A friend of mine recently participated in a Train the Trainer course facilitated by the Ministry of Education. She showed me her tutorials and the end product that she had to produce, which was a piece of educational software that the learner could use. However when she showed me the spreadsheet using the "If" function to correct a spelling list with only two choices of either correct or wrong I was impressed. Yes my friends, a spreadsheet using Microsoft Excel even the older versions.
To me a spreadsheet was only used to create calculations by manipulating data or to create charts.
I hope to find the time for her to adequately show me the possibilites of the spreadsheet and would have hoped that something so practical and basic would have been added to our course. No I'm not asking Mrs. Woods-Jackson to add another aspect of the course for you to learn. But I can share some lesson bytes for spreadsheets taken from Morrison& Lowter (2002) Integrating computer technology into the classroom p.242.
They state that a variety of different problems can be derived from a spreadsheet e.g length of jumps of plastic frogs, number of paragraphs read, height of bounce of ping-pong balls, heart rate by minutes of exercise and a traditional favourite plant growth in different soils.
I am now very curious to find out more about the basic applications present on computers and the way they can be fully explored in education. Though cloud computing is quite interesting and innovative, the internet is needed to access it. This raises the question of utilizing the software on computers with no internet, to the greatest capacity allowing students to still develop digital literacy skills. Thank you for this enlightening information.
ReplyDeleteHi Natasha
ReplyDeleteI agree with you 100% while the discovery of web 2.0 tools are fascinating and the potential boundless especially for student engagement we have missed a step.
In many schools as you rightly pointed out classrooms are now transitioning from blackboards to whiteboards far less interactive whiteboards/Smartboards.
Mind you some schools are ahead of the curve like St. Francois College.
The reality is that as Reading Specialists we should be able to demonstrate how the applications found on any computer can be used to strengthen and support literacy instruction.
Many teachers do not know how to use word,excel and powerpoint to create interactive and appealing exercises as the one you mentioned in your post far less for going on the internet to use web tools other than email and facebook.
Lets start at teachers' comfort level (the basics: literacy 1.0)before we stretch teachers into the new frontier (advanced: literacy 2.0)
I look forward to a continuation of this discussion and maybe we can get together as a group to share what we learn from others like from your friend once we have the time .
You can check my blog
LiteracyWarrior where I address this same topic with a post titled Low Tech Reading and Writing