Personality Test

Well according to the personality exam I just took, I am a giver. When I read the description of my personality type, I was shocked at how almost completely accurate it was; there were just a couple of things that I would say were not my personality, but for the most part it was correct.
I do enjoy helping people, just for the satisfaction of helping people, I am socialable and getting to know new people. Other aspects of my personality were: honest, straightforward, giving, sympathetic, socialable, able to bring people out of their shells, emotional.

I think some of these traits will be invaluable for teaching. One of the compliments for my personality was that my people skills were great, especially for teaching, because I can relate to different people from different backgrounds or be sympathetic. Not one student will be like another, just like all students learn a little differently from eachother. I think that this would be an interesting test to have students take on the first day of school just to see what they think of the results.

Excel in the classroom

I think that at first Excel can be intimidating to anyone who has never worked with it before, but once you learn and get the hang of it, it seems invaluable. As a future teacher it will be a great help to me for grades and worksheets. And the great thing about it is that you don't have to have a calculator, Excel does the work for you. Of course we all know that computers can get viruses and collapse and what not, so I would always recommend to having an actual gradebook.
Not only though is it a great asset for teachers, but you could actually encourage your students to create a spreadsheet at home for their grades. How often does a students question an average or a grade on their progress report or report card, but always seem to lose or misplace the paper they need to prove otherwise. This way it not only teaches them organization, but responsibility.

I thought the video was detailed and interesting. It basically has everything a student would need to make a slideshow presentation or help organize ideas for an essay. I would use it in my classroom not only for myself, to help with visual learners, but also encourage my students to take advantage of all the helpful tools it provides. When you think about it, most students stress out the most about the organization of an essay and how to start it; this could easily minimize that stress and provide more creativity than only using pen and paper.

As I said in my previous paragraph, I think this tool would be especially useful for essays. The different ways it allows students to organize and manage their thoughts is great. Of course it would also be great for projects that they wish to present in powerpoint format. Not only would this would this be great for personal use, but also can be used for peer review. It would be easy enough for students to print out their outlines and give them to their peers for review, because sometimes it is not easy to read handwriting. However I would not encourage students to email eachother their outlines or anything of the such for peer reveiw, it would be too easy for copying.