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Shared Professional Resources |
Here I've posted various documents and files which may be useful and/or of interest to other educators. Everything posted here is copyrighted, but educators are given permission to modify and use these items for educational purposes as long as Steve Grant is clearly acknowledged as the original author.
Ebooks & "Hardware Matters"
NEW 2/08--> Excel Basics (TeacherTECH '08)
NEW 2/08--> Excel Intermediate (TeacherTECH '08)
Excel Basics & Excel for Budgetkeeping
Using
the Web for Research: A Lesson Model
Info
Select: Use Your Computer as Photographic Memory
...Creating "Resource Lists" for Student Research...
ResListMstr
Ebooks...
-->If you have PowerPoint installed: PowerPoint format, aprx. 70 slides, aprx. 3.8MB
-->If you don't have PowerPoint: PDF format, aprx 2.2MB
Years ago ebooks were hailed as The Next Big Thing. But sales of dead-tree editions still are booming, new pride-of-the-city libraries continue to open across the country, and 30-lb. backpacks full of textbooks still weigh down students. What's going on? This PowerPoint...
"Hardware Matters" (6 pages, PDF format)...
In considering how we can use technology to deliver powerful resources to students any time, any place--throughout their school day and even at home--we have to look at a new breed of powerful, wirelessly-connected, portable devices to supplant the desktop computers (and even laptops) we've been wiring for and installing all over campuses. And while we're at it, let's say goodbye to 30-lb. backpacks and make textbooks part of those resources as well. Could etextbooks on powerful, portable tablets ultimately lead to the demise of the printed book and the computer lab? "Hardware Matters" is my Feb. 2002 posting to the San Diego County Education-sponsored Technology Innovations Maximizing Education (TIME) group.
Excel Basics (TeacherTECH '08)
This Excel Basics--Tips & Tricks (PDF format) is the handout for the TeacherTECH '08 class. It includes commands and tips for doing the following:
Files used during the class:
All Courses 2_05.xls
Avg copyright 629s 2_05.xls
Budget Master '07-'08.xls
Running total demo.xls
The handout for the "Excel Intermediate" class is directly below.
Excel Intermediate (TeacherTECH '08)
Files used during the class:
All Courses 2_05.xls
Budget Master '07-'08.xls
Column chart sample.xls
Horizon report-sample.txt and Horizon report-sample.xls
IF, COUNT function sample.xls
Pie chart sample.xls
Sorting sample.xls
Excel_Basics-Tips_&_Tricks_(handout)... PDF format; prints to 4 pages
Excel_Basics-Presenter_Notes... PDF format; prints to 15 pages(!) (Large font, lots of white space so I can read it in dim light.) If I ran out of time during my presentation and you want to see the rest of what I was hoping to show you, this might do it for you. If you'd like to have this in Word format so you can edit and use it yourself, that's here: Excel_Basics-Presenter_Notes.doc.
All_Courses_2_05.xls... Excel workbook (2 worksheets): Created to figure the cost of providing classroom sets of textbooks for all courses at La Jolla High School.
Budget_Master_LMC.XLT... Excel workbook template (11 worksheets): Every year I start with a new file based on this. Download and play with it. If you think you'd like to customize it for your own use, see instructions in Excel for Budgetkeeping (LMC), below.
Horizon_report-sample.txt... This is a tab-delimited text file exported from our Horizon circulation system. It's a list of all my school's copies of a particular textbook, and includes barcode number, item status (checked out vs. checked in, etc.), checkout date, and name of the person to whom that copy is checked out. Use to practice importing a delimited text file into Excel, then using Excel's formatting and sorting capabilities to produce a list more readable (and compact) than what the circulation program would print itself. Hey, you can even skip the dead-tree hardcopy: save in Excel format and email the file to that administrator who asked for it... Let him/her view it onscreen or burn up the paper and toner him/herself!
Horizon_report-sample.xls... This is the above text file in Excel format, after I've imported and "cleaned it up" using Excel. As an exercise, see if you can open the original text-file version above in Excel, then use what you've learned about Excel to come up with something that matches this.
Txbk_Ordrg_Tool-Fall_05.xls... Excel worksheet I designed in the summer to help me keep track of whether we had enough copies of all the various basic texts for we check out for all courses at the beginning of the year. After school was out in June and all were checked in that were going to be, we did a physical count of each title and I plugged those numbers into the "Quantity on Hand" column. Then I went through the master schedule and plugged in course enrollments. The worksheet calculates whether I'm "over" or "short" enough copies to meet enrollment (I always need a few more for new students suddenly showing up or to replace those lost by students). It also lets me plug in additional orders as I make them and instantly see where that puts me, taking into account orders I've placed even before they've arrived. Since enrollments are a moving target those first few weeks of school, this really helped me keep my sanity when we'd suddenly run out of copies but students were still needing them: do I need to order more or is the combined initial quantity on hand (from June) plus quantity(ies) on-order enough to cover enrollment today? I did have to consult each new day's version of the master schedule almost daily for the first to weeks in order to plug in updated enrollments, but at least the worksheet gave me my answers immediately and prevented me from over-ordering. This is probably too La Jolla High-specific to be much use to you, but at least you can study it to see how it's done and perhaps use it as a model for your own if you're responsible for textbooks at your school.
