Post # 2

Chapter 3 was titled Application Software Productivity Tools for Educators. I am going to summarize three main points in the chapter beginning with application software. This is software consisting of programs that perform specialized tasks for its users. Microsoft Office, including a word processor, a spreadsheet, and several other applications is one example as Word is used to type up reports and essays, while Spreadsheet enables us to make tables of data and information. Productivity software, another important point in the chapter, is software that helps us get the job done faster! Software like Word, Excel, and Spreadsheet help us work more efficiently and effectively. Finally, Graphics and Multimedia Software, this consists of desktop publishing, paint, and multimedia and Web page authoring software. Desktop publishing allows us to design documents containing text, graphics, and color! Multimedia authoring allows us to create electronic documents containing not only text and graphics, but also video, audio, and animation! Paint/image editing software enables us to create and modify graphics. And finally, Web page authoring is used specifically for designing and maintaining Web sites.

Since the last posting, we have been required to make a newsletter, which I found to be very fun and certainly useful in the future. I had no idea that Microsoft Word offered so many awesome tricks to make normal documents look so much better! I had a great time playing with my newsletter and inserting all sorts of different shapes and graphics, that is until it got way to crowded and I had to begin deleting a few things! I could easily see myself using all the fancy applications in Word to make my class syllabus, homework sheets, and all sorts of other documents look fun, but still professional. I am eager to continue playing with Microsoft Word and learning more about all it has to offer!

I had always thought that being a math teacher I wouldn’t really need to know much about technology, just because the subject matter doesn’t require much in the way of using computers. However, I am beginning to see how technology can easily influence my teaching. I want to be different from the other teachers, hopefully appealing to all students learning styles. I know that I am a visual learner and that just by using Word to make worksheets more fun and colorful looking, I would be more likely to remember what I see. Besides if nothing else, I have always heard that students perform better in classes where they really like the teacher, so at the very least, hopefully I can use technology as a means of relating to students and they may appreciate what I can do.