Index: Educational Technology

Lesson Activities

Page Contents

Objects Working with text Working with files Preferences Menus and Menu Items Help and the annoying Office Assistant Tables and Charts HTML 1: The Basics Data Organizational Structures Creating Workbooks in Excel Creating Charts in Excel Creating Formulas (Models) in Excel

Objects

1. Formatting a disk
2. Keyboarding?
3. Opening the application Microsoft Word
4. --PART ONE--
5. Parts of the application include: Menus (drag over the menus)
6. Toolbars with buttons
7. If you don't see the toolbars, put the mouse cursor above the menu "Views"
8. Click and hold
9. See the menuitem "Toolbars"
10. Scroll down the list of menuitems in menu "Views" and rest on the "Toolbars" menuitem
11. Additional menuitems will appear
12. Select the "Standard" menuitem by moving the cursor over it and stopping -- then let go!
13. the menuitem will either appear or disappear depending on whether or not it was visible to begin with
14. Make the standard menubar visible if it is not already on your screen
15. Other parts include: the document "window" itself, and the document ruler, and the scroll bar
16. Creat new document
17. You can select available document templates, but we won't do that today
18. -----------
19. http://www.microsoft.com/office/word/default.htm or CLICK HERE

Working with text

1. creating a *New* document
2. Move the cursor into the document
3. Type: "now is the time for all good men to come to the aid of their country"
4. move the cursor over the text to reveal the insertion character
5. click after the word "men"
6. type " and women"
7. move the cursor over the word "country"
8. click once on the first character and drag over the word in order to highlight it
9. type "planet"
10. now double-click (tap twice over the top-left part of the mouse button) on the word "good"
11. hit the delete key to make the text disappear
12. go up to the menu "Edit"
13. select "undo typing"
14. watch the word "good" re-appear
15. select the word "good" again if it is not already highlighted
16. go up to the menu "Edit"
17. select "cut"
18. watch the word "good" re-appear
19. go up to the menu "Edit" again
20. select "undo cut"
21. watch the word "good" re-appear
22. select before word "women"
23. go up to the menu "Edit" again
24. select "paste text"
25. watch the word "good" appear before the word "women"
26. you may need to clean up the text by inserting or deleting spaces
27. The difference between "cut, copy, and clear"
28. The menus are dynamic: For example, redo, cut, and paste change a little bit depending on what it is you just did. See how cool?
29. Now select the word "Planet"
30. style the text by choosing Bold, Italic, and Underline
31. choose "undo" several times; see it revert several times?
32.

Working with files

1. Save your document: 30. go to menu "File"
2. select save
3. navigate to where you want to save the document, e.g. "C:/My Documents/"
4. You can create a new folder if you wish
5. Choose "New Folder"
6. Give your document a name. e.g. "myname011601.doc" sans quotes
7. close the document window
8. reopen the document
9. Voila! There is is again
10. Important notes: You can save anytime, and should save VERY VERY OFTEN (if the computer freezes/crashes, you will lose all of your work since the last time you saved.
11. type some text (anything)
12. choose save again, now that text is saved onto your document
13. type some more
14. close your document without saving
15. re-open your document
16. see how what you did not save is not there?

Preferences

1. Select menu "Tools"
2. Select menuitem "Preferences"
3. In the "Preferences" window, click on various tabs to see how their contents come to the forefront
4. Check off the functions which are distracting or confusing
5. Talk about some of the functions, which are not too complex (for the time being)
6. See how easy? Say yes.

Menus and Menu Items

1. Select every menu in the Application Microsoft Word
2. Select each menu item in each menu and talk about it
3. Give demonstrations where appropriate

Help and the annoying Office Assistant

• See all items in the Help menu
• talk about each
• navigate the Help Menu with the Office Assistant (only available in MS Word 98 and later)