Excel for Budgetkeeping (LMC)...
Template file: Budget Master LMC.xlt
Tips for using template file (prints to 7 pages): Tips4BudgMstrLMC.pdf
Using the Web for Research: A Lesson Model
This is a lesson I developed to teach students how to search, evaluate, and cite Web pages, and to acquaint them with all the steps in the overall research process. To learn more about this lesson and to download the files required to teach it (PowerPoint slideshow, teaching instructions, and student handouts), click here.
Info Select: Use Your Computer as Photographic Memory
Even your laptop can store enormous amounts of information and search it all with amazing speed. So why is it so hard to quickly take a note (or capture it via Copy-Paste) then find it again weeks, months, especially years later? If you use Windows, it's doesn't have to be...all you need is the right tool. Info Select has been my right-arm program--first to load, last to quit, every day--for over 15 years, ever since its first incarnation as "Tornado Notes" in the dear-old days of DOS (remember those?) It has a built-in calendar with tickler which I use for all professional items (including the entire LMC schedule and my personal appointments). It's also a great way to store and quickly find URLs for Web sites, since you can add annotations (Copy-Pasted or typed yourself) which are included in your searches...and the URLs are "live links" which when clicked automatically switch to your browser and call up the site. Talk about Bookmarks (or Favorites) on steroids! You can also purchase a Palm OS compatible version which allows you to have (and find!) all your Info Select notes on your Palm OS PDA without lugging your computer around.
At $250 (or $50 to use for one year; the Palm OS version is another $70; prices as of 12/05), it's not cheap, but once you start using it, you may find it the best software investement you ever made. Note that it's only available for Windows.
Information and ordering available at the Web site of the company who created it, Micro Logic: www.miclog.com.
I've done several presentations about Info Select at conferences, where I've included some of what I find are the most useful tips for efficient use. You're welcome to download and/or view my PowerPoint presentation on Info Select (link below). Note that it applies to version 6; some of the minor drawbacks and workarounds I mention there may be addressed by later versions of the program (currently in version 8 as of 12/05).
My PowerPoint presentation on Info Select v6: Info Select.ppt ...30 slides, 2MB (includes frivolous clip-art just to keep the audience awake)
Notetaking Exercise... As students increasingly rely on online sources of information, "Copy-Paste plagiarism" runs rampant. Too often, however, we as educators assume only laziness and dishonesty drive them to grab complete chunks of professionally-written, published writing and then try to rewrite them as their own (when they even do that!) directly into their rough drafts. But do they really understand what it means to "take notes", capturing the key information as briefly as possible so they'll remember it when, looking at their notes, they write a rough draft that's truly their own? Rather than assume that, print a class set of this two-page exercise (you'll need an overhead and a watch or clock). Have the whole class take notes on the first section--you do the same yourself--for two minutes. Stop everyone, then have one student copy his/her notes on the overhead for all to see. Critique it as a group: What did he leave out? What did she include that she didn't need to? Any abbreviations, symbols, spacial arrangement he could have used to save space & time or indicate relationships? Copy your own notes to the overhead to show them how you did it. Although everyone has his/her own notetaking style, there are lots of commonly-used tricks of which many students may not be aware. Repeat for the other sections. Within a class period (or less), this can significantly improve students' notetaking comfort level and ability. (Fun, too, as students get to write on the overhead...what a concept!)
Notetaking Exercise (MS Word)
Notetaking Exercise (PDF)
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Taking Source Notes: What to Write and How... When doing research, students often forget to capture the information on the source itself when they take notes from it--then have to go find it again (or make it up!) when they have to write their bibliography. Good teachers of course remind students before they even begin taking notes that they need to capture information on the source itself at the same time they're taking the content notes, but that brings up a whole other problem: Which pieces of information do they need to capture for which kinds of sources so they'll have everything necessary to write their bibliography? This handout is designed as a two-page (single two-sided sheet) threefold flyer which shows them that for the most commonly-used information print and online sources...books, magazines, newspapers, Web-at-large, subscription databases, and interviews (it does not include radio-TV broadcasts or videos). For each source type, I've also included a sample MLA-style bibliography entry, although for lack of space I could not format the entries with hanging-indent and double-spacing as MLA requires for a finished bibliography. *Note: This is a "generic" version of what I created for La Jolla High School. You'll need to edit it to include your name, and your school's name and subscribed databases as appropriate. I've included the PDF version here in case you don't have access to MS Word, so you can at least open and view it to help you design your own.
