Useful Tools from Class

I really like all the software and tools that we've learned in class so far. They're really interesting and I think they'll really help us as teachers when we're teaching in our own classes. I like that there are a lot of programs that we're learning about that we might not necessarily find out about on our own, and since we're learning them now we can try to incorporate them when we start student teaching, or they might even lead us to other programs that could be even more help. I really like the Google Forms that we just learned, and I think that would really cool to use as take-home quizzes or pre-assessment activities. I also had a lot of fun making a Prezi presentation, and I will definitely be using that in future class presentations in college and in my future classroom. I thought that was a really fun alternative to a PowerPoint, and I think students will be more interested looking at a Prezi and taking in the information I give out to them in that form.

I really want to learn more about how to use Microsoft Office more effectively, especially Word and Excel. Word is a program I use all the time, but there are so many tools that can be employed through that program, and I have no idea what they are or how to use them. I can only create simple documents, and I can barely make a simple spreadsheet on Excel. I feel like these are really important programs to know and use, and they are not as intuitive as some of these other programs we are being introduced to are. I feel like we could figure out how to use, for example, Zoho Writer and Prezi if we took enough time to figure out all the details of the program, but Word and Excel are not as obviously (to me, anyway). I would really like someone to go over these programs and introduce us to more of what these programs have to offer us so we can really use them as they are intended to be used, making full use of all the extras and characteristics that make them so useful and lasting.