Office 365 for the Classroom
Using Office 365 for Teaching and Learning
Built with teaching and learning in mind, the Office 365 suite includes powerful tools and features designed to increase engagement and enable accessibility in the classroom. Transform your classroom and give every student a voice with Office 365 tools including:
- OneNote - Capture and organize all your class materials in OneNote, your digital notebook.
- Sway - Create interactive lessons and spark student creativity using Sway.
- Stream - Upload, view, and share videos securely.
- Teams - Collaborate and share information via a common space.
These apps, along with the entire Office 365 suite, are available to all current KU faculty, staff, and students and are compatible for use on any Windows, Android, OS X, or iOS device.
Below are some examples of how you can utilize Office 365 tools in the classroom:
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Video Lectures in PowerPoint 365
Users can create engaging video presentations using only PowerPoint and a Windows computer with a webcam attached.
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Using Teams as an alternative to Zoom
As an alternative to Zoom the Office of Information Technology recommends Microsoft Teams, which is part of the Office 365 suite and can be accessed from any web browser without downloading a desktop application. As a KU user you already have access to Teams along with all Office 365 apps. For more information about using Teams please check out our Solution Center article, which includes instructions for both hosts and participants.
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Facilitating a Flipped Class with Office 365 Tools
Setup your lessons:
- Build lessons using software such as Sway, Learning Glass, or Mediasite Desktop Recorder to create a video presentation with audio voice-over.
- Share resources with students via OneNote.
Students outside of class:
- Students can watch these lessons on their smartphone, on their laptop or desktop, or in a computer lab on campus.
- Students can pause, rewind, and re-watch the lessons. They also need to summarize lessons, take notes, and ask questions that they need help answering.
Students in class:
- In class, students review their knowledge through classroom conversations with the whole class or in small groups.
- Students discuss important parts of the lesson, ask each other their questions and discuss and compare answers.
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Researching with Office 365
OneNote Web Clipper
With the OneNote web clipper, you can save and annotate anything from the web to your OneNote Notebook to reference at a later time, even offline. The OneNote Web Clipper extension is available for Chrome, Firefox, and Edge. Safari is not currently supported.
OneNote Researcher Tab
Using Microsoft's Bing search engine, the Research tab in OneNote allows you to find topics and sources for your research right from within the application.
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E-Portfolios in Office 365
Users can leverage Office 365 tools (such as OneNote or Sway) as a digital portfolio to professionally share work artifacts and personal reflections.
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Using Office 365 for Science Labs
OneNote can become an electronic lab notebook that allows for an all-in-one tool for documenting procedures, acquiring data, computing data, presenting data, and sharing.
OneNote
OneNote is an extremely flexible digital notebook that allows you to create, organize, and share notes. You can add images, diagrams, audio, and video to your notes connect your notebooks with other programs in Office 365, and collaborate with instructors or students.
To Access Microsoft OneNote, navigate to www.office.com and login to Microsoft using your KU username and password. On the office landing page, click All Apps to see an alphabetical list of the Office 365 applications.
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Taking Notes in OneNote
The tools available in OneNote are ideal for implementing best practices in note-taking.
- The handwriting and sketching capabilities available in OneNote have been shown to make a difference in the effectiveness of notes.
- OneNote’s collaboration tools allow students to compare notes with each other, which has been shown to significantly boost long-term learning.
- Faculty who have private access to individual student notebooks can provide guided notes and additional scaffolding for the students who need it.
- Providing instructor notes has proven to be a powerful strategy for learning; OneNote’s sharing capabilities would make this quick and easy to do.
The below tutorials are for the web-based version of OneNote included with your subscription to Office 365.
Using a Desktop version of OneNote? Visit Microsoft’s support pages for Windows 10 and Mac OS X to learn more. Using a mobile device? Visit Microsoft’s support pages for Android, iPad, and iPhone devices to learn more.
Getting Started with OneNote
Ready to explore?
Using OneNote as a digital portfolio
Embedding assessments in OneNote
Tagging and searching for tags. OneNote will also search the text within images (OCR) and within handwritten notes (if they are legible).
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Create Lecture Notes with OneNote
Use a shared OneNote notebook as your virtual whiteboard to write your lectures notes during class. Students can follow along on their own device during lecture and have a copy of the notes and diagrams for review after class.
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Faculty: Using OneNote in the Classroom
OneNote includes an add-in called Class Notebook specifically for use in the classroom. Class Notebook allows you to create a notebook for yourself as well as set up notebooks for your classes and individual students, and then tie them all together.
