Microsoft Class Notebook
It is explained how teachers can use the Class Notebook in Microsoft Teams.
Gallery
Welcome to Class Notebook
The interface of Class Notebook is shown on the first picture below. To open it the teacher just clicks on this name in the list of tabs in Teams (see 1). If one clicks book's icon (see 2), then the list of available pages is opened or concealed. The column under the name of the Class Notebook includes: Welcome Section, Collaboration Space, Content Library, Teachers Only section, and Personal Notebooks of Students. Using "Add Section" button (see 4) the teacher can add more sections if necessary. The second column includes the pages available in the section, which is highlighted in the first column. One can add pages to each section with the button "Add page" (see 3). Any teacher of the class sees the personal note book of each student as well as can read and edit any page in any section in the list. Any students can edit her or his own Notebooks, cannot see the Notebooks of other students and Teachers Only Section, and can read Welcome Section as well as Collaboration Space. Whether they can write in Collaboration Space depends on the teacher's decision. By default, this option is turned on. On the one hand, it looks like sometime it is good to turn this option on. On the other hand, this option allows students to copy solutions. However, Microsoft Teams include a control program "Insights." It can be installed as a tab in Teams by pressing "+" and choosing "Insights" in the list of applications available for installation. "Insights" provides a total control of students in Class Notebooks of Microsoft Teams. The teacher can see which files were opened by which student with the indication of the exact time, when a homework or test was submitted, attendance at all meetings, etc. Because of "Insights" it is very important to run all tutorials in the Class Notebook of the Team.
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The Main Page of Class Notebook
If you press tab "Class Notebook" (see 1) and press on the book's icon (see 2), then to the right of 2 you find the list of teacher's sections followed by personal sections of students. Teachers can see what students write or type in their sections. If you click on any of these sections, then on the right window, you find all pages available in the clicked section. Any page can be opened in the third window of the Class Notebook, You can add sections by pressing "Add section" (see 4), and you can add pages by pressing "Add pages" (see 3).
Pic. 1
The Main Page of Class Notebook
The above picture shows how one can open materials in the Class Note Book. If you click at a place on the third window (see 4), then you conceal both windows on the left, see the picture below.
Pic. 2
The Main Page of Class Notebook
To turn student's attention to important sections of materials, teachers may use stickers.
Pic. 3
The Main Page of Class Notebook
To insert materials in the Class Notebook, I press "Insert" (see 1) and choose "Insert File Printout" (see 2). This option requires pdf files only. For pictures, you can use the tab "Picture." Using the standard Windows 10 program "Snip & Sketch," you can take screen shorts (these are "png" files) of your materials and insert them as pictures.
Pic. 4
The Main Page of Class Notebook
This picture shows the picture's options available.
Pic. 5
The Main Page of Class Notebook
To get access to stickers click the ellipsis (see 2) and choose "Stickers" (see 3).
Pic. 6
The Main Page of Class Notebook
To choose the sticker, I press the icon of the "Fruit Crew" and then press 2. The icon will be inserted at the cursor's position before the choice.
Pic. 7
The Main Page of Class Notebook
The member of the "Fruit Crew" is inserted in the chosen position in the Class Notebook.
Pic. 8
The Main Page of Class Notebook
There is a set of stickers, in which teachers can edit text. This family has a green icon (see 1). Then you just click on any member of the family (see 2).
Pic. 9
The Main Page of Class Notebook
A teacher can edit the text in box 3.
Pic. 10
The Main Page of Class Notebook
You press the button "Done" (see 4) to place the sticker in the chosen place.
Pic. 11
The Main Page of Class Notebook
It is an example of use of editable stickers.
Pic. 12
The Main Page of Class Notebook
One can combine the stickers.
How to organize Home Reading in Class Notebook?
