Search Results for: onenote

How to Add a YouTube Video to Word, PowerPoint & OneNote on Windows

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add youtube videos office

Inserting multimedia elements to your documents make them instantly more engaging and can save you jumping from one app to another. So, the next time you want to spice up a study guide or have your students submit a multimedia document with text, images, video and more, take a look at this handy guide. Here is what you need to know.

Add a YouTube Video to Word, PowerPoint & OneNote

Step 1: Open the app of your choice (Word, PowerPoint or OneNote), then place the cursor where you would like the YouTube video to go.

Step 2: Click (or tap) Insert and choose Online Video from the toolbar.

insert video

Step 3: Click (or tap) in the box that says Search YouTube and paste the URL to your video, or insert some keywords to search for the video from inside of Office, and hit Enter. (While a keyword search will work, a YouTube URL is more likely to give you direct access to the video you want).

Step 4: Click (or tap) the thumbnail of the video you want, and then hit Insert to add the video to your Office document. The video will appear where you placed your cursor, but and can be resized or moved to a different place in your document.

youtube search results

Advanced Tips & Tricks for Embedding YouTube Videos

Sometimes it is useful to embed the YouTube video with an embed code, instead of pasting a URL or searching with keywords. Here’s why you might want to do that instead.

  • Not all videos will appear in a keyword search, and sometimes the URL doesn’t work either. For scenarios like this, you can always grab the Embed code from the YouTube video and go to Insert > Online Video and paste the code next to the option that says From a Video Embed Code.
  • Is your video too long? Trim your video to the part you really need with TubeChop.com and add the embed code into your Word, PowerPoint or OneNote. You can also modify the YouTube embed code to choose your own start and finish times for the video.
  • If you want to hide the grid of “related” videos that YouTube offers up at the end of a video, be sure to click Show More underneath the YouTube embed code BEFORE you copy it. This opens a drop-down menu that lets you uncheck a box that says Show suggested videos when the video ends. Once you have that box deselected, copy and paste your embed code and the related videos will vanish from the end of the video.
  • Can’t find the video you want on YouTube? Embed codes from Vimeo and other popular video sharing sites are supported in Word, PowerPoint, and OneNote.

Troubleshooting Videos That Don’t Appear

Every so often you will find that a link to a YouTube video reveals no search results, and the video has no embed code on YouTube. Unfortunately, this means you will likely not be able to add this video to your Office document, because the video creator has chosen to remove the ability to embed their video on other sites. This is an option for all YouTube users and can be found among the upload settings when uploading a new video to YouTube.

You may also find that you don’t have the option to add YouTube videos in your version of Office. To add YouTube videos to PowerPoint you need Office 2013 or later for Windows. To add YouTube Videos to Word or OneNote you need Office 2016 or later for Windows. If you don’t have access to one of these versions of Office, you can always use the free Office Online which can be found at office.com.

How to Use the OneNote for iPad Drawing Tools

jonathanwylie3 Comments

onenote draw tools for iPad

Recently, Microsoft updated OneNote for iPad to include the one thing that iPad users were missing most from their Windows versions of OneNote – Draw tools. Given the touch capabilities of the iPad, this is a very useful addition. For the classroom this means students and teachers have the option to use handwriting in OneNote, or annotate existing notes, images and more with the new drawing tools. Here’s how they work.

The drawing tools are accessed via the new Draw tab on the toolbar. If you don’t see a Draw tab, make sure your OneNote app is updated to the latest version. Tools available include a thin pen, a medium pen, a highlighter, an eraser, a selection of inking colors, pen thicknesses, and a variety of palm rejection options.

onenote draw tools ipad

To start writing, select the type of pen you want to use then choose a color from either the four default colors on the toolbar, or from one of the 16 colors that reside in the color wheel. Note that there are only four colors to choose from with the highlighter pens.

Next, choose pen thickness. You will see that line thickness varies depending on whether you choose the thin, medium or highlighter pens, but there is enough variety here that you will likely find the thickness you want from one of these pens.

The palm rejection options are a little more sophisticated than the horizontal guard you get in apps like Notability. In OneNote for iPad, there are different options for left and right handed people, and accommodations are made for a few different ways that you might hold your hand on the screen while writing on the iPad.

palm rejection onenote ipad

If you make a mistake, the eraser can come to your aid, but it might not work exactly the way you think it might. The eraser will remove entire lines at a time, as opposed to small parts of a line. For writing, this generally means the entire letter. Basically, everything you draw until you lift your stylus, or finger, will be erased in one fell swoop when you use the eraser tool. In essence, it works the same as the undo arrow. Both tools produce the same results.