- Organize lesson plans, activities, and supporting materials all in one place.
- Store, organize, and share everything from outlines to audio recordings.
- Interact with students’ individual notebooks (if shared).
- Present material to the whole class or share content to individual students to provide differentiated learning.
- Provide collaboration spaces, ideal for group projects, project-based learning, and co-creation between faculty and students.
- Assign pages to small groups of students randomly or according to their interests, etc.
- Review student collaboration groups at any time making it easy to offer support and keep students on task.
- Automatically sync to OneDrive and access from a laptop, tablet, or mobile device for later review anytime, anywhere.
The below tutorials are for both the web-based and desktop versions of Class Notebook.
Getting started with Class Notebook
Troubleshooting Class Notebook
Ready to explore?
Embedding assessments in OneNote
Embedding a Sway presentation in OneNote
OneNote Class Notes is a platform to empower differentiated instruction to accommodate learning differences, and to identify each student’s strengths and weaknesses.
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Using the Whiteboard Feature in OneNote
The Whiteboard functionality of OneNote is easy to use and allows for quick sharing of documents, markups, and other class materials after the lesson concludes.
Dr. Marco Ehrl, Assistant Professor in KU’s Communication Studies department, demonstrates how he leverages the OneNote Whiteboard in Zoom to engage students with the lesson. Watch Dr. Ehrl’s demonstration video in a new window.
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Accessibility in OneNote
Many of these tools, like Immersive Reader and the Dictate add-in, are embedded right inside OneNote. Students can access course materials and construct their own learning in ways that work best for them.
Sway
Microsoft Sway is a digital storytelling tool that is part of the Office 365 suite. Sway allows users to visually organize information in a variety of formats using templates or created from scratch and share with peers via email or social media. Content such as audio, video, images, and links can be added from multiple sources and can be easily dragged and dropped to reorder the information.
To Access Microsoft Sway, navigate to www.office.com and login to Microsoft using your KU username and password. On the office landing page, click All Apps to see an alphabetical list of the Office 365 applications.
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Creating Content in Sway
Sway’s interactive canvas and built-in design engine makes creating and sharing professional presentations easy and fun!
The below tutorials show how you can create content in the web-based version of Sway.
- Getting started with Sway
- Use Quickstarter to create a Sway in seconds
- Embedding content in Sway
Need more help with Sway?
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Use a Custom Template
Sway has a wide array of templates available. Sway can be used as a digital portfolio tool where students can offer highlights of their written and visual work on the web. Students can share interactive presentations with peers in a virtual show-and-tell-style. Interactive reports with charts, graphs, and images can liven up the latest lab report. Our students can research and write a narrative story as a digital history project.
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Accessibility in Sway
When viewing a Sway, you can turn on the Accessibility view for easier reading, including disabled animations and keyboard navigation for use with screen readers.
Stream
Microsoft Stream is a video service where students and faculty can upload, view, and share videos securely. You can share recordings of classes, meetings, presentations, training sessions, or other videos that aid your classroom collaboration. Users can add closed captions and transcripts to their videos and embed their content into other applications such as OneNote and Sway. Please note that Stream video content can only be viewed by Kutztown users at this time. Sharing with non-KU users not currently available.
To Access Microsoft Stream, navigate to www.office.com and login to Microsoft using your KU username and password. On the office landing page, click All Apps to see an alphabetical list of the Office 365 applications.
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Getting Started with Stream
Please contact the Office of Distance Education for more information on using Stream in your classes.
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Accessibility in Stream
Enhance accessibility for everyone with automatically-generated closed captioning. Stream also has a built-in transcript editor to ensure accurate transcriptions of closed captions.
Additional accessibility support for Stream
Teams
Microsoft Teams is a collaboration tool that provides users the ability to work together and share information via a common space. Students and faculty can interact through text chats or audio and video calls. Office 365 content can easily be shared through the Teams interface. Please note that Teams are only available to Kutztown users at this time.
To Access Microsoft Teams, navigate to www.office.com and login to Microsoft using your KU username and password. On the office landing page, click All Apps to see an alphabetical list of the Office 365 applications. Download the desktop application for full Teams functionality.
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Recording Student Group Presentations in Teams
Video calls can be recorded and saved to Microsoft Stream, providing a platform for online group presentations.
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Accessibility in Teams
Enhance accessibility for everyone with live captioning during your meeting.