Writing in the Air: Flexible Teaching with OneNote and a Surface Tablet

If your classroom has a projector, you can display PowerPoint and pictures. But does your projector get in the way of real, interactive teaching? Amy describes a tool that allows her the flexibility of writing, presenting, and demonstrating more naturally than most touch computers and much cheaper than a smart board.

Chris: You are the first one that I’ve seen use OneNote and a Microsoft Surface.

Amy: I love it. There are some technical difficulties with the Surface, which has been a bit of a headache for me. It hasn’t connected. Actually, the worst thing is that we got it to connect wirelessly and we’ve never been able to make it work. And so I have to be connected. I’m tied to the front of the room. That’s the downside. Otherwise, I could walk around and put it on a student’s desk.

It is seamless. I don’t know why everyone doesn’t have one, to be honest. You can write with your pen and you can move the screen with your finger.

(Amy uses the Surface to write student answers in class.)

Amy: Writing is difficult to be neat. I always feel like my handwriting is sloppy. The beginning of this year, the students always complained and then they start getting opportunity. I don’t do it really often. It takes a long time to get them up there, but I will let them come up and write on it and do activities, class work, sometimes, I call them up to do stuff. The first time or two, they’re like, “Oh…” Now they know why my handwriting isn’t very neat. It’s just a little difficult, but it looks better than on some other screens.

I’ve tried—one day when it wasn’t working, I grabbed one of our other touch screens that we have in the computer room, it was just a disaster. Every other program, you write then you change something.

I love it.

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Marc Miller

5 years ago

This is a great idea!! I plan to incorporate this in my class this year. There is a wireless adapter that works very well with the Surface Pro and a projector. I have included the link.https://www.microsoft.com/accessories/en-us/products/adapters/wireless-display-adapter-2/p3q-00001

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