With this project, we explored the many extra features of Microsoft Word and how their use could enhance our teaching. The first product was an acrostic poem created using Word Art. I think that Word Art could be a valuable tool for those students who really do not like to draw. The computer provides many outlets for people who before may not have considered themselves artistic. This may be something that I use in my teaching just because I feel that Word Art could be useful in some cases and it is always useful to know as many of the features of a program as possible.
The second product was creating educational handouts with a page border. For this we learned how to apply a border to the page and also how to insert a watermark. I think that this would be a useful tool so that students could create a class newsletter informing parents or other people of what is happening in the classroom. I think that giving the students more options of what they can do when creating a project encourages them to do more and learn more therefore this could be useful in the classroom when creating Microsoft Word projects.
Product three was creating trading cards using Microsoft Word. I think that this could be a useful tool in the classroom to make games or flash cards for each unit you may be discussing. However, I found these to be time consuming to create. I think that if you made a set for each unit and then laminated them, you could use them over and over each year so that you wouldn’t have to keep recreating them.
All of these are excellent resources for the classroom. They all provide ways to make teaching more interesting which is something that is definitely necessary in today’s test driven society. Some like the Word Art are things that I think could be easily done with the students in the classroom, others like the trading cards I think would be useful for the teacher to create and then use with the class.