view: full | short | titles only
from Malcolm Wilson
Microsoft Office Lens (or Office Lens, or Microsoft Lens) is a versatile digital tool which can be helpful in many situations in an educational context. A teacher may wish to quickly grab the text from a page of a printed document to edit, to annotate and to share with a class. Office Lens can do …
from Malcolm Wilson
Do you want to present with panache, style or flair? If you or your learners spend a lot of time trying to make your PowerPoint slides look good, then welcome to PowerPoint’s inbuilt Designer or Design Ideas to power up your PowerPoint presentation in the click of a button! With just a few clicks in …
from Malcolm Wilson
If you are looking for a way to support learners (or indeed, yourself!) to be clear, expressive and confident when communicating & presenting to others using digital tools, then Microsoft PowerPoint Presenter Coach is a handy feature of Microsoft PowerPoint. It’s built in to PowerPoint whether on the web, on desktop/laptop or mobile device, and …
from Malcolm Wilson
At the end of each school year you may be moving from one establishment to another, or from one local authority in Scotland to another. You’ll want to be aware of how your move may change your access to your Glow account and actions you’ll need to take before the move. The following guides may …
from Malcolm Wilson
Do your learners create graphs in your classroom? Perhaps after they undertake a survey, such as a traffic survey, favourite food, eye colour, or something related to an area of study in the curriculum? There’s a whole range of digital tools available to help create graphs and charts (have a look at this blogpost “Fun or fear? Spreadsheets for Problem Solving in the Primary Classroom – fun over fear!” for a host of ideas and links to digital tools for using spreadsheets in the classroom).
Microsoft Excel is one of the most well-known and widely used digital tools for creating spreadsheets, which can easily be used to create graphs and charts. Microsoft Excel Online is available to all Glow users in Scottish schools as part of Microsoft Office 365. Excel Online is available anytime, anywhere with online access so can be accessed at home or at school (it can also tie neatly into the desktop version and mobile apps for smartphones and tablets, so that information created on one device in one location, is accessible for editing and updating on another device elsewhere).
Excel Online can be used to create spreadsheets from the beginning (or you can upload an existing Excel spreadsheet from your computer to make it available to edit online thereafter). You can keep it private to you in your own OneDrive (the online cloud storage with massive capacity available to every Glow user in Scottish schools). Or you can, at any time, choose to make a Excel Online spreadsheet visible to other users of your choice – and you can choose whether to allow them to just be able to read it without being able to make changes, or you can give other users the access rights to be able to jointly edit the spreadsheet with you. If your class is using Microsoft Teams then a Microsoft Excel spreadsheet can be created in the shared files so that all members of the class can automatically collaborate without the need to find and add specific usernames.
Have a look at the Sway presentation here for a step-by-step guide for learners to create an Excel spreadsheet in Excel Online in their OneDrive in Microsoft office 365 via Glow and to share this with other Glow users to be able to jointly edit the same spreadsheet. This has steps outline for creating a table, into which the results of a class traffic survey can be entered. From this there are steps shown to guide as to how to create a bar chart, to sort the information in the table, to share with other users and for them to add comments so that questions can be asked about the information.
Microsoft Excel – there is a wide range of resources online using Microsoft Excel as the tool to put spreadsheets in a context suitable for use by pupils in a primary classroom. Some links have been provided below. Some of these provide tutorials in the use of Excel while others provide the ready-made files along with classroom teaching notes. Excel Online is available for free to schools using Microsoft Office 365 (all schools in Scotland using Glow can access Microsoft Excel Online as part of Office 365. It’s available in OneDrive or as part of Microsoft Teams for classes so you can either create spreadsheets individually or collectively so that multiple learners can collaborate on the same Excel Online spreadsheet at the same time on different devices from anywhere).
Click here for some guides to undertaking basic tasks in Microsoft Excel Online
The Beginner’s Guide to Microsoft Excel Online – a handy guide by Matthew Guay describing with screenshot illustrations how to undertake a variety of tasks in Microsoft Excel Online, from starting a new spreadsheet file, looking at options in the menu ribbons, applying functions, adding charts and tables, using the survey tool, sharing and collaborating with others, using comments and more.
Pivot Tables in Microsoft Excel Online– while pivot tables are not a function of spreadsheets which beginners may likely use, it may be handy to know that Microsoft Excel Online has this feature and that this link provides a guide to how to use them in the online version of Microsoft Excel
Users of Glow can access Microsoft Excel Online from within Glow by clicking on the OneDrive tile on the Glow Launchpad (from where Excel Online can be accessed from the 9-square waffle), or via Microsoft Teams Files tab (for Excel Online spreadsheets shared with the rest of the class Team) or directly from the Microsoft Excel Online login https://office.live.com/start/Excel.aspx entering the Glow email address – which is usually something along the lines of the form gw17surnameforename@glow.sch.org which will then take you to the usual Glow login page.
