Application Software:1 Catherine: 0 AR#2

In my daily life I would say that I use a handful of productivity software programs. I use word almost on a daily basis. All of my written files are in word. Occasionally I use excel when making rubrics…I often use Rubistar to create rubrics and it uses excel to display them on your screen after they are saved. I would say I am also very proficient in PowerPoint. It was easy to become well versed in PowerPoint terms when I started using it on a daily basis during my internship in a 5^th grade class. This particular classroom was equipped with a MIMIO so I used imported PowerPoint files for my lessons. Along with PowerPoint and Word, I also feel comfortable with Outlook, Integrade Pro, and other grade book programs. I am not comfortable with Mac OS or application software because I have never owned a Mac or really been able to spend a lot of time working on one. Hopefully one day this can change because I would love to use some of the Mac application software

The assignment for EME5050 this week was to take a sample Excel spreadsheet and edit it. Among adding columns, changing colors, and sorting numbers, I also had to dynamically link pages in the workbook. Simple! I thought. How wrong I was. Last semester one of my fellow students taught a lesson on the various parts of Excel so I thought this would be easy. While I accomplished each task with ease, I had NO idea how to do this dynamically linking thing. After spending several hours searching the internet and asking friends, I was finally able to figure out how to accomplish this task. When you dynamically link the pages, you are able to make changes to one page and these changes will show up on the other pages in the workbook. This is one of those tools that I think many people have either never heard of, used, or they forget about. However, this tool is great especially when it comes to grade books. If a student needs to be added or deleted, this is simply done. When I took over for a fourth grade teacher on maternity leave, I came into a class of 21. After a month, I was down to 15 kids because 3 were moved out of ESOL and 3 moved away. If I had been using an Excel spreadsheet for grading, I could have really used the dynamically linking tool in order to keep up with these changes since I had 1-2 students leaving each week for over a month. So, after much trial and error, researching, and asking for help, I was able to accomplish a difficult task that I can actually see myself using in the future. Also, I think more teachers would use Excel if they knew how to use the different tools in a more effective way. In the future (if I am back in the classroom) I would love to share this with other teachers since I know many who still use a paper grade book. Finally, I think next time I will maybe search the web more efficiently because I felt like I was haphazardly hunting for answers and getting frustrated. I have found that I do best when I have someone to help me or someone to bounce ideas off of.