Applies to
Microsoft Office OneNote® 2003 Service Pack 1

By Mona Slaven

As a teacher, I'm always looking for efficient ways to store information and to recapture it for immediate use in the classroom. As keen as I am on databases (I'm a Microsoft Certified Database Administrator), a dedicated database would be overkill for a classroom presentation. By the time I open Microsoft Office Access 2003 and run a query, my poor students will be snoozing. For teachers, information stores are only as good as how easy they are to access. Enter OneNote. OneNote serves as a storehouse for notes, facts, answers, and miscellaneous information — and it puts it all at my fingertips when I take the stage in front of a class.

Note  Some of the features or functionality described in this topic are available only if you have installed Microsoft Office OneNote 2003 Service Pack 1. To learn more about the service pack and how to download it, see Service pack features in OneNote 2003.

OneNote in action

Let's say you're giving a slide show presentation and a student asks a question or you want to refer to a little-known fact or to a chart that isn't in the courseware. OneNote is like rubbing the bottle that contains the genie. If you leave OneNote minimized in the taskbar during your presentation, all you have to do is maximize it, enter a search term, and press ENTER to find the information you are looking for. Like magic, your note appears. It's an easy transition to minimize OneNote when you're finished, and then resume with the presentation.

Preparing for classes with OneNote

OneNote has a familiar interface (reminiscent of Microsoft Office Word), which makes setting up OneNote for the classroom both familiar and comfortable. Perhaps you teach several different classes and would like to use OneNote to organize your thoughts or lesson plans for each class. This can be accomplished in five easy steps.

Create sections

First, try creating a specific section for each of your classes. To create sections (designated as tabs across the top of the window), click New Section on the Insert menu, and then type your section (or class) name on the section tab. The following illustration shows a glimpse of how I've organized my classes in sections in my notebook.

Tip

You can also create a new section from the task pane. To do this, on the File menu, click New, and then click Section in the task pane.

Create notes

Once you've created your sections, you can begin taking notes. To create notes for different classes, you can use a variety of methods:

• Type directly into the notes window. There's no need to save — OneNote saves your work automatically.
• Copy and paste material from other files.
• Scan the material you want to copy and save it either in .bmp, .jpg, or .tif format. Navigate to where you saved the file, select it, and then drag it to the location in OneNote where you want to place the image.
• Drag links, text, or images from Web pages into your notes as you are doing research on the Web.
• Import an image from a file on your computer or directly from a scanner or camera.
• Insert documents as picture files, and then comment on these images in your notes.
• Capture anything on your screen — including details from programs, Web pages, documents — that you want to refer to or share with the class while you're teaching. Screen clippings are similar to using the PRINT SCREEN key to make a copy of the screen, but better — you control exactly what portion of the screen you want to capture

Customize note flags

You can customize note flags to quickly identify and categorize your notes.

First, let me give an example of why you would want to customize note flags. Say you want to be able to quickly identify notes you've jotted down that you may want to incorporate into future lesson plans. After you create the note, you can flag the note with a note flag you've customized as "Lesson Plan." Later, when you sit down to write lesson plans, you can search for all the "Lesson Plan" flags you've used and incorporate those notes into your work.

To customize note flags:

1. On the Format menu, point to Note Flags, and then click Customize My Note Flags.
2. In the Note Flags Summary task pane, click the flag you want to change or define, and then click Modify. You can change the name, symbol, font color, and highlight color.

Customizations do not affect notes you have already flagged.

Assign note flags

Now you can assign the note flags to the title by clicking in or on the title, and then selecting the correct flag from the Note Flags toolbar. (If the toolbar is hidden, right-click a toolbar, and then click Note Flags on the shortcut menu.)

Particularly helpful to me is the fact that I can assign more than one note flag to a specific note. For those times when I can't remember the exact keyword, it allows me to search by note flag classification.

Alphabetize page tabs

Finally, I like to alphabetize all of my page tabs. The hidden benefit is that now my page list is also in alphabetical order.

Here's how:

1. Click a page tab and drag it sideways until a small triangle appears next to the page tab.

   To select more than one page, hold down CTRL and click the tab for each page you want.

2. Drag the page tab up or down until the triangle indicator is at the location where you want to move the page.

If you want to sort your notes, click Page List on the View menu. The Page List task pane appears. You can use the task pane to sort by section, title, or date.

Keeping in sync

Maybe you need to keep information synchronized between a laptop and a desktop computer, both of which you use for teaching. Because all OneNote (.one) files are stored in the My Notebook folder, it's easy to use an external drive or a network to transfer and synchronize between computers by copying the My Notebook folder. This is where a removable USB flash drive can really come in handy!

Do you take notes for teaching on a Windows Mobile™-based Pocket PC or Smartphone? When you connect your Pocket PC or Smartphone to your computer and open OneNote, notes taken on that device are automatically copied to the Copied from Device section of your notebook. Taking notes on a Pocket PC or Smartphone is a great way to capture thoughts throughout the day that you may want to use later while constructing your class plans in OneNote.

We all know students want to be entertained, and OneNote gives me a quiet advantage by providing immediate access to information. You can use OneNote to jot down all the tidbits of information you use to spice up your lectures — those that are only as worthwhile as how quickly you can access them! "Never Let Them See You Sweat" is the instructor's battle cry. With OneNote, you'll be sweating a whole lot less. For the on-the-spot instructor, OneNote delivers.

Mona Slaven has MCSE, MCDBA, MCSA, Security, A+, Network+, and Microsoft Office Specialist certifications. She is an independent contractor who teaches A+ and Network+ Certification at the college and corporate level. She is also co-founder of Huntsville Office Systems Users Group (www.hosug.com) in Huntsville, AL. You can contact her at mslaven@kinology.net.