The E-line Archives, Vol. 3, #24

David L. Scott's Wall Street Words (referenced at Dictionary.Com) defines productivity as "The efficiency with which output is produced by a given set of inputs..." For teachers, "output" is the outcomes of instruction, student learning. Our "set of inputs" are ourselves and our students, lesson plans, teaching resources, and support systems. For this edition of The E-Line, our "support systems" are computer tools. If the microcomputer has done anything, it has given teachers and students powerful tools for writing, computing, organizing, and presenting - the stuff of productivity. Because of them, teachers are able to design and deliver instructional materials quickly and easily, and students are better equipped to produce a wide range of finished assignment formats.

Computer productivity tools are often bundled together. In Kentucky, most school systems have standardized on Microsoft Office for productivity software - Word for word processing, Excel for spreadsheets, Access for databases, PowerPoint for presentations, Publisher for electronic publishing, and FrontPage for website creation and maintenance. Below we focus on online resources which support and integrate these tools - lesson plan sources, software tutorials, and templates. Take a few moments this summer and improve your productivity!

On-line lesson planning

Microsoft Office Lesson Plans

http://www.microsoft.com/education/LessonPlans.aspx

Microsoft maintains a substantial bank of lesson plans using each of its Office products. The database can be searched by keyword, product, grade level, subject level, and theme. You won't find direct ties to content area standards, nor classroom-ready worksheets, but the ideas are good, the integration well designed, and every plan is offered in printable form. Additionally, look at Virtual Classroom Tours - stand-alone PowerPoint presentations on a variety of educational subjects.

Tutorials

Office2000, FrontPage, Outlook, Internet Explorer	Actden http://www.actden.com/ These tutorials are great general introductions. Lots of cartoons and clever dialog, but limited content, and beginning to become a bit dated. If you're bored by text-only tutorials and just want some quick and fun exposure, this'll work. Offered free by Canadian online designers Act360 as a promotion for their other services.
All Office tools, many other software	FreeSkills http://www.freeskills.com/ Featured in our October 3, 2003 newsletter, FreeSkills is a pretty extensive screen shot + text tutorial site. A service of VisualSoft UK, Ltd, as a promo for their online courses, they also offer tutorials for Adobe, MacroMedia, and other software, as well as general orientation tutorials for databases, Web design, Visual Basic programming, etc.
All Microsoft products	Microsoft Office Tutorials http://www.microsoft.com/education/Tutorials.aspx Needless to say, Microsoft offers extensive online tutorials for all their products. They are usually offered in Word documents with text and screen shots, sometimes with accompanying PowerPoints. Although you can search on grade level (elementary/middle/high), the tutorials are generally aimed at adults. For a more extensive collection of resources, take a look at the online training modules at Microsoft's Office home page. Microsoft also maintains a site aimed at Office for Macs, but I could find no tutorials specific to it online - they refer users to the help files embedded in the software.
Word, Excel, Access, PowerPoint (Office 2003 coming soon)	Bernie Poole's EdIndex http://www.pitt.edu/~edindex/ Dr. Poole, a professor of education at the University of Pittsburg at Johnstown, provides good basic Microsoft Office tutorials in PDF (and, hence, very printable) format. They're presented in language which will be quite familiar to teachers and students of education!
All Office tools, many other software	Online Tutorials from SkyWire http://www.service911.com/mvu/ This site is still offered by SkyWire after their acquisition of the original developer, Attenza. In addition to the standard Office offerings (including some basics on Office2001 for Macs), there are tutorials on several operating systems, including Palm, PocketPC, and MacOS. Like several of the free sites, this one isn't being updated to the latest versions any longer, but the list of screen-shot + text offerings is extensive.

Templates

All Microsoft products	Microsoft Office Templates http://office.microsoft.com/templates/ Hungry for cute layouts and PowerPoint formats? This resource is rich with templates appropriate for business and other professional applications. It's a little obscure for educators. But there's lots there! Microsoft also bundled a lot of education templates and classroom tools together into a single download, but that resource hasn't been updated in a while.
Excel	Classrooms that Excel http://www.sabine.k12.la.us/class/excel_resources.htm This Many, Louisiana school district supplies this nice collection of resources and templates of Excel documents for a variety of educational uses. There are links to lots of other sites supporting Excel.
PowerPoint	Brainy Betty http://www.brainybetty.com/educators1.htm There are dozens of commercial PowerPoint template suppliers on the Web, some offering free ones for download. This one has a bunch, all free. They're zipped - you'll need WinZip to expand the files.
Word, general educational templates	Teacher Tools Templates http://www.teachertools.org/forms_dynam.asp Teacher Tools, managed by Mark and Shelli Temple, is suffering from some neglect these days, but this list of Word templates for a variety of general educational uses seems worthwhile.

Software Resources

Viewing Microsoft Documents

Microsoft provides several viewers, allowing users who do not have Office installed on their computers (or whose version of Office isn't new enough) to view documents created there. The most popular is the PowerPoint viewer, since PowerPoint capabilities have changed a lot over the years. The Word viewer work in conjunction with Internet Explorer.