Get started with OneNote Staff Notebook

  • 10 minutes

OneNote Staff Notebooks promote teamwork and make it easy to share information with school staff and provides a personal workspace for each staff member. They include several different areas:

  • Content Library for publishing important information
  • Collaboration Space for staff members to work together
  • Leader Only area for private content for leaders and co-owners
  • Private workspace for each staff member

A staff leader creates the Staff Notebook for their faculty or department or staff members.

Collaboration Space

The Collaboration Space is great for working together with other staff members. All staff that have access to the notebook can edit and add information to any page located in this section. You might use the Collaboration Space to work with colleagues or faculty on department specific initiatives or you might work together to develop resources or create common assessments and project rubrics. The Collaboration Space is also a great place to organize and track staff meetings, agendas, and meeting minutes.

Leader-Only area

The Leader-Only area is a space for content that should be kept private from other staff members. Only the staff leader and coleaders can view and make edits to pages in this section. This section is useful for draft meeting agendas, field trip notes, policies, and other high-level confidential content.

Staff member private workspace

Private workspaces are a place for each teacher or staff member to work in the Staff Notebook. Only each individual staff member and the staff leaders can view and edit content here. This allows administrators to privately share notes with teachers, such as providing feedback after classroom observations.

Activity

Think about your school context and then identify 2-3 different ways a Staff Notebook could support staff collaboration and workflow in your organization. Use these questions to frame your potential use of Staff Notebooks:

  • Who should be invited? Is it a department team? A particular group of teachers? Administration/non-teaching staff?
  • How will this help make your workflow more efficient?
  • What types of resources could you include?

Application

Staff can collaborate on:

  • Creating emergency procedures for the school
  • Designing cross-curricular lesson plans for a grade level
  • Designing curriculum initiatives across grade levels or departments
  • Establishing protocols for discipline issues