OneNote is a free whiteboard and digital textbook app from Microsoft. You can access it free through a Microsoft account, or as part of an education M365 account.
OneNote has incredible organisational tools for sections and pages, and can embed a wide range of content on pages, as well as text you type or paste, and digital ink via a touch screen, digital pen or mouse.
Using the Notebook in Class
Students can also open their own copy of your class OneNote notebook, either as a read only document, or as part of a Class notebook in Teams. In this context they can only view the content library pages but edit the pages that you and they put into their own personal student area of the notebook.
Adding Images
Images can be added to a OneNote page by dragging ono the page from your device onto the page, or pasting from the edit menu (or the right click menu). You can also use the insert tab and choose pictures to choose pictures from your documents folders or with the online image search.
Digital Textbook
OneNote uses section groups, sections and pages (as well as nested pages) to organise content in any way that suits you. You can create folders of class lessons, one-off lesson pages right through to a digital textbook for your entire academic year. By combining text, images and video as well as interactive media like forms and links you can create an engaging learning solution that can be accessed on any device app or in the browser.
Printing
You can print OneNote pages should you need to, but you can also print other document types into OneNote, This provides an alternative way to add content to OneNote.
MP3 and Recording
Many file types, including audio can be added to a OneNote page. In the music classroom audio files, mp3, wav and MIDI files can all be added to a page, as a way to share examples to learners, collect ideas or make listening libraries for independent work.
Adding Files to a Page
By dragging or pasting a range of file types onto the page you can choose to either place them on the page where they will stay like a folder, or embed them into the page to be viewed as if open.
Graphic Scores and Tables
You can create a range of graphic scores by either pasting images or creating using the shapes tools built into the app. You can also use the add table tool to great effect to create a range of table based guides and templates for student tasks.
Listening Tasks
By embedding audio recordings or recording straight to the page, you can create bespoke listening tasks for learners, where they can listen to the examples as many times as they need to, and respond directly on the page as either text, ink or audio recording of their own.
Embedding Video
Pasting a link to any of the big video providers (such as YouTube, Vimeo, etc) will automatically embed a small player on the page which can be resized to suit your preference. You can also embed other video content, such as FlipGrid.
Linear Lesson with Video
By organising the content in different ways on the page, you can support learners who need a more linear, step by step approach, as well as those that prefer a more freely explored scrapbook-like layout of content.