Necessity is the mother of invention, and inexperience is surely its godfather. I had very limited experience with all of the applications we learned, mostly because I had avoided them at all costs up until now. However, I found that all of the productivity tools we used were not only useful, but some of them were fun as well. My knowledge base of Microsoft Office expanded four-fold. By using these tools, I'll be able to  cut a large amount of preparation time from teaching days that I know will already be crowded before I have a chance to add my own tasks.

I created my calendar from a template. There are plenty of sites on the web where they can be found, and it was much easier than the ones I had previously attempted on MS Word. The calendar is a good quick-glance tool for me, and something I can send home to parents, post on the web, and keep visible in the classroom for students.

I created a newsletter using MS Word. Keeping in mind that there is only so much graphics business the parent eye can handle in this kind of thing, and there is also only so much black and white text the kids can handle, I tried to maintain a balance between the two. The newsletter is a great way to convey what we're doing in the classroom to parents and students because it's concise and more fun than just a note, which is more likely to be lost on the way home.

We also found several sites that had templates or generators for worksheets. While it's preferable not to use them a lot, they're pretty much an inescapable part of what we'll be doing, and they are effective to use as ice-breakers, or to gauge what students know before we begin a course of study so that lesson plans can be supplimented effectively.

I found that Power Point can be used for a lot more than to create  the familiar bullet-pointed classroom presentations we're used to. We used it to create seating charts, and then went on to use it to create hall passes and name tags. Learning other uses for Power Point was the most  fun aspect of the exercise, because after several semesters of being subjected to teacher and student presentations in class, I had decided that the program was useless as an effective teaching tool. Now I know otherwise. While I know that the school I end up teaching in will most likely have a set hall pass that we all must use because it would be confusing and too easy for students to create their own, it was still a fun project and could also be used for field trips, and things like lunch-time tutoring.

 (A word of advice to any prospective education majors who may read this: If you loved playing with Colorforms as a kid, you may lose a lot of time playing with the clip art and Word Art.)

Learning to use Excel was a slow process, because I had never used it before.  After using it as a tool to create attendance and grade sheets and pictographs,  I had gained enough basic knowledge to try more on my own. The spreadsheets and pictographs will be particularly useful in the science classroom so that I can have students corrolate data they've collected and then present it in an intersting visual form.

 While I think there is still a great need to have both students and teachers learn to use their minds for creative process as well the basic skills these programs provide, the time-saving aspect of using them will make jam-packed class days easier from a time management perspective for everyone. Access to the web provides nearly limitless informational and formatting possibilities for creating whatever teaching or classroom projects need to be done. 

In addition to the other tools, we learned to find lesson plans on the web that can be used to save time, expand what we already have, or form a base for expansion.

Using the MS Power Point lesson plan No Flakes Like Snowflakes, my students can not only learn about the visual symmetry of ice crystals and how they form, they learn about the mathematical concepts involved, as well as improving their computer skills. They begin by brainstorming, and then move on to the computers where they can inspect snowflakes, and then design their own using concepts such as angles, scale, mirroring over the axis,  symmetry, and structure. They learn or reinforce their computer skills while they create snowflake designs that can be printed out or projected. The beauty of this particular lesson plan is its applicability for lecture, team, or independent study.

On the Education World website, I was able to find a variety of lesson plans for science. One that I particularly liked was What is in the Water? . Students use lab technology, computers, and outdoor experience to study the difference between untreated water in their outdoor environment and the water they find in their indoor environment. Working as teams, students examine pond water, bottled water, and tap water after researching their state and local standards for water purity. They use a wide variety of equipment, including thermometers, water quality test kits, CBL probes, microscopes, nets, and magnifying glasses to evaluate the water they drink and their water sources. In addition, they use computers and field research to find information from sources ranging fromthe U.S. Geological Survey, U.S. Forstry Service, and local water authorities to the Center for Disease Control. They then would use Excel and Power Point to produce spreadsheets, pictographs, and other visual aids. The team-based learning is a great introduction to the way real research teams do things, and the chance for outside study allows students to really connect their subject matter to the world they live in.

Several government sites offer not just a wealth of information, but also exciting and challenging lesson plans for educators. While browsing the U.S. Geological Survey (USGS) site I found a great lesson plan for the study of how hurricanes impact the land and the people on it while intruducing students to availability of data and source materials to the public that most people don't even know exist. The plan for GIS-Based Lesson- Hurricane Analysis With Public Domain State and National Data is an aggressive opportunity for students to learn using the specific example of how Hurricane Rita affected the Texas coast. Students create spreadsheets, generate projection data sets, and analyse geographical features of the shore and surrounding land mass, the size and intensity of the hurricane, risk zones, and other climatic and geographic features. If time permits and the programing is available in the school, students can use information gathered to create graphic images of the shore, the storm itself, and other elements, such as storm surge and beach erosion. (Students can also suppliment their information by visiting the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration website). Team discovery in this project is imperative, and educators using it would be well advised to try it a couple times before using it. However, it is a fantastic glimpse at real world applications for weather  and geological study.