I have created a OneNote Class Notebook for each of my synchronous, remote classes this semester. I planned to use it to capture class notes without having to scan them and upload them, to save emails to and from students with various excuses, explanations and promises, and to serve as a shared space to work in office hours and save office hours notes.

It does all that.

As part of a support class for a College-level class I have students complete vocabulary lists for each chapter. Since the support portion is asynchronous this semester I would not be as easily able to show there the vocabulary list was in the book. So, I distributed the list of words to the students.

First, I went into the notebook in the online version of OneNote. I clicked on the Class Notebook tab. This added a navigation ribbon. I distributed a new section called Vocabulary.

Then, I created a page with instructions and the vocabulary list in my teacher section. With that page selected (I originally did not have that page selected and almost sent everyone a second copy of the class notebook user instructions) I distributed the page.

Now with just some instructions in HFCOnline each student has a place to complete the vocabulary assignment where I can grade it and they can access it for the rest of the semester.

I had never noticed the Class Notebook tab before. Now that I see it exists I notice it is also in the desktop version for Windows 10. It appears to sync, however, at the speed of Microsoft. The new section has not synced with my desktop copy of the course. I’ll update the post if I have somehow created a horrible sync error.

Doubtless this is much easier if I had just made a Teams site. Maybe next pandemic.