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

Downloading Music

If you need to find music for a diversity project or for personal use you can search and download through Google. Copy and paste the following search parameters in the search box for Google:
-inurl:htm -inurl:html intitle:”index of” mp3 “pearl jam”
Change pearl jam to any song or artist you like. It will find directories that have mp3 files. Right click on the song and select "save target as" and browse to the location you want to save it.

Camtasia

I have been using Camtasia for about 3 years. The program is like a video cam that records everything you do on your computer screen and then coverts it to a video file that can be played on any computer. Perhaps you are demonstrating to your class how to use tables in Word to align the text of a multicolumn document. You have your computer connected to an overhead projector and the students are watching as you show them step by step how to insert a table then make the borders disappear so everything is lined up nice and neat. You mouse click a button at the bottom of your screen and Camtasia starts recording your screen. When you are finished you click again on the button and Camtasia saves everything you have done to an AVI file. It then puts the entire AVI file on an editing screen and you can edit it. You can narrate over it, annotate it, cut out parts and even insert an interactive self grading quiz at the end. When you are finished you simply select produce and everything is saved to a file as AVI or Flash (to have the self grading quiz you need to save it as Flash). The final file can be put on DVD or CD. Next time you want to have this lesson you just play the video and the students see everything you did the first time plus the annotations and narration. You can copy it on each workstation or your network. Over the year, if you have a lot of lessons like this Camtasia can create a table of contents. Camtasia will automatically convert a powerpoint to AVI. (I don't think Camtasia is on the DOL approved list so you will need to take this home to use it or put it on a non DOL laptop or figure out something else. I have only one CD and do not want to send it to DOL for six months and wait for approval). It is a little pricey at around $350 for education but worth it. http://www.techsmith.com/camtasia.asp

Playing Catchup

Do you feel you are behind the learning curve. You know the terms but aren't exactly sure what they mean. The following are links to short three minute videos that explain in easy to understand terms technologies that are shaping the current generation.

blogs http://www.commoncraft.com/blogs
RSS http://www.commoncraft.com/rss_plain_english
Twitter http://www.commoncraft.com/twitter
Wikis http://www.commoncraft.com/video-wikis-plain-english

Do you know of other links to help us play catch up? Post them as a comment.

Experimenting with Technology in the Classroom

How great would it be if we had a complete multimedia tutorial system that covered all of the items in our TARs. Some people are visual learners and need video and animation, others need to read content and still others need to hear a lesson. With all students interaction seems to be a key factor in learning. A complete multimedia tutorial system could provide all of that.

The following are some experiments towards that ends. You will need flash to view most of it but it should already be running on most computers. The Percent and PosNeg are simply powerpoints that were converted to flash files using a program called Camtasia.

http://www.californialanguagecenter.com/UN/Exercise.swf

http://www.californialanguagecenter.com/Percent.swf

http://www.californialanguagecenter.com/PosNeg.swf

A TABE Tutorial Site Developed at HJCC

This link will take you to a TABE self study site. It offers tutorials, worksheets and quizzes on the math, reading, and grammar elements needed to improve a TABE score. It can also be used to prepare for the college placement exam. www.californialanguagecenter.com/indexB.html