EXCEL Project

Project Name

How We Spend Our Day

Description of Learning Goals and Standards

This project ties in nicely with the “Create a Newspaper” Lesson Plan. As one of their news articles, students will interview students concerning one particular topic (How we spend our day), collect and analyze data, and extract statistical data using the Excel software program. This lesson helps students with their analytical skills, communication and writing skills as well as strengthening their technological abilities. It is important that students be able to integrate several skills into one larger project. They will need to be proficient in this in increasingly more difficult projects as they progress through high school, college and the work world.
The Standards met for this project are:
· 5—Students employ a wide range of strategies as they write and use different writing process elements appropriately to communicate with different audiences for a variety of purposes.
· 6—Students apply knowledge of language structure, language conventions (spelling and punctuation), media techniques, figurative language, and create, critique, and discuss print and nonprint texts.
· 8—Students use a variety of technological and information resources (libraries, databases, computer networks, video) to gather and synthesize information and to create and communicate knowledge.
· 11—Students participate as knowledgeable, reflective, creative, and critical members of a variety of literacy communities.
· 13—Students use basic research techniques with teacher guidance.

Rationale for Technology

Conducting interviews and then analyzing one’s data is an excellent way for students to learn to gather information and pull it together into a report that correctly communicates this data. The EXCEL spreadsheet helps them organize the data in a logical manner and the graphs that are produced helps the students visualize the results. They should be able to use the program to determine if their data is correct and if results make sense.
EXCEL also allows them to check their math computations for accuracy which is great reinforcement.

Description of Lesson Implementation

The “reporters” are given Interview sheets that are used to question their fellow classmates on a given topic. The information is entered into the Excel program. Students must understand how to enter formulas and how to arrange data so that the answers are relevant to their question. Students manually calculate the averages and then use Excel to check their answers. Charts are produced that visualize the results. A news article is written concerning this analytical interview and the charts are entered alongside the article in the newspaper.

Assessment

Again, I am finding this lesson plan extremely useful across the curriculum. Students work on writing skills with their article, technology skills using Excel, math skills calculating the averages et al, and thinking skills when they determine whether their spreadsheet conveys the data correctly.

Other Places to Use this Solution

EXCELcan be used in every subject area and inside and outside of the classroom. It is a great tool for organizing data. The charts provide a quick study of data that can be helpful in the classroom, PTA, home budgets, work presentations—anywhere that a lot of data needs to be synthesized.

What I Learned and What I Would Improve on Next Time

I did learn to KISS. My first EXCEL project was based on an intermediate project in the EXCEL kit. Halfway through I realized that generating the formulas using EXCELwas beyond my immediate knowledge and I had to start over with a simpler project for my first try. This reinforced the need to keep my projects simple the first time I try this with students. What works manually mathematically may become frustrating for a student trying to integrate the technology and math skills together into a project. Becoming bogged down in a multilevel math formula defeats the lessons that can be learned by this project.

References

Excel spreadsheet
Excel Kit Interview Worksheets
Georgia QCCs

Bloom's Toxonomy

Knowledge: List the as many different parts of a newspaper as you can remember

Comprehension: Contrast the way an author writes a short story to the way that same story would be written as a news article.

Application: Write an article for a newspaper using the Inverted Pyramid Format

Analysis: Explain why you ordered the facts in your article the way that you did

Synthesis: Publish your article in the correct section of the paper

Evaluate: Consider the quote: "you can't believe everything you read in the paper". Having written an article, do you agree or disagree and why or why not?

Microsoft Publisher

Project Name

Henley’s Happenings—A Classroom Newsletter

Description of Learning Goals and Standards

The learning goals are multifaceted in this lesson. Working on a project from start to finish helps children process, organize and prioritize new information. Transforming students into reporters and editors causes them to become effective users of technology in order to publish their own class newspaper. Additionally, editing articles to be published incorporates critical thinking skills as well as reading and writing proficiency. The Standards that are met for this lesson are:
· 4—Students adjust their use of spoken, written, and visual language to communicate effectively with a variety of audiences and for different purposes.
· 5—Students employ a wide range of strategies as they write and use different writing process elements appropriately to communicate with different audiences for a variety of purposes.
· 6—Students apply knowledge of language structure, language conventions (spelling and punctuation), media techniques, figurative language, and create, critique, and discuss print and nonprint texts.
· 8—Students use a variety of technological and information resources (libraries, databases, computer networks, video) to gather and synthesize information and to create and communicate knowledge.
· 11—Students participate as knowledgeable, reflective, creative, and critical members of a variety of literacy communities.


