AlexKay_A4podcast.mp3 (1.18 MB)
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Creating a crossword puzzle in Excel proved to be quite rewarding - and quite frustrating - for me. Rewarding because it is yet another tool that I will be able to use in the future to enrich the educational experiences of my students. Frustrating because I am just not all that Excel-proficient.
Teaching software within the context of another educational area is a great idea because it creates an environment where the learner is having a two-fold educational experience: he/she is both learning the software and a textually appropriate use for it at the same time. Teaching someone how to use something like Excel isn't nearly as good as teaching that same person to use Excel while at the same time giving her/him an idea of how it can be applied to a specific curriculum.
Today's students are so technologically advanced that I think a crossword creation project in Excel would work even better for them than it did for me. Because I already know the words - and I'm not that familiar with Excel - my frustration came from putting the crossword together. Someone more technologically savvy would be able to concentrate more on the words than on the software, thus spending more time learning the words.
Next time, I would employ graph paper much earlier in the process. I sketched out my puzzle first on regular paper only to find it didn't fit when I transferred it to graph paper. Needless to say, I was quite frustrated.
Lastly, creating the puzzle with an online puzzlemaker was actually incredibly easy -- much easier than creating it with Excel. While the online puzzlemaker took just a few minutes, Excel took more than a few hours.
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