To add text to your page, you don’t have to revert back to the Home tab. Instead, you can tap the text mode button to momentarily revert to typing. Once you are done typing, you can tap a pen to resume your drawing activities.

All in all it is a very successful implementation. In the future it might be nice to see the addition of a shape or line tool, but this is a great start and it adds some very useful functionality to an already great free app. The draw tools are perfect for annotating over pictures, screenshots, maps and more, but many will just use it for handwriting, and as research shows, there is nothing wrong with that.

OneNote for Teachers: Help & Support for Educators

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onenote for teachers logo

For me, OneNote is a peerless app that can quickly change the way students and teachers create and organize digital content. It is intuitive, powerful and works across all your devices. Whether you are an Office 365 school district or not, it is hard to ignore the potential that OneNote has.

To help support teachers in their use of OneNote, Microsoft developed a website exclusively for educators called OneNote for Teachers. It is a great resource that helps you get started with OneNote if you are a first time user, but also includes tips and tricks for experienced users by showing you how to deliver your curriculum with OneNote through tools like the OneNote Class Notebook Creator.

I use OneNote a lot on the iPad, and find it especially useful now that iOS 8 has allowed extensions. This lets me quickly add a website to a OneNote page from Safari, or send an image from my Camera Roll to add to my existing notes. I also use OneNote on my iPhone, on Windows, and will shortly be exploring the Mac version too. OneNote is free for all these devices and all my information syncs quickly and reliably.

onenote for teachers

Looking for more ideas? I have been developing an Office 365 training site for some of the teachers that I work with. There are resources and ideas on how to use OneNote on that website and you can view it at 365education.weebly.com. You might also want  to take a look at the Microsoft Educator Network, which has a searchable bank of lessons and resources that you can use in your classroom. You can also check out my Choose Your Own OneNote Adventure Stories learning activity that was added last month.

How (and Why) to Add Links in OneNote 2013

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We live in a connected world, so the ability to add links is a valuable skill for students and teachers alike. Here’s how to add links to notes in my favorite note taking app – the Windows desktop version of OneNote 2013. 1. Typing a URL The first method is by and large the easiest. All you have to do is start typing the URL of the website you want to link to and OneNote 2013 will detect that you are typing a web address and automatically hyperlink it. If the URL is on the long side, you can copy and paste it into OneNote and you will see that it also gets automatically linked on your page.

type links in onenote

2. Hyperlinking Text If URLs take up too much space on your page, or just don’t look right with the rest of your text, consider highlighting some text and linking that instead. Once the text you want to link is highlighted, go to the ribbon menu at the top of the page and click Insert > Link. In the pop-up box that appears, type or paste the name of the website you want to link to in the Address field, and then click OK. You can access the same linking option by highlighting the text and pressing Ctrl + K on your keyboard, or by right-clicking on the highlighted text and selecting Link…

hyperlink text in onenote

3. Linking to Another Section/Page Another useful linking strategy is the ability to link to another section or page in a notebook. This can be useful for creating your own table of contents. There are a few ways to do this, but perhaps the most elegant way is to combine it with the method above. So, start by highlighting the text you want to link to another section or page. Then right-click on it, go to Insert > Link, or press Ctrl + K, to open the Link options menu. Now, navigate to the page or section you want to link to by clicking the “+” sign next to the notebook that has the page or section you need. Click the location you want to link to, then press OK. You can also get the link to a page, or a section, by right-clicking on the page or section you need and clicking Copy Link to Page or Copy Link to Section.

link to a section or page

4. Linking to a Specific Paragraph Need something more granular than linking to a page? Try linking to a specific paragraph. This can be a great way to direct students to the homework questions, or to definitions in a glossary. All you need to do is click on the paragraph you want to link to, then right-click your mouse and select Copy Link to Paragraph. Once you have the link you need, you can highlight some text, open the Link options menu, (like we did above), and paste it into the Address field. Anyone who clicks on the link will then be taken to a specific paragraph on a specific page.