Rationale for Technology

Even though my lesson plan calls for the ReadWriteThink Printing Press publishing program, Microsoft Publisher works just as well for creating a newspaper for a class and would cut down on incremental costs of buying that program. I think the ReadWriteThink Printing Press may actually have a newspaper format for the project but this may not be worth the extra cost if the school keeps Publisher on their network. This technology is great for students to learn to work on a project from beginning to end. It helps with organization skills, editing proficiency, working as a team to put together a newsletter. The technology provides a fun way for students to learn reporting skills and the fact that their work will be shown in a professional manner using Publisher should make them want to work hard on their articles and the actual layout to produce a high quality final product. It is great to have a computer program that allows the students to take their hard work and format it into a professional looking product.

Description of Lesson Implementation

This plan follows Days 8 & 9 of the Lesson Plan I- Creating a Newspaper-where the students take the articles that they have written and edit and format them for a newspaper. They will layout the articles, insert pictures, make sure their headlines grab a reader’s attention and that their articles adhere to the reporting lessons that were learned in previous weeks.
This newsletter would become a monthly project in the classroom. Students would rotate staff positions to increase their proficiency in different types of news reporting. Students would learn to take other articles and reports that they have written and summarize them for a news report. Students would take turns being on the publishing staff that actually formats the articles for the paper. Rotation of positions should allow all students to understand the entire process of news reporting. It also allows the newspaper format to vary from month to month based on the creativity of the staff.

Assessment

Microsoft Publisher is a great computer program for school and is a very powerful tool for language arts as well as other subjects. Students should take pride in having a polished finished product and should want to work hard to make sure their published product (that will be seen by other students and classes) is their best work. It should help them improve their editing and vocabulary skills. The word processing portion makes it so much easier to do this. Researching articles on a monthly basis should increase their research skills. Using the computer program Publisher helps hone their technological abilities while having fun on the computer.
While I would use a rubric to grade individual articles, I think peer pressure to produce the best newspaper would be enough feedback for the students. The actual formatting of the paper should be a fun activity and not one to be graded. Sometimes the less academic students can shine in this area and knowing that they are not going to be graded on this part of the project could allow them to be more creative. If the finished product fell off in quality, I of course, would institute some sort of evaluation system. I would probably individually meet with the staff and talk about how they could improve their product. I would still not want this part of the project to be graded--some things need to exist for a student's own personal satisfaction and not for comparison purposes.

Other Places to Use this Solution

Publisher can be used across the curriculum as students could use reports they wrote in other subjects such as science or history and summarize them for the newsletter. It, of course, could also be used as a teacher tool to send newsletters to parents. It can be used as a web page so that parents can get weekly updates on what is happening in the class. The uses for this program are endless.

What I Learned and What I Would Improve Next
Time

I learned that Publisher is a very easy computer program to use. While formatting my “newspaper”, I realized that this is a very powerful tool for teaching Language Arts and for keeping students interested in writing.
I did have some problem with the columns and I would have to use this a lot before I had students format their own layout. A template is the best way to go at first.
I never could get a caption inserted next to a picture but other people were also having the same problem. I need to experiment with that part further. I think this is a great program that should be on every school’s network.

References/Resources Used

Microsoft Publisher computer program

http://www.msn.com--online/ news service

Various photos found on internet

Visual Activity

http://eduscapes.com/sessions/digital/activity2.htm- picture is worth a thousand words. I think this activity works well with middle school and high school students. It should generate discussion about the topic and the "little things" that crop up in photos that one does not think about without seeing a picture.

Power Point Presentation

Project Name

Extra! Extra! Read all about it!


Description of Learning Goals and Standards

This lesson plan was designed for students to hone their reading and writing skills as well as incorporate critical thinking skills while becoming more proficient on the computer. With the end result being the publishing of a class newspaper, the students learn to discriminate between news reporting and other types of literature. Learning how to effectively write a news story teaches them how to prioritize events while learning to format a newspaper should increase their understanding of how the media evaluates and prioritizes articles.
Students should increase vocabulary through this lesson, learn to communicate effectively and adjust their language to address different audiences. As this lesson begins with learning to write a news article and culminates with the publishing of a class newspaper, children should gain confidence that is derived from successfully working on a project from start to finish. The QCCs met for grades 3-5 are: #4--students adjust their use of spoken, written, and visual language (e.g. conventions, style, vocabulary) to communicate effectively with a variety of audiences and for different purposes; #5 students employ a wide range of strategies as they write and use different writing process elements appropriately to communicate with different audiences; #6 students apply knowledge of language structure, language conventions, media techniques, and create, critique, and discuss print and nonprint texts.;#8-- students use a variety of technological and information resources to gather information and to create and communicate knowledge; #11-- students participate as knowledgeable, reflective, creative, and critical members of a variety of literacy communities.


Rationale for Technology

Computer technology is going to continue to advance at a rapid rate and students need to be confident using these tools. Integrating technology throughout the curriculum allows students time in the classroom to become proficient with computer programs such as Word and publishing programs while still mastering the core courses of writing and reading. Writing their news articles in a computer lab provides time to learn how to use spell check and grammar to ensure that their articles are of professional quality before printing. Using the READWRITETHINK Printing Press allows the students to format their stories into their own classroom newspaper. The use of digital cameras to insert photos into their paper teaches them how to use this new technology.

