I AM STARTING MY FOURTH semester using Class Notebooks and have learned from the experts [1] the importance of exporting and archiving old data as one large PDF or XPS file. Because of all the practical work contained inside those OneNote files, I have committed to saving those archives for at least seven years, a statutory limit for some forms of electronic data.
Exporting a Classroom OneNote is similar to exporting a normal OneNote file.
1. On the File menu, click Save As.
2. Go to the Select Format area and choose your export format.
3. I recommend PDF as the export format because that is the format friendliest to formal discovery processes.
4. Click Save As.
5. Select a place to save your work. I harvest the entire directory where a course resides, often archiving audio and video clips in the process.
6. Enter a name for the file, and then click Save.
7. Try to open and view the saved Classroom OneNote.
I'm pushing all my course work onto a shared institutional space and pointing to my archives by file name from shared documents residing inside institutional cloud services. I consider these archives as my legacy and the work of saving and exporting is tantamount to an exit interview. I've made a page called "Note to Self" at the top of the Classroom OneNote where I talk openly about the running of the course, the snags I encountered and the major learning objectives I saw accomplished.
I wish we had a OneNote Staff Notebook that fellow lecturers were encouraged to use. I've made one such staff notebook but there's little imperative for using the shared asset. The capability for sharing staff notebooks exists inside the Office 365 services that support nearly every third level academic institution in Ireland. I've seen OneNote Staff Notebooks set up with personal workspaces for every staff member or lecturer, a content library for shared information, and a collaboration space for everyone to work together--all one click away from email and calendaring.
Like several other educators, [2] I have run Evernote and OneNote side-by-side for several years. I believe Microsoft OneNote is just as good as Evernote. Moreover, OneNote has been engineered as the digital equivalent of a binder, which means both lecturers and students have more organizational control. I still have a large chunk of data inside Evernote and I really enjoy Evernote extensions inside Chrome but I have become more organized with my note-taking and very dependent upon searching for material by using single search with OneNote. I can even find hand written notes and video files from OneNote search.
So it's off to another semesters with Classroom OneNote, starting with reviewing what students did best with their OneNote during the preceding academic year.
1. Microsoft -- "Collaborating in the Classroom with OneNote"
2. Saikut Basu -- "10 Awesome OneNote Tips You Should Be Using" accessed September 13, 2013.
