cross posted at http://blogs.parisisd.net/dmartin
TCEA session 1
Karen Ferrel
Language Arts Activities using Microsoft Office
Word
1. sentence elaboration
copy and paste
e.g.
The dog ran.
to elaborate – see wherer they started and where they ended up for complete concrete visual of improvement
copy and paste sentence – add an adjective
The spotted dog ran.
How did the dog run?
Swiftly
The spotted dog ran swiftly.
more descriptive what breed?
The spotted dalmation ran swiftly.
The spotted dalmation swiftly trotted.
some language arts skills
teach open word, copy and paste,
Passive Verbs
Find and replace
given a prepared sentence or paragraph
use find and replace to find passive verbs like is
and replace with is but click more
format – replace unhighlighted is with highlighted is
replace is replace all
student can quickly see that they have a lot of is in there
or
vary sentence structure
find The (capital The space) check match case
this highlights all the sentences that start with The
you can change the colors of highlight
Parts of Speech
formatting and or highlighting
prepared paragraph
or their own writing
have them go through and highlight or bold all the verbs or different font
or underline
can use format painter
find all the nouns?
select noun, highlight
double click format painter
it will now stay active
now click off painter and click maybe the verbs
change format and click on format painter
Excel
sentence generator
tools addins box tool pack – click first tow little check boxes
has spread sheet of words click f9 and it generates a new sentence
uses a combination of an if statement
function =if randbetween
www.karenferrell.net
can highlight the list and format font to white so kids don’t see the words
file available online
Access
Madlib
design the sentences
create table
ID student name adjective noun 1 noun 2 adverb past tense verb
add data for each field
she used label wizard type in what sentence might look like
student name
the space adjective space noun space verb to the noun.
it will put them in there for you
detailed instructions online
Powerpoint
drawn objects with text
triggers
click on the ? could be noun? whatever you want them to click on
create text box, type in sentence, enlarge font
create buttons to tell student if they clicked right or wrong
can create prompts 1n wordart
e.g. try again, you are right, maybe a star that says correct!
if they click anywhere on the sentence besides the noun we want it to say try again
custom animation
add effect to try again
enter, dissolve?
attach animation to (right click timing box comes up click triggers
first everything will be try again
create boxes over nouns for exceptions
make fill transparent so word will show (and no outline)
add animation effect for correct and again right click timing trigger and choose rectangle number (whatever is correct)
Error eraser
use this for finding an error in a sentence (taks)
(this one is in book – gamewise for Language arts
matching game
booth 935 and 2479
conference price for book 27.00
Students frequently ask me how to insert a sound and make it play for more than one slide. Here is how to do it in ten steps. This assumes that you have already found a sound and saved it somewhere on your computer. This is in Office 2003
1. Navigate to the slide where you want your sound to begin playing.
2. Go to Insert>Movies and sounds>Sound from file
3. Navigate to your sound file
4. Click OK
5. Click Automatically
6. Go to Slide Show>Custom Animation (your sound file should be listed)
7. In the drop down list next to your sound click the effect options. Play sound, Effect tab
8. Click the radio button beside stop playing after (Here there is a drop down box where you can choose the number) slides
9. In Timing tab – to play automatically you can set to start after previous with a 0 second delay
10. Go to sound settings and adjust the volume
This is cross posted at Technology For Learning
There was so much so fast here but she does have the links to the instructions on her website at http://www.karenferrell.net/TCEA
This was all about using the randbetween function in excel to generate random numbers in a range you designate to create flashcards, graphs, ordered pairs and more. She shows you how to use autoshapes and this function to create dice. I will play with this some more but wanted to get the link posted. Excel rocks!
Here is my handout. Some of it is covered in other places in this blog. It was created on a Mac using Pages. I am trying to get more comfortable using the iWork software and I think that while it is not as much of a workhorse as Word it was fun and easy to export as a PDF.
Jumpdrive
Create a folder
PowerPoint Backgrounds and creating content in Word
Adding Sound to PowerPoint and making the music play across multiple slides
Creating Screenshots
Creating a group in Outlook Express
Locking your computer
Word Tips
FireFox
End of year grade export
mayStaffDevTips.pdf
Posted in Application, Education, Mac, Microsoft, Personal, Work, firefox, iwork, technology by Dee, May 22, 2008 6:51 pm | Comments Off
You can type the content for your PowerPoint presentation in Microsoft Word. If you highlight a section and choose Heading 1 in the formatting toolbar, that section of text can become a slide title. If you highlight another section and choose Heading 2 in the formatting toolbar, that text will become a bullet point. Header 3 will give you a bullet one level in. Normal text will not show up at all.
When you are finished typing your information, save your text in case you wish to edit or re-use later. Go to File/Send to (click the chevron arrows if necessary to see all the choices) and choose Microsoft PowerPoint.
