Customer Reviews

Technology Tools for Teachers: A Microsoft Office Tutorial

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This book is an acknowledgement of the importance of Microsoft Office software in a classroom environment. Given that any computers present in the classroom are likely to run a Microsoft operating system, or be a Macintosh. For both, MS Office is available.

On first glance, most of the book might come across as yet another text on MS Office. Like how to type in a document using Word, or fill in a spreadsheet using Excel. So why don't you, the teacher, just use one of those alternatives? But on closer inspection, there is more to Mills' book.

He shows how an Office program can have specific usages within a classroom context. Take Excel. You might use this for such tasks as keeping attendance records, maintaining a classroom budget or recording student grades. These are very common tasks faced by many teachers. Or you might be a school administrator. Then, Excel can certainly do these tasks for more than one classroom. Perhaps for all the classes in each year, and thence for all the classes in the school.

Excel can also be used for instructional tasks. The obvious context is in teaching maths. But there are other usages that might not be so obvious to you, which Mills explains. A possibly hilarious usage, with a very serious intent, is to let a student project her own grades, based on her actual current grades, and with varying assumptions about her effort.

The book's chapters on PowerPoint might attract your attention. Perhaps you wish to instantiate your lessons in this format? PowerPoint is easy to use, as the book suggests. You can see how to integrate slides, audio, simple animation and hyperlinks. Especially to make HTML documents. This could help your students after hours, if they can go to your website, possibly hosted by your school, and review your lesson. At the university level, some lecturers already do this. No reason why this cannot also happen in a high school or even a primary school.

the basics are great but the book is SO vague on anything more than basic. Get one of the "DUMMIE" books or something like it.

This is very easy to use with Microsoft Office 2003 (I had to go to my work to finish up my class), however, with Office 2007(which I have at home) it is horrible. The commands are different. If your like me, and don't know much about Power Point and Excel, it's very difficult to follow.

My suggestion would be to use a computer with Office 2003 to do this, otherwise you will be very frustrated.

Also, I had a few problems with the cd. I could not open the lesson plans link or one of the power points on any of the computers that I tried....who knows why.

Good luck!