Teacher Tools

Reading Database                                 Grizzly Gazette Newsletter

Reading Database Reflection

Working on Microsoft Access was truly a frustrating and educational experience. Sometimes some frustration brings learning. When I decided to do my assignment on Access I was ignorant of what my end result would be, which was a database. When I think of database, I think of where I go on the Online Library at OSU and look through the databases to get research articles. Well, I knew I didn’t want to create anything that huge, but something similar. From this I developed the idea to create a database for all my “pretend students” which would give me information about their individual interests as well as information about their reading levels and assessment scores. These are things that I will need to know and record next year if I’m blessed with a Reading Specialist job. So, rather than exploring on my own through Access, I used the step by step instructions given to me on tech4u.org on how to create a database. Together with my trusty instructions, I created a database, which looks like a table to me. Overall, I learned how to create the database, but afterwards I did some exploring on some other things I could do with Access like creating a Report or a Query. It seems to me that both would require a lot of information over similar topics that I didn’t have, so I didn’t actually create one, but the “Help” option allowed me to explore how I would go about doing such things. Access seems to be more beneficial to organizing large amounts of data. The table I created could have just as easily been created on Excel. Actually it would have been much easier for me because I am familiar with Excel. So from the whole experience, I now know that for large amounts of documents I should use Access, but for tables, grade books, and such Excel will do just fine.

 Grizzly Gazette Reflection

Creating the newsletter was pure fun after I got started. I had a little trouble at first learning how to get my textboxes and columns right. I first started my newsletter on Publisher using the template they provide, but then realized it needed to be done on Word. Since I did two newsletters, I can compare the two programs and believe that Publisher’s template is much easier to use. However for my purpose of learning how to create a newsletter, Word worked well. Exploring requires a lot of trial and error and for me is the best way to learn. Things I learned to use or maybe I should say I gained more practice at using are things such as the text box, inserting columns, changing the sizes and fonts, and inserting lines and pictures. Looking at it now, I see things I could change and add. Actually I might even want it to be longer than two pages. Just for your information, I don’t have a classroom, so everything is made up, but hopefully I’ll have kids next year that can be creating their own newsletter.