Week 4:  I was introduced to Microsoft Excel. I have been using this tool at the school where I work for many years, however I never had a proper introduction until now!  We normally just use ready-made documents that the exec administration sends out to us – reports like course schedules or budget spreadsheets.  I never knew how to create a formula until today.  

The following list is taken from Module 4 of AAU’s ARE615OL

Excel can:

•   Record and calculate grades

•   Record student attendance or participation

•   Keep track of supplies/inventory

•   Establish program budgets

•   Keep track of income and spending

•   Keep track of various types of donations

•   Keep track of employee and/or volunteer hours

•  Create charts to graphically represent data

Today I learned about formulas and graphs.  I didn’t realize this tool could be used to record and track attendance plus grades.  Here are a few examples of my practice spreadsheets and graphs.

This graph shows a sample list of students and their grades for an Art History Assignment

Using Excel I was able to extract each student’s scores and create individual graphs.  This is a nice visual tool to share with students so she/he can see visually how they scored.

This week I also explored Rubistar.  This is a website that helps educators create rubrics.  What a great starter tool!  Often I feel stuck looking at empty cells or graphs, but with Rubistar the content is pre-filtered and populated.  A teacher can use this as a guide to further tailor the rubric to the course content. 

Here is my sample from Rubistar – using a rubrics I created for Learner Blogs.  I am still going to try and edit this to fit the assignment more.