Oh, I love MS Word.

Post #2 Prompt

A paragraph on how you’ve used MS Word as a student and how you’ve seen your teachers use MS Word.

A paragraph on how you might choose to use them as a teacher.

A paragraph on new skills you acquired in the class so far that you think will be especially useful to you in your educational career and why you think so.

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Considering that my classes in high school were some forty-five minutes long, I never really saw my instructors typing away at a computer. If classes were longer, I'm sure they would be hitting Facebook up every three minutes, but then, time was money. I'll give them the benefit of the doubt, though; with the hundreds of "busy work" assignments given to me over the years, I'm sure one or two had to be constructed using Word. Maybe not...Xeroxing was the rage at my school. So worksheets, probably some lesson plans, letters, tests, quizzes? It's hard to say what program they used; all teachers all seem to pull their lessons out of some generic lesson bank some place where the font is always "Comic sans MS."

Now, I'm all about originality. I really cannot imagine one textbook meeting all state and nationally mandated curriculum. So, I suppose drafting our own tests, quizzes, etc. is necessary, and relatively simple. I plan on using Word specifically for lesson plans, newsletters, tests/quizzes, study guides, worksheets, etc.

I find the merge letter skill to be particularly useful, allowing instructors to "seem" personal with students' families while saving valuable time (thank goodness!). This upcoming assignment, "MS Assignment 2," will be particularly interesting, as none of my teachers have ever published a newsletter. I'm digging deep to conjure up a farce classroom enviornment in which to comment on. So those of you who want to pretend to be in high school again, my newsletter will be out next Monday. :-)