Today's guest blog post comes from the amazing Lee Whitmarsh, a longstanding MIEExpert in the UK, who is having an amazing impact on his students through his use of OneNote in his teaching as well as having a positive influence to inspire many colleagues in his own institution. Read Lee's story to here how in his own words. 

My name is Lee Whitmarsh and I am the Curriculum Leader for Art, Design and Technology at Alsager School in Cheshire UK. I have been given the opportunity to be part of the wonderful MIEE programme which has allowed me to develop my use of technology in teaching with students, parents and staff. I believe creative and effective use of technology is fundamental in building a progressive educational experience for all. The experience of working as part of the MIEE team has profoundly changed the way I teach, think about and engage with education.

What are the benefits of using OneNote?

I can not speak highly enough of the benefits of having OneNote as an integral part of your daily teaching toolkit.  We have developed our use of OneNote across three pedagogic areas

• For students with the A Level Photography course. This has cascaded, and we have shared this approach with staff across the school who now use OneNote across such diverse areas as Music, Food Technology, English and Engineering.
• For staff with a Faculty OneNote and individual OneNote Teacher planners
• For Curriculum Management and faculty development and reflection.

OneNote has given time back to staff in the classroom as the content is accessible 24/7 from any device in and out of school; enabling us to share resources, approaches, track student progress, give immediate formative feedback via digital inking, photographing student work, written teacher/peer/self feedback and video and sound recording of tutorials.

What impact has the use of OneNote had on staff and students?

I have been working with staff from across the school sharing my MIEE experiences and inspirations from other fellow MIEE.  I have asked a colleague to share his experiences using OneNote.

“OneNote is important as my personal hub. Prior to OneNote I would have folders with various documents and print-outs for each class and course taught (Graphic Products, Resistant Materials and Engineering). Now each class has a page with sub-pages for individual students, data points, SEND information and so on. Its great how I can 'print' documents to these areas with the click of a button - especially my to-read section - from any of my devices.  Microsoft's multi-platform strategy has been a game changer. 

 I also used OneNote to create a digital textbook for an A-level theory class. Here I gathered information from books and PowerPoint presentations along with diagrams, videos, hyperlinks to other sites and past papers. Everything in one place ready to help them learn or revise.” 

Speaking to students they have told me that Onenote allows them to develop their projects at their own pace and has enabled them to move forward more effectively in and out of lessons as they have a digital hub to support their learning.  Having OneNote across multiple devices has allowed students to have this digital hub with them 24/7 via the OneNote app.

In terms of learning outcomes our entire Photography A Level is now run digitally through OneNote and we are seeing significant improvement in the student attainment which in turn has seen an increase in the number of students taking the subject.  We have 40 A-Level students this year and without OneNote we would not have the opportunity to give differentiated formative feedback direct into the student’s notebooks and manage the course as effectively as we are currently doing.

Follow the great work of Lee Whitmarsh further

Daily Edventures Blog post 

“OneNote has enabled us to work with different people, different cultures, and just collaborate and share with students what’s going on outside the classroom.” – Lee Whitmarsh, UK

Lee's own blog site

https://lwhitmarshblog.wordpress.com/

OneNote Central Twitter Link – Fantastic resource and support for OneNote

https://twitter.com/OneNoteC

Lee's Twitter account

Tweets by l_whitmarsh