jmarienthalreflection3

Blog Topic: How can you use the different features in Word/Excel for student learning,
development of information literacy in your students, or for your own data management/
collaboration?

Our district uses the Open Court Reader program for ELA. Part of the OCR is set up for "workshop". It allows the teacher time to break the class into several groups and be able to work with a small group of students or one on one. If we set up the forms template we could make a little self-test that each table could use to see if they were ready to move to the next packet. The students also have to take a pre-test for spelling. That could also be done on line. To encourage
information literacy, we can have different tables create mini-lessons in how to add graphics to files, make their own notes, etc. Essentially the same things they learn in the computer lab, but they only have computer lab once a week.
In its quest to be a "data driven " school, the Edison program provides an over-kill of data. Teachers are always doing monthly benchmark exams and then having to use the vendors tools to make an analysis of the results. Creating a spreadsheet form that would just track
scores above and below one standard deviation would be a nice tool to have.
Finally since this is my blog, this is my chance to gripe that not everyone who is teaching is going to get an M.A., or is going to do extensive research. The history department approached the problem by having two forms of master degrees. One for teachers, which involved a minimal demonstration of paper writing skills and massive readings; and a second, which involved the more
traditional masters thesis. I think that a better way of doing this might have been to do research on an assigned topic and then presenting a summation and a classroom presentation, maybe even as a two person team.