The Best Laid Plans of Mice and Men...

I was all set to present the technology part of my lesson today to my first hour. I had tried this on my husband's PC at home to make sure the tools were there. I thought that was smart thinking on my part because I already knew that everything worked on the Mac. The tools were on Word on my husband's computer. I was ready for my class!

They finished typing their essays on Word in our computer lab. I was ready for my "Tools" lesson. The first part worked okay. I was explaining the spelling and grammar feature, which I knew that the students knew. However, when I said to pull down the Tools menu, they couldn't. At school, we have a different version of Word. Not to panic, I went over to a computer to see what was going on. In the meantime, a student said to click on Review to get to spelling and grammar. Worked like a charm. New problem: When I told them to click the option button in the dialogue box, any student who had already done the spelling and grammar check couldn't get to it. I told them to type a word incorrectly in their document and then try again. Viola! That worked. I had them check the "Show Readability Statistics" box in the dialogue box and then click okay. Word did the spelling and grammar check and then brought up the readability box. Students were surprised when it said 4.5, 5.2, or something like that indicating the reading level of their writing. Originally, I had in the directions to look at word choice, sentence structure and variety, grammar, etc., to make improvements so that the readability level would be 10. I did lower that to at least between 8 and 10. I gave them a website to check grammar questions and a website for a virtual thesaurus in addition to Word's thesaurus. That worked okay, too. Next problem: I wanted them to use the Auto Summarize button, which on the old program was under Tools. I thought this would be great to show them what the computer picked out as the main ideas. They didn't have that function on the computer. I am thinking to myself, "Why would that be removed from Word because it is such a good idea?" We tried to find it, but the hour ended before we could. I would conclude that first hour was not as successful as I had hoped it would be.

Second hour I am ready to try this again. While the students were finishing their essays, I tried to find the answer to the Auto Summarize question; however, the only PC left in the room for me to work on wouldn't let me into the system for whatever reason. I saw that a girl had finished her essay and was waiting. I asked if I could experiment on her computer. I found what I was looking for and figured out how to add it to their Word pages. When people had completed their typing, I gave them the directions to add the Auto Summarize feature, and then I went on with my "Tools" lesson. I felt much more successful with second hour. Now I just have to do the presentation for my fifth hour class and redo the lesson for my first hour so that they can do the next step.

I also had the most interesting discussion with my second hour class about blocked sites. They assured me that if I wanted to get to any blocked site, they could get me there. Yes, it is true that students know more about technology than some of the teachers! My question to them, though, was why did they think that Facebook, a social network, was blocked, but Twitter, another social network, was not blocked. One answer they gave was that it was too new or that the blockers didn't know yet that students were twittering. I should call our ISD to see if I can get an answer. But I make no promises to do that and actually get an answer. I just thought it was interesting.

I don't go to many sites at school through our school's server. I mainly use the school's e-mail site and Skyward for attendance. Today my third-hour students are out selling yearbook ads so I have a few minutes to work on this. I am glad that it worked out this way so that I could write about my earlier two hours while it was still fresh in my head. I am not sure when my students will return because at 11 we went on a lockdown, and there is a police dog in the halls. I am not sure if this is a scheduled practice or the real thing. My students left at 10:45 and are supposed to return between 11:30 and 11:44. It is now 11:26, and we are still in the lockdown. This has been an interesting day so far; I want what fourth and fifth hours will bring!