Productivity Tools: Day Three

By now you are familiar with locating and customizing templates to create newsletters, hall passes, business cards, etc. You have also used PowerPoint to create a seating chart and Excel to create a pictograph and an attendance/grade book record.

Your remaining tasks for the Productivity Tools Project are create a worksheet and write a reflection on using productivity tools in teaching and learning.

PART ONE: FINDING A WORKSHEET

To find a worksheet to customize, there are two useful websites: Discovery School Teaching Tools and Education World. Another interesting place to find a "worksheet" is at Vicki Blackwell's website. Just make sure that you select a worksheet that can be used for your subject area/grade level. Don't just print out a worksheet that you find - make sure to customize it.

PART TWO: WRITING YOUR REFLECTION

The final portion of your assignment (worth 30% of your grade) is the reflection. Here's an example of what your reflection/webpage should look like.

Here's how you go about doing it:

Create a new page for your portfolio (named "tools")- include links to each of your productivity tools objects (saved as pdf files - you'll have until Friday to get them converted to pdf files and linked to your page). Give an explanation for each of your artifacts, what you learned in the development of the artifact, and how it could be used in a classroom. You'll also want to include a few screenshots of your different objects - the handout from today's class will show you how to do this.

Then, on the same webpage, explain in detail the types of activities students can do using productivity tools. Your discussion and specific descriptions should focus on activities at a LoTi level of 2 or greater. Make sure to publish the page when you are finished.

The easiest way to go about completing this portion of the assignment is to first talk in general about the products you created - what you learned while creating them and how they could be used by a teacher in your subject area. Then, locate 3 or 4 lesson plans that use the productivity tools and discuss them in detail. The focus of this portion of the reflection is on the ways students can use the tools at a LoTi level of 2 or higher.

There are two good places to go to find sample lessons that use productivity tools:

1. Georgia Learning Connections (select your grade level, select "technology integration" for the subject. Click the "Search QCC button". Then click the "Productivity" link)

2.Microsoft Lesson Plans

Remember that lower grade levels may use tools like Graph Club (for spreadsheets/graphing) and KidPix (for multimedia presentations) instead of Excel and PowerPoint - but you can use these as examples for your reflection.

Don't forget that all of this goes onto a new webpage with links to the objects you created.


FOR THURSDAY:
1. All portions of your productivity tools project are due at the beginning of class on Thursday. You will turn in a printed copy of all 9 objects that you have created. You will publish a new web page with screen shots of several artifacts and your written reflection before the beginning of class. You will have until Friday to have all 9 objects linked as pdf files to your page.