Software Secrets
Submitted by: Rich
Due
to shrinking budgets and rising standards, today's teachers
are expected to handle more work and responsibility than
ever before. In order to shoulder the burden most teachers
spend long hours after the bell rings recording grades,
documenting attendance records, and cataloguing other information
that is critical for assessing grade reports. These are
tasks that can be drastically streamlined by applying techniques
offered in MS Excel courses.
Because teachers spend so much time and energy teaching others, they rarely have time left over to learn new technologies that can make their own jobs easier and free up more of their time. The good news is that even two days of MS Excel courses can eliminate countless hours that teachers spend on busy work each year. If you're not currently using the powerful spreadsheet program in the classroom, you may be wondering how MS Excel courses can help. In this article, we'll take a look at just a few ways that teachers are using Excel in the classroom.
Calculating Grades
Calculating grades on paper and by calculator can be cumbersome,
tricky, and just plain frustrating. Most end of period grades
are a combination of many different variables, each with
a weighted percentage. For example, homework grades may
count for only 20% of a grade's weight while test grades
may count toward 40%. In MS Excel courses, you'll learn
how to write formulas that instantly calculate grades based
on any number of different weighted variables.
Taking a few minutes at the beginning of the grading period
to create one formula explained in intermediate level MS
Excel courses can literally shave hours off of the process
of figuring grades at the end of the grading period. Each
day when tests or homework is scored, simply enter the grade
into your Excel sheet and you'll have an up-to-the-minute
final grade throughout the school year.
Tallying attendance and participation In addition to documenting
grades, teachers are also responsible for tallying the number
of attendance days, class participation, and the number
of days students handed in homework. In MS Excel courses,
you'll learn about the "=countA" formula which instantly
adds the number of occurrences within a cell range, rather
than calculating the value inside of the cells. Instead
of hand counting and recounting checkmarks on an attendance
or homework roster every grading period, this one Excel
formula does the work for you.
After a few Excel courses, you'll learn how to instantly
get a total of number of occurrences for any variable during
any grading period using just one simple formula. Keeping
track of student information During school hours, a teacher
is a student's guardian. And for every student, there is
a great deal of information that may need to be accessed
quickly.
Information such as guardian names, home phone numbers,
medical information, whether or not the student has returned
a permission slip for tomorrow's field trip and who to call
to get a faxed and signed copy of it before the field trip
begins. Suppose one student regularly travels between 2
parent households. Teachers can't be expected to remember
which parent to release the child to on a particular day,
but an Excel spreadsheet can do this effortlessly.
In MS Excel courses, teachers will learn how to create lists
that can hold almost limitless amounts of organised data
along with how to sort and filter those lists for easy access
to the data. If you're a school principal, consider enrolling
your teachers and teacher's aids in MS Excel courses to
help them discover new ways to streamline their daily, weekly
and monthly tasks.
This helps teachers spend more time teaching and less time
handling paperwork while also freeing up some much needed
hours or personal time.
About Author: Author is a freelance copywriter
for a Microsoft software training company, the UK industry
leader in its sector.
For more information on MS Excel courses, please visit http://www.microsofttraining.net
Article Source: http://www.article-outlet.com/
MICROSOFT OFFICE
Computer training Microsoft online courses
Microsoft Excel tutorial cheat sheet
Microsoft Excel tutorial reduce errors
Microsoft Excel tutorial finances
Microsoft Excel tutorial formula
Microsoft Excel tutorial function
Microsoft Excel tutorial password
Microsoft Excel tutorial select
Microsoft Excel tutorial sales
Microsoft Excel tutorial teacher