The New OneNote change has some Williston students and faculty frustrated.
OneNote is a notes app that all students and faculty use here at Williston. The new updated OneNote was intended to be more modernized, with more features to make things easier. Instead, some students and faculty feel the update has caused confusion and complaints from the Williston community.
OneNote, made by Microsoft, was first released on Nov. 19, 2003. According to a Microsoft support page, OneNote, “is designed to serve as a digital note-taking app for keeping notes, research, and plans. It allows easy organization.” Microsoft was founded in 1975 and is currently worth $3.79 trillion.
Williston students began using OneNote in 2013, according to a Willistonian article by Katie Murray, when Williston began giving Microsoft Surfaces to every student.
This year’s OneNote update is proving troublesome for both teachers and students.
Patrick Loftus, a current English teacher at Williston, feels there is a lot going on in the new version.
“There is just too much stuff on the pages, but I think it will just take some time to get used to,” Loftus said.
Loftus finds, “The organization of people’s folders specifically the drop down make it hard to find the students work and the missed place sections folder keeps growing and not syncing properly with student notebooks.”
Rowan Martin, a three-year junior boarding student, dislikes the new change and feels the old OneNote was more straightforward.
“I feel like the old OneNote was better, it was a little bit easier to use and the new one is too touchy,” he said. “One thing that I don’t like is moving an assignment to my own notebook is harder in the new OneNote than the old one.”
Lucas Guay, a two-year senior boarding student feels the new OneNote takes up more space while he does work.
“I feel like the new OneNote is way smaller and everything feels crammed,” he said.
Nina Coffee, a four-year senior boarding student is similarly frustrated.”
“I feel like some worse changes are its very glitchy and it lags and when I’m trying to write it deletes what I’m writing, and I feel that there are no better features,” she said.
The Willistonian reached out to the technology office, but did not receive a response in time for publication.
