Being able to learn new programs is important in this digital age. Working on an assignment this week where I had to make changes to a mock grade book in Microsoft Excel was pretty easy for me except for the last instruction. I had to link the list of student names from the worksheet on the 1st nine weeks to the worksheets for the other 3 nine week periods. I’ve never had to do that before and I just upgraded to the 2010 version so I had to use the help section to figure it out. I’ve had plenty of experience with Excel (at least earlier versions). As an undergrad, I had to take a course on Microsoft Office, which had a lecture and lab. After the first couple of classes, I quit going to the lectures and just completed the labs. I did so well that they asked me to tutor some other students. Being able to utilize Excel for a grade book would allow me to quickly calculate my students’ current grades and isolate the ones that are in need of extra help. There’s no need to wait until the end of the nine week grading period to find out if the students need help when I can set a formula that will recalculate the grade each time I add a grade for an assignment or test.
Of course, even if I didn’t have experience with Excel, I’ve always been able to learn new programs easily. Usually when I want to learn a new program, I just go into the new program and try different functions to see what they do. If I can’t figure out how to do something with a program I’m using, I start looking for directions in the help section for the program. If I still can’t find what I want there, then I search the internet for directions. In high school, I took a course in desktop publishing and on occasion, I couldn’t get the results I wanted using just one program so I would figure out which programs could do the things I wanted and then worked between them to get the results I was looking for. I think this ability will be very useful as a teacher. Our students need to learn 21st century skills and my ability to learn new programs easily will allow me to integrate more technology into my curriculum. I know that some teachers are reluctant to integrate new technology because of the learning curve involved, but I really like learning about new technology. Sure, there may be some bumps along the way, but as long as I keep a Plan B as backup for when technology fails, I’ll be fine.
"Our students need to learn 21st century skills." I think one thing that is so important about this that we teach our students how to use technology. We need to teach them what is good technology and what isn't useful.
ReplyDeleteThis project was actually hard for me. I know some about excel, but not a lot. When I heard that I would have to put functions into excel, I started freaking out. Now, I can see where already knowing a lot about this would be useful, but I think I liked re-learing how to use this, because it put me in a place that my students might be in. If we are in elementary, this would be the first time some of our students have seen this. And now that I have had to re-learn it, I think it has made be better able to help my students. So I think there is some benefit to learning alongside your students... but of course, you should always be one step ahead.
Megan H