Lesson 7

      

I am not teaching yet, but when I do teach I feel that Microsoft Word would be software that I would definitely implement in the classroom. I feel like Microsoft Word is not only beneficial to my students but to me as well. I feel as though Word is a program that many such as me use on a daily basis. I use Word to create many various types of documents; I especially have been using word in this class. A lot of the assignments I complete in Word because even if I’m only copying/pasting the document into another program, I at least have the comfort of using familiar tools with Word to correct and review my documents for me.

          I think that Word is very beneficial to students because it allows them to write freely and takes off the pressure to spell words correctly or keep a constant flow throughout the paper.  I know that many may feel as though Word may be a sort of “cop-out” to writing a paper because of all the features it has enabled for review.  In defense, those tools can actually be turned off so students can write a document first and even submit that to you after receiving it themselves for errors. I just think that it is best to take advantage of a program such as Microsoft Word because more than likely students will use this program in college, or work so they may as well become very familiar with the program. 

In one of my undergraduate classes a teacher gave us an example of using Microsoft Word that I found very beneficial and ties into what I was referring to earlier about turning the review tools off. The teacher would have students disable the review tools, write an assignment and save it to a jump drive. The next day in class students would switch jump drives with classmates. The students would then open the documents and turn on the review tools and assess why the highlighted words/phrases were incorrect and write a paper detailing why these were errors. This was a creative approach to doing a editing type of assignment and she said that the students enjoyed the lesson and they would try to get as much as the draft correct as possible before being reviewed by a peer.

So after reviewing the lesson on communication tools, and because of the many uses I personally get out of Microsoft Word software, this would be my top choice for students to use in the classroom. As I mentioned before, Word is a very versatile program, and can be used for many purposes, and I think that by using it in the classroom it will help both the teachers and students to familiarize themselves with a program that they will more than likely use very often.