All About Spreadsheets

Today we learned all about spreadsheets. It was really helpful. I have never been good at Spreadsheets and to go over simple exercises was a good review. The type of things that we learned are the type of things that I would use in my classroom.

These Spreadsheets will be perfect for recording test scores, homework and stuff like that. I also think this would be a good thing for the older grades to learn. A lot of people use Spreadsheets these days and it is becoming a necessary skill to have in

the working world. Having to learn these skills at an early age would be really good.

We also went to Google Docs and learned about the spreadsheets there. It is nice to know that it is free which is always nice. They were both really similar to each other, but I think I like Excel a little better. But overall today was really informative and I am

excited to use the things I learned today in my future classroom.

Copyright!

Today in class we went over Copyright laws. I thought this was really important because as a teacher it is kind of a gray area as to what is legal to use and what is not. One of the most important things that I learned today was Fair Use. I didn't even know that this existed. It's really good to know that as a teacher I can use websites and their materials without having to worry about copyright laws. I think that this is such a good thing, because there are so many materials out there that normally teachers would not be able to use. But thankfully our nation thinks the education of our children is more important than copyright laws. There are still limitations under the Fair Use though. And as teachers we have a responsibility that we are using our materials legally.

Overall, I am really glad that we learned about Copyright laws today. I was so unsure about what was okay and what wasn't. The case studies that we did in groups was really helpful in deciding what was legal and what wasn't. I will definitely be implementing the things I learned today into my future classroom.

YETC

Today we had a tour of the YETC Resource Center. I thought it was really interesting. My favorite part of the tour was when he was showing us a few of the websites that are good to incorporate into a classroom. I thought that spelling website he showed us was awesome. I think kids would love this. You are playing games while practicing your spelling words; how much better can it get? This class has definitely opened my eyes to all of the resources that are out there for educators. I can't wait to use them in my own classroom someday.

I also thought that it was so cool that the YETC is the only computer lab in Utah that has the NASA program. They have SO many cool resources that could really get students excited about math and science.

Another program that he showed us was called Stillaruim. It was seriously so cool. It had a feature showed all the star constellations. I think that students would love this. There were also different landscapes that you could go to, one of them including Mars. The program also had a tracker where you put in any town or place in the world and it points exactly where it is it; including the longitude and latitude. I thought this place would be perfect for students because it is exciting, fun and really interesting!