to sync on mobile devices and share with colleagues. However, to do this, it needs OneDrive activated. Obviously Google and Microsoft are at war, and Microsoft won’t allow OneNote to sync using Google Drive instead of OneDrive.

Two Peas in a Pod

So suddenly we find ourselves wanting to get OneDrive set up. Both OneDrive and Google Apps are essentially ‘free’ for Education. So we have access to both.

Initially, it would be fine just to use OneDrive as a means to an end, if only just to run OneNote it would be worth it.

However, my thinking is, why not use all of Office 365, Microsoft’s answer to Google Apps. If teachers are sticking to using Word because of familiarity, why not
just extend this to Office 365 and get all the benefits of Google Docs, but in a familiar setting. Perfect.

Except we have Google Drive all set up. We have Google Doc templates. I’ve spent all year changing myself over to Google. And what’s more, our school has just invested in providing Chromebooks for use by our senior students, which all run off Google Apps.

So teachers will still need Google Drive, and Google Apps.

Or vs. And

In most battles, it’s always an “or” that is used. Holden OR Ford. Marmite OR Vegemite. Rugby OR League. iPhone OR Samsung. Facebook OR Twitter. Microsoft OR Apple OR Google.

However, in this case, because Google have nothing that even compares to OneNote, or the familiarity of Microsoft Office with Office365. But in the same sense, we definitely need to keep Google Drive and Google Apps. There is no way we should throw the baby out with the bathwater.

So, at our school, we will be adopting an AND mindset.

We will be using Google Apps and Microsoft Office 365. We will make use of Google Drive, and OneDrive. We will collaborate and share with students in Google Docs, and will organise ourselves through OneNote.

Essentially, we will find ways that we can have the best of both worlds.

November 11, 2015
Using Google Drive instead of My Documents
Sometimes old habits die hard. Sometimes default settings also can be a bit of a pain. Sometimes you can set up all the synchronisation you want, but files will still get lost somewhere in the blue void.

That’s my experience with Windows in schools. Microsoft does a very good job for the most part, but it has always been a bit of a sticking point when a teacher arrives at work on Monday and suddenly their work from the weekend goes missing. Or they’ve logged in on another computer and suddenly don’t have all the files they thought they did.

Firstly, before we even look into using Google Drive, I want to say one thing. Back up your files.

Then back them up again. Put them on a USB or portable storage. Take them home. Back them up again. Just in case.

I make a habit of doing it every year at the end of the year. Some would even suggest doing it more regularly. Every term, or every month. However, now that I’m using Google Drive to store my files, I’m finding that the need to back up is much, much less than if I were purely relying on Windows and My Documents synchronisation.

Google Drive

Okay. So what is this amazing thing called Google Drive?

Basically it is a server of all your files on the interweb. In a cloud some people say. It’s a USB stick, except instead of plugging it in, you simply log in online. This image below gives you an idea of how it works.

All your files, uploaded to Drive, available on all your devices. Essentially we are setting up one big backup each time we make or create or edit or move any document in ‘My Documents’. And what’s more, space has just become unlimited with Google Apps for Education (#GAFE)

Find out more about using Google Drive here: www.google.co.nz/drive

From here you can click on and create a new Google Doc, Google Sheet, Google Slide, or Create Folders to store your documents in, just as you would in My Documents.

The Incoming tab will display all your shared files, along with any files that have been shared with you.

The Recent tab displays the most recent files you have created or opened and worked on.

In the Starred tab, you can see any files that you have starred (just like emails that you ‘star’ in Gmail)

Bin is where all your deleted files are kept just in case.

Searching and Finding

Remember; Google is a search engine first and foremost. This means they can apply the same search functions to your documents as they can to the entire world wide web.

At the top of the Drive home page (drive.google.com), or the Docs home page (docs.google.com), is a search box. This can search through any document you have opened or put into your drive.

Do not forget you can use the Incoming and Recent tabs to help with finding documents.

Integrating Google Drive with Windows

There is a great program for Google Drive which creates a folder on your computer for your Google Drive documents. This then syncs up with your Google Drive on the internet.

ANY file can be put onto Google Drive. It’s not just limited to Google Docs. This includes old planning files, PDF’s, images and photos of your class, worksheets, and other resources.
1. Go to http://www.google.co.nz/drive/download/ and click on Download → Mac and PC.
2. Once it’s downloaded open it and install with the preset default options.
3. It will require you to sign in at some point.
4. You will now see a Google Drive option in your “Favourites” bar when you go to Windows Explorer (Windows+E).
  Here you can see I have copied all my teaching files over from My Documents to Google Drive.
  When I save a file, instead of saving it in My Documents, I save it to the Google Drive folder.
5. In Libraries (down bottom left of the picture above), click on Documents
6. You will see a bar at the top of the window. Click on Includes: 2 locations
  (Note: Mine says 3, yours may have a different number)
7. On the right of the pop up box, click on Add.
8. Find your Google Drive folder (should still be on the right in your favourites) and click on Include folder.
9. You should now have your Google Drive folder showing up as a location.
10. Right click on Google Drive and select “Set as default save location”
  I then right click on it and select “Move Up” until it is at the top. This means when you click on “Documents”, your Google Drive location will show up at the top.
11. Click on OK. And now you are all set up and ready to go!
Tips and Tricks
1. You can save attachments straight from emails to your drive. Just click on the Drive icon that shows over the attachment in Gmail. Then you can choose which folder to put it in afterwards, and open it in your Google Drive.
2. Use the little arrow at the end of the Google Search bar to filter your search results before you search. Maybe you can’t remember the title of the document, but you can remember that it was shared by a particular person or was a PDF. You can select these first. This arrow also works in Docs, Gmail, and all the other Google Apps.
January 31, 2015