Easy ways to expand your skills in Excel, PowerPoint, Word 2007

If you’re looking for a place to find answers about “how to” do something with Word, Excel or PowerPoint, here are two resources that will help:

http://inpics.net/   This website shows you, a picture at a time, how do accomplish a task.  Just click on the software (remember, we’re using the 2007 version), then click on your choice.  There is also a search function, so you can search for specific tasks you are trying to accomplish.

http://www.woopid.com/.  This website has short videos that show and tell you how to accomplish a task.  Like Inpics, this website has a search function, but it also has a place to browse through the offerings (which go beyond Office 2007).  Go to: http://www.woopid.com/channels.php, click on Windows, and you’ll see a list of Office sofware – Excel, PowerPoint, and so on.  If you click on PowerPoint, for example, you’ll see a list of different videos available.  You’ll see “login” and ”sign up now,” but you don’t have to register to use the website.  Just find the video you want, and watch it!

These tools might be a good way to learn a few new tricks – and you don’t have to go to a class to do it!  Enjoy.

Thanks to Richard Byrne, blogger of “Free Technology for Teachers” for these great resources. http://freetech4teachers.blogspot.com/2008/11/computer-tutorials-in-pictures-and.html.

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Suspect plagiarism? Here’s an easy way to check

 

                Has a student’s written work suddenly and spontaneously become sophisticated and fluent?  Is part of the paper the student’s typical writing, and the middle is suddenly error-free?  Are you suspicious?

 

                One quick and easy way to check if the work was borrowed from the Internet is to “google” some of the paper.  Here’s how.

 

1.        Identify a sentence or phrase that makes you suspicious.

 

2.       In Google, www. google.com, in the search box, type in that phrase.  You may have better luck if you “put quotation marks around the phrase.”  Don’t do a whole paragraph – a sentence or long phrase will do.

 

3.       Look at the results.  Do you see that very phrase or sentence?  Do you see still more of the suspicious report or essay?  Is much of your student’s essay or report the same as what you found via Google?

 

 

4.       Print down the Internet page with the copied material.  Highlight or otherwise mark it.

 

 

5.       Mark the offending material in your student’s work.  If they are the same, or virtually the same, you have the necessary information to document the problem and take action.

 

Sad we have to do this, but this provides us with a teachable moment, doesn’t it?

 

Fran

 

 

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