[EXCEL]lent tool

This week's theme is Excel. For the most part, excel and I have had a love-hate relationship.

it can do so many things... but it's a pain in the neck to learn.

I actually took a computer fundamentals course a year ago where we beat the basics of excel to death. But i also found out about a lot of other cool tricks on the way.

You know how everyone's go-to presentation shower is powerpoint? well, i learned that excel can do a lot of that stuff too. and it's actually pretty cool.

So you know how you can have multiple sheets within one document? Well, there's a way you can hyperlink the cells to go back and forth between the different sheets. and you can insert pictures and backgrounds into the excel page.

So I ended up making this one excel document that I titled "the boy store".
(I'm warning you now: when I made this document, I had nothing better to do with my life than create this document.)
What I ended up doing was photoshopping pictures of action figures onto empty store shelves. the action figures were meant to symbolize the perfect man, as if you could shop for them. So for each action figure, I put a brief description of the man in the cell above and then linked it to a following worksheet. For example, there was a Buzz Lightyear doll that linked to Will Smith and a random action figure that linked to Matt Damon. And then on that sheet, I had a link that brought you back to the original page.

Ideas like this are PERFECT for elementary classrooms! You can have the "homepage" have different problems that link to the sheets with the solutions for example. there are so many possibilities with excel. And albeit it's tedious and time consuming, in the end, it's worth it.

What CAN'T google do?

I have officially decided: Google is my all time favorite website, and possibly my favorite noun/verb. People who have basic computer knowledge just see google as a basic search engine. But once you move past that, you see the beauty that is Google. Not only is google the most widely used search engine, but it is the go to site to fine pictures, maps, online books, and that's only part of it. You can search for pictures of anything on Bing, but by the time you finish saying that phrase, you could already have Googled pictures of cute little kitty cats or whatever it is you search for (don't judge me). You can see where your house AND the great wall of China using Google Earth. You can bypass dialing 411 for a fee and use Google411 (1-800-466-4411) for free. There's so many things that you can do with google.


Like GoogleDocs!


This is the future of classroom group projects. Say Sionara to the days of having to pass around one piece of paper to everyone to squeeze their ideas on. Say Adios to having to meet in the library and crowd around one person as they type everyone's ideas. Say Au Revoir to emailing documents back and forth and copying and pasting from one doc to the next. 


GoogleDocs eliminates all of that mumbo jumbo. 


With GoogleDocs, you upload the file or start from scratch once. And at everyone's leisure, they can all open the file and fix it as they wish. Then when it's done, everyone can save the finished product once. There's no more crowding, no more emailing, and no more hassle.


Where was this when I was in high school?? 

Good Ol' Technology

I learned the hard way tonight that technology, while wonderful, can be very, very trying.

Why?

I was working on my presentation for the Educational Technology tools, and I needed to download a video to help enhance a point. My friend had recommended this one site to me, so I decided to try it out, regardless of the fact that I already knew of a website of the type that did the same thing. Nevertheless, I decided to give my friend's website a try.

Five failed attempts and one hour later, I still did not have a video for my presentation. I finally decided to try mine, and it downloaded in a matter of 2 minutes.

But on a positive note, I've actually learned a lot about fun new sites to try. Not only are these sites good for teaching, but they're a lot of fun too.

take Gliffy.com

This website not only helps you create charts and organizational flow, but it also helps you make building floor plans, network diagrams, venn diagrams, etc. It's actually pretty cool.

Try Wordle.net on for size. look what I made! it's pretty awesome

In short, here's what I learned about educational technology tools today:
1) Some Ed Tech Sites are really, really cool
2) Some Ed Tech Sites really, really try my patience
3) Some powerpoint presentations are due at 5pm, not 1am.

Whoops. Sorry.

until next time,
Love,
Kate

This is my mom's side of the family. Of all of the people featured in this picture, I have only met a few of them, I've heard several stories. My family was strongwilled, quirky, kind, and sometimes crazy. Seeing these pictures and hearing the stories, I realize that I have many of the same qualities and it makes up part of who I am. My family has been through a lot, and it's been these family traits that sometimes help me get through it all. And sometimes, you can't know where you're going unless you know where you've been.

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