Mastering Microsoft Word can make you a more productive and creative teacher. You'll learn how to create, open, edit, and save documents, as well as how to create tabs, margins, and spacing. Then you'll make your classroom documents come to life. You'll add borders, clip art, and WordArt. You'll even insert shapes, pictures, tables, and complete a host of other exciting tasks that you can teach your students. As you get more familiar with this program, you'll find that it enhances your teaching in ways you didn't think possible, and you'll have a host of ideas for curriculum-related classroom projects.

As we walk through our virtual tour of Microsoft Word, you'll encounter a lot of program features you may not have known about—features that enable you to control document presentation, stay organized, and keep your students inspired and excited. You'll even produce templates that you can use for classroom tests, create a classroom poster, and use Word's table tools to create a class grade roster.

This course is vital for today's teachers who have to produce and achieve so much in so little time. Join us and find out how to turn this dynamic program into a launching pad for creative lesson plans and engaging classroom activities.

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Syllabus:

All courses run for six weeks, with a two-week grace period at the end. Two lessons are released each week for the six-week duration of the course. You do not have to be present when the lesson is released, but you must complete each lesson within two weeks of its release.

A new section of each course starts on the second or third Wednesday of each month. If enrolling in a series of two or more courses, please be sure to space the start date for each course at least two months apart.

Week One

Wednesday - Lesson 01

In our first lesson, you'll discover Word 2007's navigation principles and its indispensable new tabs. We'll also go over the basic editing features that will allow you to dive into more complex word processing feats and teach your students the ins and outs of this powerful program.

Friday - Lesson 02

Letter writing is a great skill to teach your students in any discipline, so today you'll use Word to format a letter. You'll also find out how to use keyboard navigation for document shortcuts. You'll make your life in the classroom a whole lot easier by putting this lesson to use right away, and you'll learn about some great letter-writing lessons for your students, too.

Week Two

Wednesday - Lesson 03

Get ready to take your first steps toward becoming an organized Word user! In this lesson, you'll learn how to save, resave, and relocate documents to different drives on your computer. You'll go through the process of saving files so that you can teach your students how to do it correctly.

Friday - Lesson 04

How many times have you wished you'd caught a spelling error that slipped by? Well, with Word's spell check, you'll never have that problem again. Today, you'll look at some more productivity tools, like spell and grammar check, cut and paste, and file deletions. Then, you'll learn how you can teach these time-saving tools that will make working with Word—and writing in general—much easier for your students.

Week Three

Wednesday - Lesson 05

Fonts, formatting, and WordArt, oh my! Today, you'll start spicing up your work with these fun Word tools that let you put your unique stamp on classroom and personal documents. You'll have the tools to teach your students to create book report covers, poster projects, and much more.

Friday - Lesson 06

Surprisingly, you have a lot of options when it comes to document printing and adding clip art. In this lesson, we'll take a look at smart ways to navigate through these choices. Word lets you preview everything you print, which is really helpful for catching any errors before it's too late. And clip art will open up a whole new world to you—enabling you to make your documents more visually friendly to young learners.

Week Four

Wednesday - Lesson 07

Today, you're going to master setting margins, headers, and footers. You'll learn about adding page numbers, changing your margins to fit different document needs, and adding borders to give classroom documents a little extra flair.

Friday - Lesson 08

In this lesson, you'll take a closer look at your document and examine how to format paragraphs and make lists with bullets and numbers. We'll also take a quick tour of indents, which will help you easily fix tricky spacing.

Week Five

Wednesday - Lesson 09

Let Word's drawing features dazzle you as you find out all the neat things you can do with AutoShapes—like filling them with colors and pictures to help you illustrate your document. With all the shapes available in Word, you'll have no shortage of creative inspiration, and at the end of the lesson, you'll have a student of the week poster to use in your classroom.

Friday - Lesson 10

Creating tables in Word allows you to do all kinds of useful things such as present charts, math problems, and other information in creative and visually appealing ways. Word offers a lot of flexibility in table design, including specifying cell height and width, color formatting, and sorting functions that will make your table pop! You'll see how it all works today and you'll use Word's table feature to create a class grade roster.

Week Six

Wednesday - Lesson 11

In this lesson, you'll learn all about Word templates. A template is a pre-formatted document that you'll be able to use over and over again for specific purposes—things like lesson plans, quizzes, grades, posters, and more. As a teacher, you'll find that templates can save you a great deal of time. You'll also see how Word's language tools can increase student vocabulary and how you can use track changes to incorporate group writing and revisions into your classroom.

Friday - Lesson 12

You'll finish the course with a final look at finding and organizing files. After today, you'll never misplace a Word document again! You'll find out how to organize folders and search for files so that saving and retrieving what you need becomes a breeze.

This course includes a knowledgeable and caring instructor who will guide you through your lessons, facilitate discussions, and answer your questions. The instructor for this course will be Robin Sellers.

Robin Sellers holds a current teaching license. She has a Master of Arts degree in English with a concentration in technical and professional communication and a Bachelor of Arts degree in English with a certification in secondary education. Since 1995, she has taught at the secondary and post-secondary level. She encourages creativity in her classroom, teaches traditional curriculum classes in a computer lab, and incorporates technology including the Internet in her lessons. She also develops and teaches online curriculum courses. In 2003, she began teaching continuing education courses for teachers.

Requirements:

Microsoft Windows Vista or XP, Microsoft Word 2007 or Microsoft Word Home and Student Edition 2007 or Microsoft Office 2007 or Microsoft Office Home and Student Edition 2007. A free trial version may also be available at Microsoft's Web site. Software must be installed and fully operational before the course begins; Internet access, e-mail, the Microsoft Internet Explorer or Mozilla Firefox Web browser, and the Adobe Flash and PDF plug-ins (two free and simple downloads you obtain at http://www.adobe.com/downloads by clicking Get Adobe Flash Player and Get Adobe Reader). Note: This course is not suitable for Macintosh users.

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