Taking Source Notes (MS Word)
Taking Source Notes (PDF)
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Typing a Works Cited in MS Word... OK, the students know how to take good notes, they know how to capture all the necessary information from their sources for their bibliography, they've written and revised the rough drafts of their papers, and now they need to write the rough drafts of their bibliographies ("Hey kids, the title for the first page of an MLA-style bibliography is 'Works Cited', not 'Bibliography'!) MLA style requires double-spacing, hanging indent, a centered title...and the author's (student's) last name to be flush right, a half inch from the top of the page. This last piece is the trickiest, because it requires creating a header with the page number automatically inserted--and that header must not appear on the title page of the paper (if the student created one--MLA style does not require it, but some kids love to make 'em!) Doing all this in Word can stymie even a frequent Word user who hasn't done it before. If the student tries to create the Works Cited page at the end of the same file as the body of the paper (and especially if he/she decided to create a separate title page there), it gets really ugly. This is a set of step-by-step directions for doing all this in MS Word 2001 for the Macintosh (Windows users may encounter some discrepancies, but will likely still find this helpful). It includes a sample one-page "Works Cited" at the end, so students have a visual model to which they can refer.
Typing a Works Cited in MS Word (MS Word)
Typing a Works Cited in MS Word (PDF)
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Creating Resource Lists for Student Research
Resource List Master... When a teacher collaborates with me on a research project and brings his/her students to the library to at least begin it, I always prepare what I call a "Resource List." This is customized to the assignment, i.e. it outlines all the "places" I know of where students can begin finding information for the range of topics represented by that teacher's assignment. In concept, it's much the same as the "pathfinder" teacher librarians have been creating for decades, but my Resource Lists are like pathfinders on steroids. Rather than just an organized list of selected titles and call numbers, I include:
*Why do I go to all this trouble? Because students subject-searching the PAC for their individual topic usually will NOT be shown reference works that contain great information! For example, a subject keyword search on "f. scott fitzgerald" will show any individual biographies of Fitzgerald and perhaps books of criticism of only or primarily his work, but it will NOT show Great American Writers: Twentieth Century, where there's a 24-page article about Fitzgerald's life and work. This makes the entire print reference collection (with the exception of the general encyclopedias) essentially useless for all but the most determined students. Even the typical "pathfinder" listing only reference work titles and call numbers usually isn't enough: a title alone often doesn't tell students how likely it is that their individual topic will be covered... and have you noticed how increasingly clueless many students are when it comes to finding information within a printed book? Providing them with an annotated list of reference works I know are likely to have what they're looking for effectively opens up the reference collection to them, giving them intellectual access they would not otherwise have. This is what teacher librarians do, and is one of the important ways we add value as more than just "librarians!"
My creation process works like this. When I first began as teacher librarian at La Jolla High School in 1991 and realized there was a need for this, every time a teacher scheduled to begin a research project, I spent many hours (some late nights!) with a clipboard walking through the reference collection selecting and annotating most of the relevant reference works we already had... then taking the clipboard back to my office and adding them to a "master list" I compiled and saved as a Word template. Every time I add a new reference work to the collection, before I put it on the shelf I spend about fifteen minutes examining it (and reviewing the publisher's description from a catalog or online), then write an annotation and add it to the master template. Since the mix of online subscription databases changes sometimes yearly, when that happens I edit that section of the template as well... and I occasionally make other edits as necessary to match any changes in any of the resources the template mentions.
When a teacher schedules and collaborates with me to bring his/her classes in for an assignment, once I'm clear on the assignment and its range of topics, the process is then one of starting with my master template and editing to match the specific assignment. I edit the initial sections (description of the scope of topics at the beginning, suggested "starter" subject search keywords, etc.), then I scroll through the list of reference works and deleting those which are not relevant for the assignment, leaving only those which are. (As I do this, depending on the assignment I sometimes boldface or add assignment-specific notes to individual annotations as time permits.) I save the file using a filename that begins with the teacher's name and reflects the assignment. (To date I've created over 145 of these over the last 15 years.)
I make one class set of copies (40) of the resulting "Resource List." I also post it to the LMC Web site in PDF format on the "Resource Lists" page, so students can view it and print their own copies if they like (and you can see them if you're curious). When teachers leave La Jolla High I delete any lists I did for them; that's why there are not 145 posted there at present. If only one class is doing the assignment, I let them keep the copies; if more than one, they leave them in the library where they're available to all classes for the duration of the project. When a class comes to begin the project, I hand out the copies and spend about ten to fifteen minutes "previewing" it orally with them, verbally highlighting its key features and some of the key reference works likely to be useful to most/all of them regardless of their individual topic. Since I always seat the class in the Reference Room, the result is that after I've finished this verbal instruction, most students head straight for the reference works(!) while a few head for the PAC computers (and yes, inevitably several more head straight for the general use computers and Google anyway... though occasionally one or two may instead go to the subscription databases I just touted).
My "master Resource List" is here as a Word template file in case you find it useful (84 pages). I'm originally posting it in its March 2007 incarnation; I can't guarantee I'll remember to update it here every time I add new reference works or make other changes... but I'll try:
Resource List Master.dot
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This
page created and maintained by Steve Grant
sgrant "at" sandi.net (<--anti-spam technique)
Updated 05-Mar-2008