Link to a paragraph in onenote 2013

Need an example of how all this linking can be put to good use in the classroom? Check out my lesson on the Microsoft Educator Network: Choose Your Own OneNote Adventure Stories.

10 Reasons Why OneNote is the Ultimate Note Taking Tool for Schools

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Microsoft OneNote

It may just be the best thing you have never heard of, but if you take the time to learn how to use it, Microsoft’s free, multi-platform note taking tool will surprise you with how powerful it really is. So, here’s why OneNote is great for the classroom and beyond. (Note: Not all features are available on all platforms, or in the free apps, but all are available in the Office 2013 desktop version)

1. Availability: OneNote is a free download for Windows 7, Windows 8, Windows Phone, Mac, iPads, iPhones and Android devices. You can even use the online web app, and of course it comes with all paid Office subscriptions. So, no matter what device you use, there is a OneNote version for you. You don’t get all the features on all platforms, but you get most of what you need. What’s more, your notebooks are synced via your Microsoft account so any changes you make will instantly be updated on your other devices.

2. Organization: Think of a OneNote notebook like a three-ring binder. You use sections to divide up your notes into manageable chunks of text. You can choose a color for each section, or let OneNote choose that for you. Within each section, you can add pages so that you can add the notes that you want to take. You can have as many pages as you want in a section, and merge or group sections. Password protection can be added to sections to hide teacher notes, or to unlock a section at a time as the teacher chooses.

3. Tags: Choose from dozens of tags to help you annotate and bookmark the best part of your notes. Students can tag paragraphs they want to ask the teacher about later or mark up the important parts of their notes, while teachers can use custom tags to highlight the homework in a shared notebook. All tags can be filtered and found quickly.

4. Search: Speaking of finding things, the search function is a great tool to find anything that you need. It will search through all your notebooks, or just the one you are working on, to find the notes you need. The search bar will search all typed and handwritten text, as well as any text that it detects in images.

5. Attachments: You can attach most common file types to a OneNote notebook. Audio, video, images, PDFs and more can be added to a OneNote file to keep all your resources together in one place. This is great for teachers who may want to use OneNote for a lesson planner, or as a digital handout for students. You can also add images from Microsoft’s online clipart gallery or search Bing for images.

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Making Reading Accessible With the Immersive Reader

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Man sitting cross legged reading a book. Text reads, the power of the immersive reader.

In August 2015, Microsoft held an internal hackathon where employees competed with other Microsoft staff from around the world to solve a problem with technology. Many of these pet projects never saw the light of day again, but the winning entry quickly grew to become an indispensable tool for a huge number of students and their teachers. It launched in January 2016 under the guise of Learning Tools for OneNote, but today you may know it better as the Immersive Reader.

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Snip & Sketch: The Windows 10 Screenshot Tool

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Snip & Sketch: Screenshots in Windows 10

Screenshots are important to anyone who is involved in education. They form the backbone of many step-by-step tutorials and are useful for creating better explanations for students. However, they are useful for other scenarios too. They are great for capturing some design inspiration, saving ideas from the web, or recording bugs to send to developers. This Fall, Microsoft introduced a new screenshot tool for Windows 10. It’s called Snip & Sketch. Here’s how it works. Read More »

Simplenote: Cross Platform Note-taking

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Try Simplenote for Free, Cross Platform Note Taking

I’ve used a lot of note taking apps over the years. I was an Evernote user for a while, I took a look at Google Keep, I jumped in and out of Notability (and still do), and finally settled on OneNote. It’s free, works on all devices, and has the features I need for organizing and searching through my notes. I’ve been very happy with OneNote, but if I’m honest, it has more features than I will ever use. I know I can just not use those features, but it made me wonder what it would be like to use an app that had less bells and whistles. What if the app was more…simple?

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Office Lens: Scan, Snap & Share!

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Scan Snap Share Office Lens

If you use a mobile device, a scanner app is a very useful app to have at your disposal. There are lots to choose from, but my go to app is Office Lens by Microsoft. It is available for iOS, Android, or Windows Phone, and it could quickly become one of your favorite apps due to its versatility and time-saving features. Here’s what you need to know.

Why Do I Need a Scanner App?

I find all kinds of good uses for scanner apps, and I expect you would too. They are great when you don’t have access to a desktop scanner or don’t want the hassle of using one. I am also notoriously bad at keeping track of paper handouts. I invariably don’t file them and end up losing them, regardless of how useful they might be. So, I scan them and add them to my digital filing system instead. Business cards and posters can be quickly captured with Office Lens and it could be a great way to make some digital copies of student artwork.

