Journal 10

Excel and More

As an ESE teacher, my job is to teach and help students of various abilities and diagnoses. A large part of the job is keeping data sheets. These data sheets can track a variety of things, including: behavior, food, speech, and skills like reading, writing, or math. Excel and other apps like it seem to be the choice method for ESE teachers trying to stay organized. The information would be easy to store, but also easy to print out when going to parent teacher conferences or IEP meetings. I've also seen a teacher use it to keep track of her students' reading levels. She had each student listed with their words read per minute, and continued to add numbers as she retested her students. I don't know what method I would use to grade assignments yet, but you could probably use Excel to do that as well.


I reviewed a couple of my classmate's blogs. A lot of people had the same material, which is not surprising, since we write off of prompts. However, I did like seeing what everyone chose as their design. I also liked learning about what grades and subjects everyone wants to teach. What I found most interesting though, is the class' various writing styles. Some of us write very colloquially, and others write very robotic. It was really funny to read all of the different ways each one of us phrased our answers.


Finally, I really would like to learn how to use iMovie or Photoshop. I may never have to use them in the classroom setting, I would just like the skill. I have always been interested in different editing apps. I have even tried to play around with a few of them, but it never turns out quite right. I just think they are very hard to use and understand if you don't know what any of the buttons do. I would like someone to walk through the basics with me, and then I would be able to teach myself some more advanced stuff.