TRG says:

Those who have Microsoft WORKS have the advantage of an integrated program. The database is easy to use and can be combined with the word processor and spreadsheet, so you can enter data once and use it many different ways.

Week 6 Textbook Reading Guide 

pp. 120 -138

The text suggests that "Word processing is used primarily to support English and foreign language exercises...", but your instructor definitely disagrees with this statement. Word processing has many different uses and as it gathers more tools it can be a desktop publisher and a drawing program. Has anyone tried WordArt where you can color and bend the text into different formations? It used to be that you had to have a separate desktop publisher program like PageMaker or Publisher to create newsletters, but now Word can do two columns as well. What did we ever do before Spell Checkers?

One major concers is still the effect that the word processor has on handwriting. MacDonald says to tell you that her handwriting has gotten worse since she has been using computers and that it's a good thing that this class is online, so you can read her comments easily!

Figure 4.5, p. 125 Suggested Word Processing Items for a Teacher's File of Resuable Documents.

Here's a handy suggestion: to save reusable items as a template, so you don't have to re-type frequently used documents. So the rubric feedback for the WebQuest was a Word template. The template was saved without overwriting it to fill in the content for each student. What a time saver!

MacDonald also loves the use of color, but many schools do not have color printers, much to her dismay. So she puts color on her webpages or prints from her home color ink jet. But you can't do 25 copies this way very often.

Check out the Technology Integration Ideas. This will help you formulate what you want to do for your final project. p. 127 TIE 4.1 shows how cartoons and comic strips can be used to help students write persuasive papers or position papers

PDAs (Personal Digital Assistants)

What is a PDA. Check out this graphic for the Learning Impact.

MacDonald loves her Zire 71, which has a built in digital camera in it. (The latest model is Z22. Go figure!)She doesn't use it much as a calendar or contact list, because she's in the classroom all day. But in the classroom, her favorite use (and lots of it) is to walk around and assess the students work on the go. With a little grading program, she can check the students work as mastered or not, satisfactory or unsatisfactory and then return to her desk and synch the Zire (Palm Pilot model) with the computer and grading is done, quick and easy!

Handmark 4.0 Student

Check out Handango for all kinds of software, from student planners to English Chinese dictionary with audio! Best of all the products are rated and you can read the reviews!

Some schools are having the children use these for data collection and graphing as a low cost way to spread computer technology around to many more students.

One of the first and most inventive applications was called Cooties.

Cooties is a virus simulation program. Here's how it works. Cooties have characters called Coodles. Students have their Coodles meet by beaming their handhelds The program keeps track of which coodles have already met and will let the students know if their coolde is sick.

After the students have finished meeting each other, they can colaboratively try to solve who was the initial carrier of the virus and how the path of the transmitted virus worked between coodles!

Think of it this way:

The cost of the Palm = the cost of a pair of sneakers!

(Actually less, now that PDA's are under $100.)

Spreadsheets

Many teachers started out keeping their grades on Spreadsheets. Of course, that meant that they had to write their own equations! Now, grading programs are often provided by the school district or are cheap enough for an individual teacher to have her own. Remember: there is a difference between keeping the grades (gradebook) and posting the grades (district grading programs).

MacDonald uses spreadsheets any time she needs to sort data and /or create graphs. See Figure 4.11, p. 133.

Top 10 strategies for the Basic Three Software Tools - p.140

MacDonald's favorite spreadsheet activity was # 1 here. Each child had their own M&M's. They had to list the colors across the top and then list their name on the left. Each person counted how many in each color. Then we collated the data for each child and tallied the class numbers for average of each color. Weren't the children surprised when they saw the sum command add up all the columns: how many red, blue, chocolate,etc. Warning: if you tally the number of M&M's in each pack and some children have more than others, be forewarned!

Then, of course, we had to do a pie chart and the color blue had to represent the blue ones!

That's all it took to hook the children onto spreadsheets!

Easiest program for graphing (K-4) is Tom Snyder's Graph Club 2.0. It is worthwhile to have one copy of this in every classroom.Of course, then the children are going to want a color printer!!

Technology Integration Strategies - Figure 4.17, p 146

A quick reference chart that is very handy.

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