10 brilliant uses for OneNote

Author: Colette Fuller

‘Amazing’…’Life changing’ ‘so useful!’ and ‘excited’ are words we frequently hear when delivering our OneNote workshops. If you aren’t already a OneNote convert then let’s see if the following will help to convince you!  

1. Taking notes! OneNote is a digital notebook so instead of lugging pens, paper and notebooks around, why not enter your notes into a OneNote notebook on your device. Structure your notebook like a ring binder and create sections and pages. Type your notes directly onto the page and if you have a Surface Pro you can handwrite with your Surface Pen too – whichever takes your fancy! Just make sure it’s saved to OneDrive and you can then access all your notes on any device. 
2. Create a digital scrapbook by embedding a variety of content types. You can insert screen clippings, images, print documents or add attachments and create links to web based content. This is great when conducting research and need to keep all your findings together in one place. 
3. Annotate documents by printing them directly into OneNote and then writing over the top of them with your Surface Pen. You could also use the built-in features in OneNote on the Insert ribbon and use highlighter pens and typed text. This is really handy when you have a large amount of documents to read and review and particularly when ‘on the go’.  
4. Do you need to gather research and view lots of websites, documents and make notes along the way? Use OneNotes linked notes feature to keep a record of which websites you’ve visited when you made each ‘note’. A hidden but brilliant feature.
5. Ever had to hunt through all your old notebooks to find a piece of important information?! With OneNote all you need to do is enter a search term into the search box and it will do the hard work for you! It scours your recent notes or even your entire notebook collection. It even searches printed documents, and handwritten notes (if your handwriting is legible!)  
6. Share your notebook with individuals or your team and collaborate within the notebook at the same time. OneNote marks who entered which note so it’s easy to keep track!  It’s a great tool when working together on projects 
7. The OneNote app, available for the both iOS and Android, allows you to take notes on the go. If you are out and about and you remember something important – don’t panic! Open OneNote on your mobile device and add a quick note directly into your online notebook. Phew! See something interesting, the OneNote app again is perfect for capturing it. Take a photo and it will insert directly into your notebook. You can even take photos of documents, posters, flyers and insert them all into your notebook. 
8. At a meeting and want to take some quick notes. Automatically insert the meeting details from your Outlook calendar, and get stuck into making notes. Need to share them with the rest of the attendees, hit ‘Send to’ and it will generate an email ready to send.  
9. Use OneNote with your students or team in the form of Class Notebook. This app takes OneNote to another level creating three distinct areas for teaching. You can structure notebooks for each of your students, a central content ‘library’ and a collaboration space. This is great for delivering content, creating a blended or flipped classroom, or an online portfolio notebook.                   
10. Conducting some research or in a meeting – can’t type your notes quickly enough? Press the Record Audio button on the Insert tab and start recording audio directly onto your page. If you make any typed notes these will be linked to the time in the audio file at the point you made the note. Clever hey!  

If you’ve got to the end of this list thinking ‘yes, I must give OneNote a try’ then book onto one of our workshops via the e3hub: www.uclan.ac.uk/e3 or watch the online course via Lynda.com: Digital notetaking with OneNote