Jan 02 2007
No More Office?
Reading though my Bloglines this morning I came across this post by Teacher Dude. This is something I have been thinking about for the computer classes that I teach. I teach three classes; 2 classes change each quarter (6th and 7th grade) and the 8th grade class I keep all year. I have been doing some cool Web 2.0 stuff with the 8th graders, but not as much as I’d like to, but the 6th and 7th grade classes have always been classes where I teach Word and Excel.
I start each quarter of new students for the 6th and 7th grade classes with a lesson on Online Safety. I use the materials from Netmartz.org. It’s good stuff and really gets the kids thinking. I also use an online program called Edclass which has standards-based content area lessons which use technology (mostly Office-type technology, some HTML and Internet). I adapt these lessons as well; some assume more knowledge of the products than my students have, some supply the template for the project when I’d like to have the kids learn to create the template themselves). I like these products, but I want to add to them. One of my limitations is that other teachers in the school rely on me to teach certain basic skills – the research teacher wants the kids to know how to set margins and line spacing, for instance, and the science teachers want the kids to be able to do basic calculations and create charts and graphs in Excel.
Since I only have these kids for 9 weeks, I do not want to set up blogs for them – it would take up too much of my time to teach them how to use the blogs effectively. I do have a bunch of wikis that I could use – maybe to have the kids collaboratively create a How-to for the things I listed above. One of the things I would like to do is use more Open Source online products. I have access to Inspiration, but I haven’t even used it this year. Maybe something like Inspiration but something online that the kids could use collaboratively.
I have another week before I go back to work and I need to do some planning this week. I’d love to hear ideas from you all on ways that I can revamp all my computer classes to use more Web 2.0 products.