You now have a basic presentation with all your text already in place. You can now add backgrounds, animations, slide transitions and whatever else you want to dress it up.
This technique makes it easy to see the flow of your presentation and to see where you might want to add notes if you are creating notes pages for yourself. You could type notes into Word as you work on your original text – just leave the notes as normal text. They won’t show on the presentation when you “send” it but once your Slide titles and bullets have been created in PowerPoint you can switch view to notes page and you can easily paste your notes onto the bottom section and you will have a complete presentation package complete with notes for you to use as you present.
If you’ve ever watched students work on a presentation you know that they tend to want to spend the bulk of their time working on the bling. By creating content in Word and then sending it to PowerPoint you know they are starting with the “cake” and then working on the “frosting”.
If you are ever asked to create a PowerPoint for someone else, you can tell them you would be glad to help and if they will type their information in Word and send it to you you will have it done very quickly for them.
- You can put single words in separate text boxes and animate them
- You can insert an autoshape and then have your text wrap within the shape
- You can decide if the animation should start after the preceding action or wait for you to click a mouse or presenter, or set the timing
- You can have more than one object animated on a slide
- You can add shapes and pictures and move them on top of or under other items like a stack of pictures and words by arranging/send to back or bring to front
- After you choose an animation you can click the effect tab and make the text change color, play a sound, appear a word or a letter at a time
- the effects tab will also let you group to second level paragraphs to give you more control of how bulleted lists appear (called a build)
- have a chart appear on the slide, one element at a time
- add buttons or pictures that let you navigate around your slideshow. You decide what gets clicked and where it sends you
- Draw comic book type illustrations using the lines in the autoshapes menu and fill shapes with gradients to give the illusion of shading
I started coaching for the first time this year and this is only the second meet we have competed in. I have two students and one went with me to the last meet. While she didn’t place this time she made a huge improvement from the last time. My other student got her first introduction to the real thing today and I expect she will improve as well.
It has been a learning experience for me as well. This year coaches are required to grade after the meet and I think this is a very good thing. I have learned more during the grading about how to help my students do better than any other time. Both my kids are seniors so I will start over next year, but with more knowledge and confidence. Every meet we attend I learn more and we get a copy of that test to take with us so we will build up a bank of practice material.
I am trying to work through all the tests I have that are from last year. If I can do it, I can explain it. If you are not familiar with this event, the student is given a test that may consist of a Word document, and Access database, and an Excel spreadsheet. You may have to embed a spreadsheet in a memo, or import data into a document to complete a mail merge. There will more than likely be functions involved too.
Computer Applications seems to traditionally be an early event and I was up at 5:30 this morning but we were home by noon so I am now getting ready to turn in.
It’s nice to see progress even if it isn’t a win. At least we are headed in the right direction!
Frame 1
Take a look at this site – a teacher wants her class to do a project like this – can we put together some instructions?
Sidebar – whoa this is cool! I am loving this.
Frame 2
A little playing, a little tweaking, some typing and some screenshots and yes we can do this! This is fun and creative and the students will take it and run!
Frame 3
Some explaining – this is how, this is where, be creative – think! not just about the bells and whistles; the bells and whistles have to enhance the symbolism in the text.
Think about the poem, put some words in separate text boxes. Animate them, use color, movement, sound and pictures to SHOW the poem!
Frame 4
Next day student asking will I be there that afternoon – this is confusing. Sure, we talk about the poem (she was stuck – how to animate a poem about sleep)
Frame 5
Student using all the elements – beautiful! Walking around helping, add a few seconds, try this and that. Go sit down – get out of the way. They are the artists!
If you are creating – you are learning. I’m learning, they are teaching me!
They are making a new piece of art!
There will be some tutorials coming up!
This was a good session that gave some basic common sense tips on using PowerPoint.
Why would we want to use it (well)?
• This generation has little tolerance for delays or mistakes in delivery of information
• It’s an easy way to get information across in a short time period
Caution:
- Too much information – on each slide
- Color choices (may depend on lighting in presentation location)
- Can be “eye catching or eye watering”
- Presentation often not test driven to catch problems
If well used can be extremely engaging
Tips:
- Proof read
- Don’t include all information
- Practice test run
- Don’t over-use the software in the classroom
Key – Keep the focus on the presenter
Start with the basics
- Know your information
- What are the key points or concepts
- Make an outline (enter basic information on blank slides)
- Order is important
- Add relevant materials (diagrams, images, audio, video)
Consider approaches for presenting
- How is the slide being used?
- Ask a question on the slide (stop for discussion)
- Break up with a related activity (stop presentation, do short activity, go back to presentation)
Adjust style elements (easy place to waste time)
- Visual interest is key but remember to keep focus on the presenter
- You can use WordArt to make notes on each slide to remind you of details, changes, and additions – what needs to be done to each slide
- Do test run
- Prepare your oral presentation (this is the part that many people omit!)
