MOS Word 2007

There is a Word 2003 component to both the Office Administration TAR and the Accounting Services TAR. Most of us are not waiting for the TARs to change and we are transitioning our students over to Word 2007. At least with it we are only 2 years behind the times rather than 6. I suspect the next revision of the TARs will switch to 2007. In the meantime here in Hawaii we found that trying to prepare students for the MOS Word 2007 is tough. The MOS test for Word 2003 has a core and an expert level and all our students tested on the easier core level. MOS Word 2007 has only one level and it corresponds to the expert level for 2003. Furthermore, personally I find the Office Suite 2007 much more difficult to learn, perhaps because there are more features or perhaps I learned 2003 and had a difficult time unlearning it. At any rate I have developed a MOS Word 2007 tutorial that corresponds item by item to the Word 2003 TAR. There is a video, audio, text tutorial for each item on the TAR. There is also a practice for each item that you can use to verify the students know how to apply that particular feature. It is online and requires Flash. Most computers already have it. If you would like the same tutorials on CD I would be happy to send it to you. You will still need Flash on your computer but you don't have to worry about your connection to the internet. You can simply copy the whole thing on each workstation. You can use the tutorials to verify and check off TAR items. It also begins to prepare them for the MOS Word 2007 test but do not rely solely on it. Use Measure Up or Learn Key or some other test simulation to prepare them. Click on the title of this article to link to the tutorial site.

Accounting Services

Are you teaching Accounting Services? We have been using the same accounting book for over five years. Most accounting books are pretty standard. They teach accounting as a process from journalizing, to posting to closing. Then they teach how to create financial statements from that work. This new site begins in chapter one with the financial statements. It explains how they relate and what kinds of information affects them. Then it goes about teaching the tools used to develop those statements. It teaches accounting from a business manager's perspective rather than a bookkeeper's perspective. Also everything is accessible online, the tutorials, the worksheets, quizzes, glossaries. They can also be printed out. They are in the process of developing video training to accompany the tutorials. And did I mention, it is all free. Take a look at it. I have just made the switch at my center. Teachers, once verifed by the site, can access answer sheets to all the problems. The problems can also be downloaded as Excel files or PDF. www.principlesofaccounting.com