Last Friday I tried an Atomic Learning lesson and it did NOT go well.
I did a lesson called How Big is a Foot? I thought this would be a great introduction to measurement. It was about a king that wants a bed built for his queen and gives his apprentice measurements using his own feet. The apprentice ends up using his own feet to measure and the bed is too small. The project was: the students were supposed to use their feet to measure the length and width of a "bed" and I was to put their measurements in an excel spreadsheet and it was supposed to calculate and show a graph. First of all, I spent almost an hour and a half setting everything up. I am sure if you are used to excel it would not take as long. I had everything set to go the day of in the spreadsheet. I did everything the tutorial said to do, but it would not work. I am positive that it was not something I was doing wrong. I even went back during the lesson and listened to the tutorial again. It is hard to explain what went wrong unless you saw what I was talking about, but basically the tutorial directed me to use different pull down menus and what they said would be there wasn't. I don't know if it was atomic learning that was wrong or if it is because my computer is really slow. Either way, it was a huge disappointment and a lot of time wasted.
Has anyone else had better luck with these lessons?
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
3 comments:
Sara,
That is the lesson Michelle, Melissa, and I were thinking about doing when we got to measurement. I have listened to the basic part but have not tried to set it up. I'm sorry it's so frustrating. I was frustrated looking at the AT lessons because there is very little for the primary grades.
Thanks for sharing and letting us know it did not go well. I'll give myself extra time when I sit down with an AT lesson.
-Lisa
Sara,
Way to give it a go! I have gone through the AL tutorials for this accelerator and found them to be right on. The step by step instructions were accurate. From your comment about the tutorial directing you to menus that were not there leads me to believe you were looking at the wrong version of the Excel tutorials. In District as you know we all have MS Excel Version 2007, AL has tutorials for earlier versions (2002, 2003)that you may have been viewing rather than Version 2007. Did you make a cutout of yourself for your students to measure?
What a risk-taker you are! I use the book "How Big is a Foot?" when I introduce my students to measurement and the AL lesson sounds just like the book.
I have an excel template I've used in the past with first grade. It allows us to create a bar graph based on how they get to school. If you're interested I'll be happy to locate it and send it your way!
Post a Comment