Getting Started with One Note

I feel like I have been quite slow to jump on board the OneNote bandwagon. I had previously exclusively used Evernote for most things but found that there were other, equally great options out there that cost far less that I should try.

I started out by using OneNote for taking notes when attending Professional Development. I liked that I could quickly type them up if needed or hand write them on my Samsung Galaxy Tablet with the dedicated S Pen (which I LOVE!). I soon learned that
I could use Sections and Pages to help me organise things better. It's great that I am able to instantly add photos to my notes and then annotate them as I need. One thing I found handy was at a recent PD, I wanted some photos added to my notes but knew they wouldn't look great from the camera on my tablet. So, I used One Note on my phone and the photo showed up almost instantly on my tablet. 

As I became more confident using it, I decided to take the plunge and move all my notes from Evernote into OneNote which was a fairly easy process. These are the instructions I followed to move between the two.

The main reason I am using OneNote is to write my blog posts. I like that I can have one Notebook for my blog but have different sections as needed. This is what mine looks like:

I've also recently began my Masters in Education, so naturally, I'm using One Note to keep all my study notes there. It's early days for that but I am already seeing the benefits of keeping tabs of everything there. 

As far as teaching goes, I haven't used it a great deal yet. I have seen a great post by Eleni Kyritsis on how she uses One Note for her Running Records. I have also heard of other teachers using it for tracking student assessment and Laura Bain has written a great post about ways this can be done on the Microsoft EDU blog as well as having some great articles on her own website about the topic. You can check out Laura's posts about One Note here.

The wonderful Bec West, of Talkin' Chalk fame, has created this great little video on how she has used One Note for a teacher diary (she has a number of great videos on her YouTube channel that are also well worth looking at). It's another great way to use One Note for productivity purposes. 

One Note is available on all platforms.  I use it mostly on my Mac but also on my Samsung Galaxy Tab A with S-Pen and on my phone (Samsung Galaxy 8). Occasionally I use it on my work iPad but I don't have an Apple Pencil and I don't like typing on the iPad keyboards.

Are you new to using One Note? What do you like the most so far? Are you in an education context and plan on introducing it to your students? If so, what is one thing you will try first?