Tables and Charts

1. Open MS Word
2. Choose new document
3. Enable "Tables and Borders" toolbar
4. Make a 4 x 4 table
5. Enter data, with top row being categories
6. Enter descriptive data in column one
7. Enter data (choose reasonably proximate numbers for this simulation) in all empty "cells"
8. Format the categories and column one in a color
9. Select table
10. Choose menu item Insert / Picture / Chart
11. You are now in MS Graph (it's part of MS Word)
12. See how both Word and Graph are available in the taskbar
13. Select chart type by either clicking on the chart icon in the toolbar, or selecting menu item Chart / Chart Type (play around with various types)
14. Play around with changing data on the data sheet
15. Watch the chart change shapes
16. Go back to your word document by either 1) selecting MS Word from the taskbar, or 2) Quiting MS Graph
17. The graph will appear in your word document
18. Select the graph and delete it by either 1) click once on the graph and selecting "Cut" from the "Edit" menu, using the controlkey function (Ctrl-X), or simply hitting the delete key. Use the "Undo" function in the "Edit" menu to try all three.
19. As you know, anything you cut stays in memory, so you could now paste your graph in PowerPoint, a paint program, and even Excel (as a picture). You could also select your data and paste it into Excel as "data."
20. Remember: Anything you do to format graphs can be easily changed in the future, so it's not like you have one chance to get it right. Happy charting.

HTML 1: The Basics

Although designing web pages wasn't originally intended for this class.

1. There are lots of HTML coding software programs out there. Some are free, or shareware, and some come directly built into programs you may already have access to. In this class period, we'll look at one or two. Some examples are Netscape Composer, Adobe Pagemill, MS Front Page, any many, many others.
2. Open Netscape Communicator. Built into Communicator are really three programs: 1) Navigator (or the browser), 2) Messenger (the somewhat awkward email editor), and 3) Composer (the HTML editor).
3. Let's create a web page in just a few minutes. Open Composer through the Communicator menu.
4. Open MS Word and select your syllabus. Select several pages of text. Do menu "Copy Text."
5. Return to Composer.
6. Paste text directly into Composer.
7. Use a variety of tools to compose the web page.
8. For example, selecting the heading "Syllabus" and make "Heading 1." You can add various colors and font properties.
9. You can do all sorts of fun and interesting things. We'll demonstrate a few in class.
10. If you're interested in continuing with HTML coding, I recommend that you visit and take some of the tutorials available at HTML Goodies or at Beginning HTML. There are any number of HTML instructional books and websites available. This can be as easy, or as complicated, as you'd like it to be.

11. Please remember that your students may need only a basic introduction to web page design before they'd be off and soaring on their own.

Happy coding...

Data Organizational Structures

Data Organizational Structures has been moved to the "Potpourri Page." You can also get there by CLICKING HERE.

Creating Workbooks in Excel

1. Open workbook (click on menu File->New)

2. You can choose from existing files, templates, or create a new workbook

3. Choose New from File menu

4. Templates offer custom toolbars and preformatted arrangement of cells (when you get good enough, you can also create your own templates)

5. Choose "New Workbook:" General (Tab)->Workbook)

6. You now have a new workbook. Each workbook can consist of numerous worksheets. Click on the tabs at the bottom to see new worksheets come to the front.

7. Make sure your "Standard" and "Formatting" Toolbars are visible, and that you're not looking at your worksheet in "Full Screen" (see view menu)

8. Columns, Rows, and Cells

9. Click in a cell to enter data; double-click on the cell if it contains data; enter a number; type return to go down, or tab to move right

10. You can select an entire row or column by clicking on its number (row) or letter (column)

11. You can perform most functions found in word processors in this document as well (e.g. cut, copy, paste, find, replace)

12. You can fill in data automatically, either in columns or rows (example)

13. Perform Mathematical Functions: First, click on the equal sign next to the "Formula Bar," then type in an equation and click return

14. You can also use the autosum function; hilite a row of numbers, then click on Sum (the big stilted-looking E symbol in the toolbar)

15. the sum appears in the last empty cell available in the selection

16. try playing around with various combinations of cells and summation

17. to see the formulas you performed, click on control ` (thats a single left quote)

18. insert a few rows up at top to make a title space

19. select that text and drag across a few columns

20. type "your name's worksheet" (do the item above before you do this one)

21. you can also do this other ways, such as typing the info in one cell, going to the Format->Cells menu, clicking on the alignment tab, and choosing merge cells

22. yes, you can color the text and background just like in MS Word; in fact, you can do this for any row, column, or cell (or sets thereof)

23. you can also create borders around cells, rows, or combinations thereof...

24. hold down the command/control key to select areas that are apart from each other

25. and, you can create page breaks, both vertical and horizontal for determining how your page is printed, then use the "Page Break Preview" and "Print Previews" to see how your page(s) will look when printed (and of course you can make changes to the format if you don't like it)

26. AND, DON'T FORGET THAT YOU CAN ALWAYS GET HELP IN THE "HELP" MENU

27. and, finally, you can access Microsofts Technical Support website by visiting http://support.microsoft.com/support