Spreadsheets.......

As a German teacher, I must admit that I do not use spreadsheets in my curriculum. I haven't used excel since college, so it was refreshing that I was able to create the recipe assignment with relative ease. And, because it was in google docs, I added a friend as a collaborator, so I did not have to email him the recipe!

I have yet to do the nettrecker assignment, but I have been brainstorming ways to use spreadsheets in my class. I think that I could take advantage of the layout, and have students conjugate verbs in columns. I could also use them as a way for students to organize new vocabulary words, and connect those new words with words they already know. I will have to do a little more thinking about other ways to incorporate spreadsheets in my curriculum.

I found chapter 5 to be interesting. I know that we want to encourage creativity in our students, but sometimes that creativity is stifled in my classroom. There is always so much material to cover, and sometimes, I feel that such open-ended assignments can hinder our progression in course material. So, I will need to take a step back and think of how I can encourage more creativity in my classroom.

My seventh graders will be starting a large culture project in the next month, and I decided to have them collaborate on the project with someone in a different hour. It will be very interesting to see if they are able to collaborate, and if they can do that all online, through the wiki!