Let's Play Cards in Class! Microsoft Office Spoons downloadable! #busedu @MicrosoftEDU

My Advanced Computer Applications students, who learn Microsoft Office, are getting close to being finished for the year. We've covered all the content, they've finished final projects, nearly all are certified in at least one Microsoft application, and they are doing GMetrix review and trying to certify in another application this week. So, Monday and Tuesday I'm just not sure what to do with them! We are in school until Friday, we'll review on Wed/Thursday, but there's just extra time to fill.

I asked for feedback yesterday and, naturally, they wanted to watch a movie. Um, not really any good movies out there about spreadsheets or databases. Another student jokingly said, "Let's just play Spoons. That's fun."

Yeah, fun. But not related to curriculum.  Or is it?

So, I decided perhaps if I made some Microsoft Office playing cards, we could play Spoons. But, still, there needed to be some sort of "reason" for it. Got it!

I found this blog post from Jennifer Findley. She did this in her class as a review activity!

Then, I found a template at the Bright Hub for playing cards in Microsoft Word. Finally, I Googled some logos and took screenshots from various Microsoft applications--Word, Access, PowerPoint, Excel, and Edge (the browser) and pasted them in to create 52 cards. I printed on card stock and just sent my student aide down to cut them apart for me. We will make two sets of cards (I only have 11 students left in the class after seniors leave, so that will do). And, I found some little flag stickers so I can put a sticker on the back of each card in the set to keep them separated.

What did I create?

• 4 Word screenshots, 8 Excel screenshots, 4 Edge screenshots, 4 Access screenshots, and 8 PowerPoint screenshots. Students would just pass cards to find a matching number, like in "real Spoons" but will find the four Word screenshots or four of the Excel screenshots, etc. 
• 4 playing cards of the logos for Word, Excel, Access, PowerPoint, Edge, and Office. Those cards will just be straight logos, so that should be pretty simple (of course, this might be deceptively easy as two people might both be holding on to the "easy" Word logos. That would just be a straight match like the other version of Spoons.
• They will play like normal, passing cards and trying to find the screenshot matches or logo matches.
• Whoever is "out" must first say "Prove it" to the person who "won" and went out first. They will put their cards down and everyone will collectively decide if they do indeed have a correct match (and I printed an extra copy of the cards originals pages and stapled them and marked W, E, P, etc., so they can double check it for the screenshots). If matches are incorrect, they are now "out" instead.
• Whoever is "out" and doesn't get a spoon will have to explain something from one of their cards in their hands. So, if you have the Print dialog box from PowerPoint, you would say something like, you can set this to print handouts 6 per page from this in PowerPoint. 
• Then, they shuffle, re-deal, and play again. You could keep score of winners or negative scores on the "loser" each round. Up to you.

Think this might work for your kiddos? Feel free to download my PDF from Google and create your own set. 

UPDATE: We played, they enjoyed, and we tried different versions (have to have one of Word/Excel/Access/PPT was one derivative). They wanted to play where the loser goes out, so that's how we did it. However, I think I need to just write on the back of the cards... the stickers kept falling off!

Google Drive and Microsoft Office Stuff #busedu #office

So, over break, I finally got into my OneDrive (formerly SkyDrive) from Microsoft to edit a document. And, I couldn't save it! Apparently I was (oops) 25 GB over my allowed storage space. I guess that means at some point they changed the allowed amount and I just never realized. Either way, I couldn't work on the document in the cloud and had to download it and then upload it to my Google Drive. It was a test and for whatever reason, those image and numbered/lettered lists never convert well to a Google Doc when I try. **SIGH**

But, I found someone who shared info about a Google Drive plug-in that adds a ribbon in Office AND allows you to open straight from Google Drive (in Word!) and edit the DOCX file and save it right back to Google Drive, exactly like my OneDrive did. Yay! https://tools.google.com/dlpage/driveforoffice

It worked great on my laptop. Then, I returned to school.

Fail.

Not sure why. I tried it on two computers but I got an "exception" error for the Google Drive plugin. And, I can't use it at all at school. Probably a firewall restriction. I have no idea. But, I still needed to finish that test! And I was determined not to download it OR convert it to Google Drive Docs either.

So, I tried the whole "Open With" thing on my Google Drive to investigate options and ran into something called OnlyOffice. I was pretty impressed, too.

Features

ONLYOFFICE allows you to edit Office documents in browser.

• Compatible with .docx, .xlsx, .pptx formats.
• Works right in your Google Drive account.
• Connects to Dropbox, Box, OneDrive and Google Drive.
• Provides co-editing and commenting. 

Anyway, here's a snapshot:

Let me be clear about a few things. First, I like Google Docs and it's come a long way. And if I am starting from scratch, sometimes that works perfectly fine. But, I still use MS Office and not having cloud storage for it is the PITS. So, this is a great alternative for something I've already authored in Word to be able to finish and not have to convert.

Just thought I'd share. Check it out!  Have a super day!