Productivity Tools - Day Two

Using templates and becoming familiar with productivity tools such as Word, PowerPoint, and Excel are important in creating a professional teaching environment. Today we will use PowerPoint to create a seating chart and begin work on a chart using Excel.

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MS PowerPoint is a dynamic software tool that allows one to create presentations. PowerPoint provides you with the opportunity to list information, display graphics (including animations), concept maps, and tables. Short movies, hyperlinks, and music may also be embedded in PowerPoint presentations.

We will spend more class time on learning about PowerPoint later in the semester. For this part of the Productivity Tools project you will learn to use the drawing tools in PowerPoint to create a seating chart. Don't forget that these same drawing tools can be used in all Office applications (Word, Excel, etc.)

Here are some sites which provide more information about PowerPoint:

PowerPoint in the Classroom

Integrating PowerPoint

Using PowerPoint in the Classroom

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MS Excel is the final tool we will take a look at in the MS Office Suite of applications. Excel is a spreadsheet application that is used by accountants, office managers, and small businesses. It allows you to create tabular data, work with numbers and charts in a variety of manners.

As educators, there are number of ways we can use excel: as a record keeping tool (attendance), grades, gather and display data (graphs and charts), etc.

Classroom Excel Resources

To Excel in the Classroom

MS Excel Modules

Today I will walk you through how to create a pictograph in Excel for one of your assignments in the productivity tools project.

Please remember that all components of the project are due Tuesday, January 31 at the beginning of class.