Tom Snyder Production's Word Workshop for Teachers
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Word Workshop for Teachers by Janet Caughlin is a how-to book written by a teacher for teachers. Educators wishing to make more use of technology in their classrooms will find this book, on the popular and versatile word processing program, extremely useful. The Workshop includes a CD-ROM containing Microsoft Word documents that are utilized in the book's learning activities, examples of documents created by teachers for use in their classes, and more than 150 picture files that may be inserted into documents. The book assumes that the user is knowledgeable in the basics of computing, but includes several pages of explanation, especially for novice users. The book's most valuable aid for novices may be the pictures of toolbars for three versions of Microsoft Word (Word 97 and 2000 for Windows, and Word 98 for the Macintosh).
The learning activities that are the main focus of the book are located in a section called Learning Word. Examples of documents created by teachers and technology specialists are in How Teachers Use Word. In addition, teachers' examples of how their curric-ula ask students to utilize Word are included in How Students Use Word.
Learning Word contains activities covering many operations within Word that can be used to create and modify Word documents with illustrations of the document being prepared, allowing users to verify their progress in the activity. Step-by-step instructions are provided for activities, such as inserting pictures into a document; using the Equation Editor, which is great for math teachers; creating personalized letters for groups using merge; and printing envelopes and labels. There are also activities that show how to create newsletters and brochures, and use hyperlinks within Word documents for linking to other documents, the Web and to create Web pages. Instructions for the many operations are, for the most part, thorough and accurate. An exception to the thoroughness with which the many operations are explained is that of screen capture. Although the procedure of screen capture is explained, an explanation of how to use the print screen to capture only the active window is omitted.
How Teachers Use Word contains examples of how Word is used by seven teachers and technology specialists. Their worksheets, letters, newsletters and other documents are displayed as graphics in the book, and are included on the CD-ROM. The appendix contains several pages of examples of various Word menus, tips on sharing Word files and printouts of photos included on the CD-ROM. In addition to being an easy-to-follow tutorial on many uses of Microsoft Word, Word Workshop for Teachers will occupy a spot on the bookshelf as a handy Word reference tool for teachers.
Jim Fulmer
Computer Science and
Computer Applications Teacher
Tokyo, Japan
Contact Information
Tom Snyder Productions
Watertown, MA
(800) 342-0236
www.tomsnyderproductions.com
This article originally appeared in the 12/01/2001 issue of THE Journal.