Co-edit a Microsoft Excel Online spreadsheet – here a link to show the steps to collaborating on a Microsoft Excel Online spreadsheet with multiple users.
How to add a chart in Microsoft Excel Online
Excel Online within Office 365 tutorial – shared by Edinburgh University, with descriptions which apply also to Glow users
from Malcolm Wilson
OneNote is a free tool which works online through a web browser, or through apps for mobile devices, or as a desktop software (it’s also part of Microsoft Office 2013).
And it’s available to users of Microsoft Office 365 (so all Scottish school pupils and staff with Glow access have this as part of the features available automatically to them via their Glow login).
It’s like a ring-binder where you can choose to have multiple sections (like card-dividers in a real ring-binder), and within each section you can have multiple pages. And it all synchronises on multiple devices should you wish it to do so.
So you may be a teacher who may have sections in a OneNote file for each subject, and within each subject pages for each pupil. Each page can contain text, photographs, comments, web links, audio or video so may be an evidence gathering tool for a teacher. A picture to show evidence of a piece of practical work can be instantly inserted via mobile device straight to a pupil’s page for a particular subject in the OneNote file.
Pupils could create a OneNote of their own and use it as a learning log, an eportfolio, a place to jot down their notes, links to resources, documents, websites, etc. And a OneNote stored online can be shared with another user – so a pupil may create a piece of work in a OneNote file for a particular topic, subject or teacher and share access to that so it could be shared only with that one pupil and their teacher.
The creator of the OneNote file can choose to make it so that the teacher can add comments to the document for feedback to the pupil, directly on the document. And in some versions they can also add an audio file of feedback straight into the page.
Here’s a video tutorial showing how OneNote might be used as a pupil topic research tool
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=i0hfsJaHTOM
Here’s a video showing OneNote being used as a learning journal shared by the pupil with their teacher http://www.youtube.com/watch?&v=pAubfxGwRJQ
Here’s a video by educator Lisa Cuthbert-Novak showing how her learners use OneNote to chronicle their learning journey in writing, particularly noting the reflections the pupils added to what they were learning as they added examples of their work, their thoughts on the process and links to resources they found:
Choose Your Own Adventure stories – this links to a blog post by Pip Cleaves describing how using the facility to add links to different pages in a OneNote file pupils can create stories with alternative texts for different junctures in a story for their readers.
Here’s a link to a basic guide to One Note Online: http://goo.gl/tbVYsL
These two links below also give an overview of the features of the different versions of OneNote, whether the online version, the full desktop software version, or the apps specific to different devices:
OneNote Toolkit for Teachers – a site which provides guides, examples and hints and tips for teachers looking to use OneNote in a classroom context. This comes from the Microsoft Educator Network
If schools are signed up to Office 365 then they also have the additional option to use OneNote’s education-specific class tool OneNote Class Notebook Creator where a OneNote class file can be set up so that individual sections or pages can have different access rights or permissions. So a teacher may have a pupil’s page in a class OneNote file shared with only that pupil and the teacher, meaning that nobody else can see that pupil’s work except the teacher and the specific pupil. Or a group of named pupils could have access to specific pages for collaborative working. This is designed to make management easier for the teacher and give more options for different purposes.
Note that in Office 365 the OneNote Class Notebook Creator needs to first be enabled by whoever administer’s the school’s establishment site – once it’s installed teachers can then set up their own class Notebooks.
Here’s a video showing how to get started setting up and using OneNote Class Creator so that a teacher can set up a personal workspace for every learner, a content library for resources, and a collaboration space for lessons and activities https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sVF90nP9qGQ
Here's a related interactive online guide to setting up and using OneNote Class notebook creator - listen to the information, move on pages at your own speed.
OneNote and Assessment – this is a blogpost by Chantelle Davies describing how they see the use of OneNote for assessment with a focus on the audio and video features providing the facility for teachers to create a workspace for every pupil, to offer a content library for adding material, and a collaboration space, with which pupils can work in their space and teachers can give feedback in the same place. The work and feedback can be accessed anywhere any time.
OneNote for Teachers – a comprehensive site which details how OneNote can be got for any device, how it can be set up for use, examples of ways in which it can be used, help guides and much more – all within a classroom context.
Microsoft Office has also produced a visual walk-through guide “Getting Started with the OneNote Class Notebook Creator: A Walkthrough for Teachers”