Sunday, September 16, 2012

The Wonderful World of Word

This past week I got to work with Microsoft Word. First, I want to talk about getting word. I have an older computer. I am running Microsoft XP and I have had Word 97. Well, that is not nearly new enough for a newly matriculated (for the second time) graduate student. I was like a kid in a candy shop at Best Buy. I bought a new 2 TB external hard drive and the university version of office 2010! So needless to say I was excited this week to try out my new Word 2010. I have used Word 2007 at work but using MY version was so much more gratifying.

I was impressed with some of the additions to word. Like I said before I have used 2007 a bit but just for basic word processing. I create a lot of social narratives I use with my students or letters to send home to parents.

My first project used smartart. I never used smart art before and really enjoyed using it. It made making my graphic organizers much easier. I easily could have made 3 very different graphic organizers for this project. I will continue to use this feature in my classroom to create visuals for my students.

My second project was a calendar. Long ago, I made several templates in Word 97 for calendars where the months started on each different day of the week. I had to format the table to get everything right and the headers are not all the same. This easily takes care of all the little formatting issues I would have spent a long time worrying about trying to make my calendar look professional. I am going to use the calendar I created for my lesson plan book for October.

My final project was a timeline about the civil war. My students will not learn about the civil war as most things we do are life skills curriculum. I wanted to do something fun for me. I enjoy learning and reading about the civil war so I wanted to do this. I really liked doing this project although it was not much more than table with some shapes. I decided to add hyperlinks. I did not spend too much time looking for good links, I just wanted to do it as something I could envision using with this type of word file.

Overall, I love word as I have used it for a very long time (I won't say how long as it may indicate how old I really am). I enjoyed learning about these new templates on word and look forward to using them to help make my job preparing and planning a little easier.

Until next week :)

2 comments:

  1. I am really glad that you have entered the most current version of Word! It is an AMAZING program! I have had it for a very long time! I had it on my PC before it came out which was nice. I was like a kid in a candy shop! I would never go back to the older versions!

    I am glad you enjoyed working on your projects. They are very informative. These tools are very useful and beneficial for classroom and professional use. I can relate to how you felt at Best Buy, I had recently bought a label maker and was super stoked about it. I can remember the days when I would think that is so stupid! As you get older, you get more excited about the practical items!

    Enjoy your new program and keep up the good work! Until next week!

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  2. Word 97?! Glad you have finally gotten an update :)! I also used the calendar and graphic organizer as my assignment and I found out a lot of great tips and tricks throughout using the program.

    I think everyone has a special place in their heart for Word since it is so often used throughout our lifetimes!

    I am jealous about your shopping spree, I need to do the same. I am still running Microsoft XP and 2007.

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