A standard semester lasts fifteen weeks of which two are used for the midterm and mock examinations. One week is reserved for a survey. It follows that there is a place for twelve different lectures. Every online lecture is recorded to "Recordings" in the "Files" tab of Teams. It is useful to prepare twelve presentations in PowerPoint or Beamer (if you use LaTeX). However, it is also necessary to force students to study textbooks to increase positive outcome in learning. Class Notebook has the section "Content Library," where all these materials can be placed. The page "Lecture 04 Library" was created with the button "Add page" at the bottom of this pane. Then I used "Insert File Printout" (see 3 below) to print out into this page a section of my new book on Linear Algebra. Since it is my book which I typeset in LaTeX, I can easily arrange its sections in the pdf format. If Adobe Acrobat is available for you, then you can extract any part of the textbook as a pdf file. Another option is to use ABBY FineReader PDF 15, which is less expensive. There is a possibility to convert a pdf file into the Word file, edit it and save as pdf again. The reason is that only pdf files can be printed out into the pages of Class Notebook. How to edit PDF files in Word is explained in the video by Kevin Stratvert (see it below). However, for textbooks of Mathematics, the result looks very poor since not all formulas will be displayed correctly. An essential editing using Word Formulas will be required as a rule. There is an alternative in such cases. One can use "Insert Pictures" instead. To be able to perform required actions you need screen shorts of your textbook page by page. Windows 10 include a nice program "Snip & Sketch". The program can be opened in a separate window, or it can be activated with the key's combination "Win+Shift+S," which darkens the screen. Then with the click of the mouse it is possible to select a rectangle for the screen short. As soon as the mouse left button is released the shot of this rectangle is taken automatically and appears in an uploading window. Using buttons at the top one can write with a pen or mark important places of the text. The picture is saved in a required directory in the economy .png format. Now, when all pictures and files for home reading are ready, we can place them in the Class Notebook to the "Content Library" pages. I click in the area marked as 4 on Pic. 1 and obtain the full view of the third window in Class Notebook, see Pic. 2. The actions required to insert the printout or picture are shown on Pic. 3-4. To insert stickers, the teacher places the cursor at the required position and presses "Insert" followed by clicking "..." (see fig. 5). Finally, one clicks the icon "Stickers" and a huge list of different groups of pictures opens in the right pane. The narrow left column lists the groups of stickers. One of them can be edited. This one can be used to stick important remarks on the margins. Other groups are useful as separators.
Pic. 13
The Only Teacher's Section
Only teachers can see this section. It is an ideal place for all graded tasks. On Pic. 13 I show a quiz. All tasks should be distributed through the "Assignments" tab in Teams. The reason is that in this case they all are analyzed by "My Analytics."
Pic. 14
Assignments
Add I click the tab "Assignments" and then click "Create."
Pic. 15
Assignments
Since I am going to distribute my Quiz 04-6 from the teacher's section of Class Notebook to the page "Tests" of every student in her or his personal section of Class Notebook, I click "Assignments" in the drop-down menu. Option "Tests" is used for distribution of tasks in Forms, mostly for multiple-choice questions.
Pic. 16
Assignments
In the name field, I type Quiz 04-6. I open the "Add a category" field and type "Quiz." This action is important for "Insights," since then it can show you student's average grades in every category separately. The field "Instructions" is not obligatory, but it is reasonable to remind students some requirements the teacher asks them to follow. Do not forget to indicate the maximal number of points assigned for the task. If you leave it blank, then it will be more difficult to grade this task later. By default, the system does not distribute tasks to students, who join the class after this task was distribute. But you may change this. Field 7 is the most important field, since it specifies the times of delivery and submissions. I discuss this topic later.
Pic. 17
Assignments
I fill field 1 and 2.
Pic. 18
Assignments
Add I fill the field "Instructions" using the edit tools available.
Pic. 19
Assignments
By default, pressing on the clip "Add resources" results in a new window, which gives four options to attach the test. The best choice is determined by the way this team was created. If the team was created manually, then the teacher does not change teaching materials significantly. Therefore, she or he removes students and adds new ones by hands. In such a case, it is better to keep all tests in Class Notebook. If every semester all classes are created automatically with SDS, then keeping tests in the Class Notebook is not a good idea, since there are no simple tools to move tests from one Class Notebook to another. In such a case, the choice of OneDrive looks better. Finally, if teams are created by Skooler's mConnect+ automatically, and all classes are filled with students dynamically, the choice of Class Notebook is again the best. If you click onto "Teams," then you can find only folders in the other teams, but you cannot access their Class Notebooks.
Pic. 20
Assignments
I press "Only for teachers."
Pic. 21
Assignments
In this case, I choose the third option, since I know the location of my quiz in my Class Notebook.
Pic. 22
Assignments
Add I choose "Quiz 04-6" and press the button indicated on the picture.
Pic. 23
Assignments
I choose the page with my quiz and press the button.
Pic. 24
Assignments
I indicate that four are the maximal grade for my quiz.
Pic. 25
Assignments
It is possible to fix the Grading Policy. You just click "Add grading policy" and follow the instructions.
Pic. 26
Assignments
You may fill the given fields or change the table.
Pic. 27
Assignments
The check mark in 1 allows the teacher to fix the time of this quiz distribution. The date can be fixed in the left field, whereas the exact time of delivery in the right part. Notice, the table, which is shown below, allows the teacher to edit minutes. The same is true for 2 and 4. There is the third line in this form. The teacher can activate it by a check mark, or leave it as it is. In the first case, the test cannot be submitted after the deadline. In the second case, it can be submitted after the deadline. However, the system indicates the delay in the submission. My experience shows that the best practice is to fix the deadline for home tasks, as well as for multiple-choice exams in forms. For other tests, it is better to leave this box blank.
