Organize Your Life With OneNote

Are you a person that has stacks of handwritten to-do lists, meeting notes, data analysis, lesson plans, and just paper of any kind? If so, you need to read this post!

I'll be the first to admit that I never used any Microsoft product except the Office Suite until this year. A colleague introduced me to OneNote (a Microsoft product) last year, and I didn't see the value. I already had an Evernote account, so why switch to OneNote?

Earlier this year, though, I went to TCEA with several teachers from my building. One of them is a Microsoft advocate (hi, Scott!) and kept raving about OneNote, so I finally decided to see what all the fuss was about.

I can now say that I've transferred all my Evernote contents to OneNote, and I don't even use Evernote anymore! For me, OneNote is the way to go for organizing files in my personal and professional life.

In a Nutshell
The concept of OneNote is simple: create virtual binders in which you can add virtual dividers and pages for optimal organization.


Features

• Create as many binders as you want with as many tabs and pages as you want
• Color-code tabs and pages
• Use any font on your system (I'm a font snob, so that capability is import to me! Kidding...kind of)
• Add tags to notes for further organization
• Create to-do lists that you can actually check off
• Import or create tables, graphs, charts, pictures, links, screenshots, or spreadsheets so they are visible without having to click and open documents
• Upload any of the above-mentioned items -- this shows an icon with the item for you to click and open
• Record audio and video directly within the binder
• Use free page templates to easily format your pages to look however you'd wish
• Draw on a page in any color (highlight, too!)
• Insert shapes
• Export pages in a variety of formats
• Password protect sections of any binder
• Put a binder within a binder
• Share binders with others -- they can have viewing or editing rights
• See recent edits in the binder and who made them

How I Use OneNote Professionally

I have one binder all my lesson plans. It looks like this:

I have four tabs -- called "sections" in OneNote -- they're the blue, orange, pink, and purple colors you see in the picture above. Each has several pages inside. So, for instance, the "materials" tab has 26 pages -- one for each letter of the alphabet -- where I keep track of materials I have in the Science Lab and which cabinet they're in. 

After that, I have a separate section group for each of the grade levels I teach + one for PO information. When I click on a section group, it opens to what basically looks like a binder within a binder. So, for instance, this is what my 1st grade binder looks like:

In this way, I think OneNote is even more versatile than a real binder because I can't keep physical binders within physical binders. :) And obviously, you can't really put attachments into physical binders, either. 

In my grade level binders, each section contains every lesson I teach in that unit. I also have a page at the top of each section for the materials I need for that unit -- all consumables are written in green so I can make my Walmart list quickly, and any printable materials are written in red.

A look at the pages I have inside my 1st grade matter section

I also have another binder that's for teaching but doesn't have anything to do with my lesson plans:

Instead of a notepad that I'll promptly lose, I take my iPad to meetings and use the free app to take notes in the "meetings" section of this binder. You'll also notice the "PD" tab, where I take notes at any professional development workshops or conferences I attend.

I love the seemingly endless amount of capabilities OneNote has and how users can customize it to fit their life and needs!

Other Ideas

1. Student conferencing tool - Create a tab for each student. When you meet with students about, say, their reading, create a new page to document the meeting. Record a student reading and store in his/her OneNote tab so you can more easily track his/her progress. 
2. Professional development - Organize meeting, conference, or workshop notes
3. Resources - Do you have a lot of random sheets of paper you have to file away for your class? Attach them all in OneNote so they're easy to preview, find, and store.
4. Parent contact log  - Use the table option to create a log for parent contacts. You can record text or audio notes about who was contacted, what the meeting was about, the method of contact, etc. 
5. Student examples  - scan and attach student examples for big projects so you'll have something to show future students.

How to Add Social Media Buttons to an Outlook E-mail Signature

I talked in this blog post about adding social media buttons under your e-mail signature, so I thought I'd write another post to show you how to do that. :) You can click on any of the photos on this page to see an enlarged version.

1. Find social media buttons. {They're also sometimes called "social media icons."} This Pinterest board has several pins with free social media buttons for you to choose from, or you can just run a Google search for free ones.

2. Download the social media buttons to your computer. A lot of times, artists will make several different sizes of buttons and let the customer choose which ones to use. If that happens, the social media buttons will probably download in a zipped file. You can read this post to refresh your memory on how to unzip files.

3. Pick which buttons you're going to use. You can pick the size and which icons you need. For instance, in my work e-mail signature, I used a button for my science lab website ("homepage"), Instagram, Twitter, and Facebook. Since I don't personally use Facebook in the classroom, I linked to our campus's Facebook page.

The buttons I used

You won't typically find a social media icon for a homepage -- I made that one myself. But some button sets will come with a blank template. From there, I just found a picture of a white house and layered it over the blank template. You may also need to re-size buttons if none are to your liking. You can read this post to refresh your memory on editing pictures in PowerPoint.

4. In the Outlook program on your computer, click "file." 

5. Click "options" near the bottom of the list.

6. When the pop-up below shows, click "mail." 

7. Click "signatures." 

8. Type your signature as you normally would. If you want to add a funky font to your signature, you may want to refer to this post and this post.

Some information blocked for privacy reasons -- I don't actually have big green rectangles in my signature. :)

9. Click the picture frame icon (shown below) and insert a picture from your computer. {You can insert your social media button(s), your signature in a special font, our mascot/logo, or any other picture you want.} Keep doing this until all your pictures are in place.

"insert picture" icon

 10. Add link(s) to your picture(s). Select the picture you want to add the link to, as shown below {this example shows my homepage button selected}:

  
 11. While your picture is still selected, click the link button:

12. Make sure "existing file or web page" is selected, and then type the desired URL in the "address" bar. {Make sure to link directly to your profile on social media. For instance, don't link to the Twitter homepage at www.Twitter.com; rather, link to your profile page like this: www.Twitter.com/YourUsernameHere.} You can continue this process of linking individual pictures as much as you want.

 13.  When you're totally finished, click "OK" twice, as shown below:

 

If you're in CISD, shoot me an e-mail so I can see your new signature. :)