As you may or may not know by now, I love using Microsoft OneNote with all my students. There is an iPad app for OneNote as well as computer applications. As of this date, the app is free. Since there is an iPad app, iPads do not need to be sent home with students. Parents can access the app for their own iPad. With the Notebook stored on Windows Live, the parent, the student and the teacher can access the notebook. OneNote comes with any Microsoft Office Suite. It is more cost effective to buy the suite than just OneNote alone as you then have access to other programs. If you click on the image, you can enlarge it to see all the notes that I have written. If this assignment is going to a number of students, you can e-mail the page so that it can be opened in each student’s notebook. This is my notetaking program of choice for all my students.
I am an occupational therapist with 18 years of experience in the pediatric sector, much of that time as an independent contractor. I am very passionate about my work and my writing. My degrees include a Bachelor’s of Science in Health Sciences and a Master’s of Science in Occupational Therapy from Touro College. Since graduating as a non-traditional student, I have worked in a variety of settings throughout the life span but settled in the area of school-based therapy. My interests lie in the area of using technology to support independence and I often train students to use programming not only to monitor their own goal progress but also support educational, vocational and life skills.
Another area of particular interest is documentation. As an independent contractor for many years, I feel that it is important to align methods of documenting goal progress with educators for greater consistency and understanding when writing for an IEP. It is better to plan a format for documentation used in the IEP, such as for assessment and goal progress and that a rubric, in many ways, fulfills the need for consistency in documentation across all domains.
Combining my interest in technology and documentation, I use Microsoft OneNote to maintain all documentation. I create a digital notebook for each student or patient with any forms required uploaded as templates which can then be completed, and saved automatically.
I strongly believe in student centered approach to therapy. Students must be active participants in developing goals and documenting progress. In order to help students understand their progress, I teach my students to develop electronic portfolios and to use spreadsheet programming with graphs to collect data and view progress, whenever possible.
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Eleanor Cawley, MS, OT 