Description of Lesson Implementation

Beginning with students examining a typical newspaper layout and format to gain better understanding of why a newspaper is read differently from other forms of literature, the children will progress to writing their own news articles. As they begin to piece together their class newspaper, they will be divided into groups to develop news articles for different features. Editing these articles teaches them to look for writing strengths as well as weaknesses and correct them. Finally, actually publishing a paper will help them learn to use the computer publishing program to layout and format their articles. The finished product is printed and submitted to the class.

Assessment

A question and answer sheet is used to assess the effectiveness of this lesson with ample space provided for student feedback. Because so much of this is group oriented and will also need a lot of teacher supervision for successful completion, a rubric would not be the best assessment tool.
As far as assessing the power point presentation, checking for understanding of the project would be the best feedback. If the slides with one's dialogue are not getting the main idea across on the first attempt, then the presentation is not effective and needs to be reworked. To me, powerpoint's strength is that it provides a grounding for the listener as the speaker talks. As we become more of a visual society, this will become more and more important to audiences (otherwise the mind tends to wander). A quick follow up to check comprehension of the main ideas would quickly assess the success of the presentation.

Other Places to Use this Solution

This presentation could be used with a current events class or journalism class. It could also be used as a marketing tool to convince parents of the usefulness of technology in a classroom. Cobb County certainly needs to be utilizing a lot of technology throughout the curriculum in their
presentation to sell their $70million project.

What I Learned and What I would Improve on Next Time

Power Point is a very useful tool and I have discovered that it is very user friendly. I was confused at first at how to click on the links because doing so only caused the slides to advance. Preparing a presentation such as this would be very useful for PTA nights as parents could quickly see how a lesson is created and implemented. I would have liked to have added sound effects (other than the typewriter) to this but could not find anything suitable to go with journalism. In reviewing my slides, I did feel that this project, while an excellent way to teach writing, is a very ambitious one that would require a great deal of teacher support for its success.


References/Resources Used

Power Point Software
Computer lab
Scanner
Digital Camera

www.eduref.org/cgi-bin/printlesson.cgi/virtual/lessons
www.web.home.insightbbcom/
www.readwritethink.org/lessons/lesson_view_asp?id=249
http://www.officemicrosoft.com/ -clipart

Midterm Reflection Paper

Six weeks ago, I walked into IT 3210 armed with the full knowledge that I was hopelessly behind in the technological arena. Armed with two textbooks and the mantra "At least I have no bad habits that have to be broken", I proceeded to boot up my computer and await instructions. That has been the last time I have waited for anything in this class. Blogging my way through a haze of terms, commands, missteps and confusion, I slowly began to remember to breathe again sometime in the fifth week. Breathing helps. While still light-years behind most of my class, I do feel I have made strides and am able to stop a moment and reflect.

Have my expectations changed? Certainly! Before this class, I had hoped to learn a couple of programs and gain some understanding concerning technology. I now view this as a field that requires a lifetime commitment to staying current. I do expect, given time, to be able to master this field and use it as one would use any tool that makes life easier. Particularly in a classroom, these programs could enliven everyone's day.

Already, I have progressed from getting completely lost in the terminology to realizing that, while I may be causing the glitch, it is repairable. I now know what address I need in order to blog and what address I need to read others' blogs. I can navigate and compose and even risked placing graphics within my website. Once I learn the correct way, it gets so much easier. It's still taking me an incredible amount of time to understand where I'm going wrong but hopefully the learning curve, while initially steep, will start to level off.
I am still not doing much differently with technology outside of this course since I don't have much opportunity for that, plus I am spending so much time just completing assignments. I am feeling more confident and was amused the other day when the subject of blogging arose and I was the only one in my circle of friends that had a clue what that was about. I may become the IT expert in my social circle by the end of the semester.

I have developed one pedagogical strength from this. Before, having always been at the top
of my class in my endeavors, I had wondered how I would handle the challenge of teaching a struggling class of students. Last week's scenario that involved turning in the incorrect Lesson Plans coupled with no memory of being shown how to access Documentation made me realize that one can truly become so overwhlemed that one cannot hear what is being said. I knew theoretically this happens to students and having now experienced it, I think I'm better prepared to empathize and (as you did) help them get over the sensory overload and back on track.

So, Mrs. Davis, continue to inspire us and power point us in the direction we need to go. We will blog and navigate as well as we can with hopes of composing a great final product. Will we improve--only our rubrics will know. You're teaching us well and if we look faint--just remind us to breathe.

Inspiration Project

You can find the documentation for Inspiration Project at this link.

You can view the actual Inspiration Project at this link.