The following is a summary of the main points covered in this chapter.
- Overview of the "Basic Three": Three software tools that are considered basic educational resources are:
- Word processing — Programs that allow people to produce typed documents on a computer screen. Benefits of using them include saving time, improving document appearance, and allowing easy exchange of work.
- Spreadsheets — Programs designed to organize and manipulate numerical data. Benefits of using them include Saving time, organizing displays of information, and increasing motivation to work with mathematics
- Databases — Programs that allow users to store, organize, and manipulate information, including both text and numerical data. Benefits of using them include reducing data redundancy (the number of places data must be stored), saving time locating and/or updating important information, allowing comparisons of information through searches across files, and revealing relationships among data.
To see descriptions of features and capabilities of some of the most popular of these software tools, visit these sites:
- Productivity applications for the three basic software tools: These include:
- For word processing — Creating handouts or other instructional materials, lesson plans and notes, reports, forms, letters to parents or students, flyers, and newsletters
- For spreadsheets — Keeping club and classrooms budgets, preparing performance checklists, and keeping gradebooks
- For databases — Inventorying and locating instructional resources, data mining for planning and reporting, using information on students to respond to questions or perform required tasks, and sending personalized letters to parents and others.
- Teaching and learning tasks that each kind of tool can support are:
- For word processing — Supporting the learning of writing processes, using a dynamic group process approach, assigning individual language, writing, and reading exercises, and encouraging writing across the curriculum
- For spreadsheets — Making possible visual teaching demonstrations; and supporting student products, mathematical and what if? problem solving, storing and analyzing data, and projecting grades
- For databases — Teaching research and study skills, understanding the power of information "pictures," posing and testing hypotheses, and searching for information during research
- Lesson activities for software tools: For instructional activities that integrate the functions and capabilities of the software tools see the Technology Integration Workshop DVD that accompanies this text. For other lesson ideas on using these tools in curriculum lessons, visit the following web sites:
