Microsoft Word

Whenever I would think of Microsoft Word writing papers or assignments would come to my mind. After exploring Word using the advanced tutorial it is much more than that. If only I would have known about some of Words advanced features while going through college. It would have been much easier to edit my work and create a reference page, and with some of the features I could have made my papers look more professional.

The features that I would find most helpful would be the editing tools and Citations & Bibliography feature. To this day when I was writing a research paper I would use a website with APA format to create the references and in text citations myself; now I am very happy to learn that Word will do that all for you! I have known about the editing features like Comment and Track Changes because many of my professors in Undergraduate courses have used those features to provide feedback on my drafts. I find them to be extremely helpful rather than just changing the document. A feature that was entirely new to me was Mail Merge. Before this week I never knew of its existence. Although I can see how useful it can be I can’t see myself using it anytime soon.

I believe that some of the features I have explored today would be very useful in the classroom. For example, I have already seen the Language feature put to good use. A student in the classroom I currently work in came from Puerto Rico last January and his mother can’t speak, read or write in English at all. The translation tool worked perfect for communication between home and the classroom! Some other ways I would use Word in the classroom are to have students edit each other’s writings, create other documents, and for myself to create worksheets. The students could use Word to create posters or fliers.

This tutorial has opened my eyes to the possibilities of Word and my thinking has changed; Word can be used for many more things that just writing papers.