Pic. 28
Assignments
The list on the left specifies times in 30 minutes intervals. You choose the closest time to the time you plan.
Pic. 29
Assignments
You edit the chosen time manually, if it is necessary.
Pic. 30
Assignments
If this task is designed for the whole class, then you leave the field "All students" (see 1) as it is. Otherwise, press the field and chose required students from the drop-down menu.
OneNote for Windows 10
Microsoft OneNote for Windows 10 is not a part of Office 365 but can be downloaded and installed free from the Microsoft Store. If OneNote for Windows is installed when the PC is running Microsoft Teams, then it will be synchronized with all Class Notebooks available. It synchronizes itself with the Class Notebooks in Teams only if your PC is running the latest version of Windows 10 with genuine Microsoft's license.
This software provides a very comfortable interface for Teams Class Notebooks. Its abilities in formulae typesetting exceed those of Teams Class Notebook and are actually the same as in the desktop version of Word except for the LaTeX option.
A teacher can easily prepare home works and tests with it. If this teacher runs a small class and does not have examination rooms, then these tasks are shown during the assignment process. If there are several examination rooms, then a teacher can use distribution options of OneNote as it is shown in the Gallery below. The task will be delivered to every student of each examination room. However, she or he cannot submit it for grading. The teacher will be forced to grade the task in OneNote, which is not so convenient. Therefore, it is better to copy the task with the mouse and paste it into pages of teacher's space in each examination room. After that the task can be distributed via the Assignments function for each examination room separately. A Teacher can also print out pdf files and insert pictures into the corresponding pages of OneNote for Windows 10.
Gallery
Exams in Examination Rooms
1. Select "Cross Notebook Distribution"
2. Select Examination Rooms and Press "Next".
3. Select the destination and press "Distribute"
4. The destribution is running
5. The distribution is finished.
The very top of Butakovka
Typesetting Math in OneNote for Windows 10
The Gallery shows below how to insert formulas in OneNote. There are two regimes in this program - the formula regime and the textual regime. To switch between them one should press "Equation" at the top of the window. When you press "Equation," the panel "Equation Tools" appears on the right. It includes three tabs: "Recent,' 'Symbols," and "Structures." Each panel has a number of entries specified in the left column. This panel is more convenient than top panels in Class Notebook, OneNote, and Word. There are eleven entries in "Structures." This panel is the most important one. It allows one to construct the formula to be typeset and then fill in empty squares either with symbols or with other structures. There are simple rules to be followed to avoid problems.
Rule 1. Always press "Equation" when you finish a formula to return to the textual mode.
Rule 2. One should never type to the very right margin of OneNote. Stop approximately when you covered already about two-thirds of the width.
Rule 3. One should never change the line in the formula mode.
Any violation of these rules may result in problems with synchronization. As a consequence, the teacher may not be able to see the work submitted. It is almost always possible to grade this work if the teacher opens it in OneNote for Windows 10. However, this creates problems in grading.
Gallery
It is shown in this Gallery how one can create a definite integral in OneNote for Windows 10 and find its value.
1. Select "Equation"
2. Select "Equation"
3. Select "Structures"
4. Symbols
5. Typeseting Integral's Structure
6. Inserting new structures and symbols
7. Completing the fraction structure
8. The formula is ready
9. The value of the Integral
10. How to find its value?
11. You can either drag the result to put it into the formula or press "Enter" and drag.
12. It is ready!
How to typeset a 4x4 matrix in One Note for Windows 10?
The standard way of typesetting matrices does not allow one to create matrices of size greater than three. I explain here a number of tricks to overcome this difficulty. The first one is to use structures tab. To begin with, let us make an empty square included in parentheses, see Pic. 1. Then we put the cursor into the box and insert a 2x2 matrix, see Pic 2. Now, insert an empty 2x2 matrix in four entries of the original matrix, see Pic. 3-4, and obtain the structure of a 4x4 matrix. It remains to fill it in, see Pic. 5. In fact, we constructed a block matrix. A disadvantage of these type settings is that it cannot be properly aligned. There are other techniques, which make use of LaTeX embedded in Word. You can find necessary operations in Pic. 6-8. The matrix obtained can be copied and pasted into OneNote. One can even create a number of templates of matrices of different sizes in OneNote. The third option is to allow students to use the site https://www.codecogs.com/letex/eqneditor.php . The formals from this site can be downloaded in GIF format and inserted in OneNote for Windows 10.
Gallery
We A 4x4 matrix in OneNote for Windows 10.