Motivate Motivate Motivate

     In order to maintain a focused, enthusiastic classroom, teachers must create ways of engaging their students by use of technologies that motivate a student to do his or her work. These technologies can vary based on the intention of the teacher and the intention of the motivation. One example that I have come into contact with was during my sophomore year at Florida State. My Writing, Editing in Print and Online (WEPO) course was instructed by a professor who really enjoyed the creative part of this course. She went outside of the box in the very beginning and created a unique website that contained the same information as a regulation syllabus. As college students, we receive the same types of syllabi over and over again at the beginning of our courses...BORING. By creating her own, unique and interactive online syllabus, my professor created an immediate sense of creativity and motivation for the students in her course, including myself. The website being interactive was definitely a plus and much different than any other syllabus I had received. It honestly made the syllabus easier to navigate, versus going through each page to find the information you are searching for. Want to know what books you need? Just click the 'Books' tab in the main menu. I honestly wish more teachers would create their syllabi in various, technology-based ways.
     I think this is a use of technology in which I would excel. I have created a website for myself before, and love the openness that the domains and programs give you to create the way you want. Being a student that hates the regular, boring syllabus, I would be able to have an edge on knowing what students really want out of their teachers and course introductions. I would go into creating a website syllabus with the angle of wanting to motivate my students immediately. This way, I would always be keeping in mind how to make the website as useful, yet provocative as possible.
     Excel is not a program that is necessarily new to me. I have heard of it, seen it used by other people, yet I have never actually used it myself. That is, until this week in my technology class. It is much different than Microsoft Word and PowerPoint, but it is very useful in its own ways. It is especially handy for students in statistics classes and science classes. It allows for easy situating of data, which is harder to do in programs like Word and PowerPoint. It organizes them automatically and once you get into the swing of things, Excel allows you to create charts in a breeze. A student in a Biology Lab would benefit from the use of Excel quite a bit when conducting experiments with numerous trials. The program doesn't just stop at creating block charts...you are able to make graphs, of various kinds, as well. This is very useful for students needing variety in their data plotting. Overall, I am glad that I was finally made to explore the uses of Excel and plan to use it in future assignments.