Irish school uses OneNote Class Notebooks to help achieve academic excellence

While we usually look at OneNote and other Microsoft software as tools made to help businesses do their best work, we should remember that they’re excellent options for anybody trying to keep track of their day-to-day tasks – including students. Brendan Cawley, engineering and technology teacher and first-year head teacher at the Coláiste Pobail Setanta school in Dublin, Ireland came to the OneNote blog today to write about how OneNote has changed the way that his school’s students approach their schoolwork.

After the school’s opening in 2008, Coláiste Pobail Setanta has been doing its best to innovate and make sure that they were always taking advantage of the cutting edge of education. With this desire to stay up to date, it only makes sense that the school would take a dive into the digital age and start moving their operations into OneNote. The school supplied its students with Surface Pro 3 machines back in September of 2015, and OneNote has been a staple of education for them since.

Each department in the school has set up their own template for their students to use, and takes advantage of all of the features of Office to keep students up to date and doing their best work. The school uses shared resources in OneNote to upload content like PDF’s, PowerPoints, and YouTube videos to students, making sure that important learning resources can be instantly shared. In September of 2015, 240 students were given Surface Pro 3s to use in conjunction with this new system, and it seems to have resulted in some real success for both the students and their teachers.

The evolution of education to the digital world is a step that always needed to happen. The nature of an always-connected world is something that should resonate with all students and educators as it gives everyone an opportunity to keep an ongoing conversation that stays productive throughout an entire semester – not just during class time. Coláiste Pobail Setanta’s work to bring itself into the 21st century is commendable and speaks to just how committed they really are to giving their students every opportunity to becoming a more empowered citizen.