What types of software applications do I use in the classroom? Well, Fort Wayne Community School (FWCS), uses a site called Pinnacle. We use Pinnacle for many purposes including taking attendance daily, entering grades and running various types of reports. I love using Pinnacle. I don't even take grades in a traditional gradebook at all anymore because it is so much easier to do it on Pinnacle. You can enter any point value that you want for the assignment and even pick specific learning standards to correlate with the assignment Pinnacle is also used to generate progress reports and report cards. It's really great!
We also use the Oregon DIBELS site for entering DIBELS scores. It can be time consuming to enter the scores, but if you keep up with it weekly, it really isn't that bad.
We have a program called Read About that allows students to do online reading activities and work on different reading skills. All the passages are informational texts which is great because there is a big push to focus on that.
Of course there are programs like Microsoft Word that I use all the time and Microsoft Publisher which is great for making newsletters. I would definitely like to get better at using Microsoft Excel. For some reason I have never really been able to get a good grip on using Excel. I see some of my colleagues use it very well and I admit to being a bit jealous sometimes of their mastery of it. I would like to start practicing using Excel and gradually build confidence in my ability to use it effectively. Wish me luck!
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