What Makes Office Lens So Good?

Office Lens uses an intelligent scanner to automatically recognize and crop any paper document that you place under your mobile device and as you will see in the image below, the before and after results are quite remarkable. Regardless of the angle of your device, the final image is cropped, straightened and enhanced to look just the way you would want it to. Office Lens can even take your scanned image and turn it into an editable Word or PowerPoint file with some clever OCR technology.

Scanning Documents with Office Lens

However, I don’t just use Office Lens for documents. I often use it at conferences and other PD presentations to take pictures of a speaker’s slides. The same perspective cropping applies when taking pictures of a presentation and it works equally well, if not better, on notes you have written on a whiteboard. This could be extremely useful for both staff and students because it is a great way to capture some brainstorming ideas or some notes from class. Take a look at the example below that I captured while attending a Jim Knight instructional coaching workshop at Grant Wood AEA.

before after office lens

Where Can I Share My Scanned Images?

One of the great features of Office Lens is the variety of places that you can share your scanned images. You can export as PDF, send as an email, or save it to your device. You can also share directly to a number of Microsoft’s mobile apps like OneNote, OneDrive, Word, PowerPoint or Outlook. Office Lens works with personal Microsoft accounts as well as your work or school accounts in OneDrive for Business.

Completed scans can also be saved to Dropbox or sent to other apps on your phone as required. You will also have quick access to your favorite social networks so that you can share those awesome presentation slides the right way, as you can see below.

tweet

So, the next time you need a digital copy of a document, business card, whiteboard, presentation slide or any number of other things, reach for your mobile device and fire up Office Lens to help you complete the job.

Screenshots and Annotations Are Easy With the New Snip for Windows

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snip beta

The Windows Snipping Tool is a useful app, but a limited one. There are, after all, many better alternatives like Skitch, Snagit, or even the OneNote Clipper. Today, Microsoft added another to this list. It’s called Snip. Although currently still in beta, Snip allows you to take screenshots, add annotations, record audio, and save your clips with anyone you want. In short, Snip is everything the Windows Snipping tool should be. Here’s how it works.

Once installed, Snip hides discretely on the side of your screen, just like Snagit. When you are ready to capture your screenshot, simply hover over the Snip toolbar to select the type of capture you want to execute. There are three basic tools you can use to capture a screenshot – the crosshair selection tool, the camera, and the whiteboard.

snip tools

A quick click and drag with the crosshair selection tool is all that is needed to make your first capture. Once you are done, the Snip editor will open giving you options for annotations that you can add to your screenshot. Although you absolutely can add annotations with your mouse, the drawing tools in the editor are largely aimed at those with touchscreen devices. However, there is the option to record audio on top of your screenshot and save it as an MP4 video file. T

This pseudo-screencasting option is an interesting option for educators and certainly opens up a lot of possibilities. In fact, if you look on the Snip home page, you will find several examples by students and educators who used the recording feature to talk about student work, explain a homework assignment, or teach poetry.

snip editing tools

The whiteboard is idea for explaining a concept and can be used in conjunction with the recorder to make screencasts that are similar in appearance to something like Educreations on the iPad. There are not as many options while recording, but the end product is somewhat comparable. The whiteboard is particularly useful for Math and Science teachers who may want to record a brief video that includes mathematical equations or cell structures, neither of which is easy to accomplish in a text based program.

Clicking the camera button will let you take a picture with whatever cameras you have on your device. Captured images can be edited with the aforementioned annotation tools. In the classroom students could use this option to talk about some art work they created, to tell digital stories, or describe areas on a map.

Snips can be shared quickly and easily. They can be copied and pasted into another app, shared by email (this didn’t work for me), or saved to your device. Videos have the additional options of being able to be shared via a link, or embedded in a website. All snips, past and present, are stored in your Library, which you can access via the book icon on the toolbar.

Snip is still in beta, so be prepared for the odd glitch here and there. However, in the time that I have had to play with it, Snip has performed very well and Microsoft have informed me that new features are on the way soon. Better still, Snip will update automatically so you will always have the latest version. Check it out for yourself in the video demo below, or head over to https://mix.office.com/Snip to try it out yourself.