- To prepare you can take your original outline and print it out or print slide handouts.
- 3 slides to a page and you can have lines on the right side for notes
Presentations without a presenter
- Podcast presentation
- Save each slide as a jpeg
- Insert into MovieMaker
- Create audio voiceover using Audacity put together audio and movie – Podcast
*They did a Distance Learning Day at Good Shepherd. They submitted lesson plans, students stayed home and did assignments via internet. This type of podcast presentation was part of her lesson.
We have no computers running Vista at school, but a few students have it on home computers. I learned I can open documents created on Vista machines with Pages on my Mac.
Just yesterday I downloaded the latest OpenOffice and burned it to a cd for a student to install on their home computer. The student created a presentation and brought it to school on her jump drive. It wouldn’t open with PowerPoint on a PC or Mac and I finally had to just open it in OpenOffice on my Mac and let the teacher view and grade it on my machine. I’m not sure it was because it was a new version of OpenOffice or if it was because the student had not saved it as a PowerPoint when she created it. I will download and install it on my PC to check it out.
It is always a challenge to deal with the issues that crop up as the public sometimes moves on to new technology before the school can completely catch up. Newer printers can only be hooked to the computer via usb and older computers like Windows 98 machines may have usb ports but they don’t seem to be able to use them. Unfortunately, printers tend to give out before computers do so this is getting to be more of an issue.
I also read a “just for fun” tip on A New Mac Tip Everyday. This is how to change your login screen background. If you are like me you don’t see that screen too often but you might want to put a picture as a background even there. Here is how:
1. Make a copy of the background you want and rename it to “DefaultDesktop.jpg”.
2. Go to /System/Library/CoreServices and find the file DefaultDesktop.jpg.
3. Store the file somewhere on your hard drive in case you want to go back to the original default background.
4. Place your new background called “DefaultDesktop.jpg” in the folder /System/Library/CoreServices.
This won’t actually affect your productivity but then if you use a Mac to work you are already productive!
I love Amazon’s used books. I got a box of paperbacks for Dale today. He has decided he wants to go back and start reading all of Sue Grafton‘s books in order. He has read A through F and I got an entire box in the mail today – G through N. For those of you who do not read mysteries Sue Grafton’s books have titles like “M is for Murder” and “I is for Innocence”. The main character is a girl private detective named Kinsey Milhone. These books should last him through the transplant process.
I got a copy of PowerPoint For Teachers by Ellen Finkelstein and Pavel Samsonov which looks pretty good. It walks you through creation of presentations to use in the classroom and I hope to learn some new techniques that I can post here. I am making a little collection of things to read and learn and blog about during Dale’s hospitalization and this will be part of that.
Part of my job is supporting teachers in their use of technology and I forget sometimes that while I get excited about Web 2.0 tools and blogging and wikis and skype, I forget that most people just want to know little tricks that make their job easier. Today I showed one person keyboard shortcuts – Windows/E for opening Windows Explorer and Windows/L for locking their computer and being able to log back in and have all their programs still open. Another person just wanted the steps for creating a folder on their desktop and instructions on how to save documents directly to it. Two people were made happy by something that took me just a few moments.
To make a new folder by the way – you right click on a blank space whether it be on your desktop or within another folder. Choose new and then choose folder. Rename your folder and then when you create a document you want to save in that folder click on File/Save As and using the drop down box navigate to the folder you just created. Voila!
I also learned you can link text boxes in Word. A class project entails some students creating a magazine type article that I mentioned in the previous post. While the Word column function doesn’t do exactly what they need another way to go is putting everything in text boxes and then “linking” them so that text will flow from one to the next if there is more text that will fit in the box.
1. Hover the mouse pointer over the border of the first text box. The pointer shape changes to the Move shape (looks like a plus sign with arrows at the ends of the lines)
2. Right click and choose Create Text Box Link
3. The mouse pointer will change to a “pitcher” shape.
4. Click in the box you wish to link to – the text will now “pour” from the first text box into the second.
5. You can link more than one text box but you must always link forward – you cannot link backwards.
This is still not an ideal answer but it gives you a some control and another option.
I love technology but I like making people happy too! New books, happy people – it was a good day!
A class was trying to do a project today and the idea was to use Word in three column format to create a magazine style article. The problem was that they needed to be able to insert a picture and the teacher wanted that picture to be able to span several columns and have the text wrap around it but still stay in column format. Microsoft Office 2000 and 2003 were being used. I tried to figure out a way to make it work and created a text box to use as the container for the picture. On my MacBook it worked like a charm. Unfortunately the text wrapping part didn’t work so well when I tried it on the PC.
Microsoft Word worked better on my MacBook than on the PC? That is just weird.
