Productivity Tools - Day Three

By now you are familiar with locating and customizing templates to create newsletters, hall passes, business cards, etc. You have also used PowerPoint to create a seating chart and Excel to create a survey and an attendance and grade record. Your remaining tasks for the Productivity Tools Project are to create a worksheet, choose an item of your own, and write a 1-2 page reflection on productivity tools in teaching and learning.

To find a worksheet to customize, there are two useful websites:
Discovery School Teaching Tools and Education World.

Use any of the template websites we've viewed this week to find the "item of your choice". Keep in mind that the item you select should be customized by you before submitting it. An interesting place to find an "item of your choice" is at Vicki Blackwell's website.

The final portion of your assignment (worth 20% of your grade) is the reflection:

Write a 1-2 page single-spaced paper explaining in detail the types of activities students can do using productivity tools. Your discussion and specific descriptions should focus on activities at a LoTi level of 3 or greater. Use examples from class readings.

The easiest way to go about completing this portion of the assignment is to locate 3 or 4 lesson plans that use the productivity tools and discuss them in detail. The reading you were given in class on Tuesday can assist you with the reflection, as well. You should not spend time summarizing the project, defining what productivity tools are, or describing the ways teachers can use the tools. The focus of this reflection is on the ways students can use the tools at a LoTi level of 3 or higher.

There are two good places to go to find sample lessons that use productivity tools:

1. Georgia Learning Connections
(select your grade level, select "technology integration" for the subject. Click the "Search QCC button". Then click the "Productivity" link)

2.Microsoft Lesson Plans

Remember that lower grade levels may use tools like Graph Club (for spreadsheets/graphing) and KidPix (for multimedia presentations) instead of Excel and PowerPoint - but you can use these as examples for your reflection.
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For Tuesday:

Bring a printed copy of all 9 objects and your typed reflection paper to class. Make sure you look over the grading rubric to ensure that you have all required components. Your newsletter/brochure should be 2 pages, you should have 2 certificates or hall passes, etc. All portions of the Productivity Tools Project are due at the beginning of class. Please print all materials before the beginning of class. You will not be able to leave during class to pick up printed materials.

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.