Interactive Learning Solutions provides programs and services developed by Dr. Eileen O'Connor (resume) and implemented through Interactive Learning Solutions either by Dr. O'Connor or by consulting education professionals. Meeting Assessments and Standards with Technology (MAST) is an email-mediated online program for helping education professional to become proficient in PowerPoint, Word, Excel, and Access. Please scroll down for an overview of the courses. Courses begin in July, September, and January, and run over nine weeks - however timing can be flexible to meet your needs. Both Microsoft XP and Vista will be addressed in the courses after Sept. 2010.

ILS/Meeting Assessment & Standards with Technology (MAST) courses are intended to help you gain technology proficiency and useful, rich ideas about using technology in the classroom and school environment. Scroll to the courses listed below or click the terms at the top of the page. Courses cost $120 per student and certificates for 30 hours of professional development are issued upon successful completion of the course. If you have an interest in a course, please send an email stating your course of interest and if you prefer to start in July, Sept., or Jan. to: eoconnor@InteractiveLearningSolutions.net

The technology instructions are delivered through the web while you communicate with your Online Mentor by email. (Detailed information is provided upon registration.) At the close of the course, you plan an original classroom project (or work-related project for non-teaching participants) and submit the project for the Mentor's review and feedback. You will also be able to print course materials thereby providing you with a rich cross-referenced, professional documentation for use in your later work.

MEETING ASSESSMENT & STANDARDS W/ TECHNOLOGY - Word 1; Word processing and multimedia desktop publishing in ways you may have never considered:

• Review or learn the basic element of word processing during the first weeks which address the essentials of text insertion and document formatting, editing, footnotes, pagination, layout and the like; embellish documents with borders, shading and special effect - for interesting certificates and text
• Learn how to engage interactive thinking-and-learning through collapsible outlines and quick rearrangements of complex documents; create table of contents and cross references that are always up-to-date
• Develop and design multimedia documents by incorporating images from the web, digital photography, personal collections and clipart; crop, adjust ; further clarify communication with your own original drawings, sketches, concept maps, webs, and complex compositions using both image and drawing
• Use tables to organize information and also to assemble and then sort and rearrange topics; learn how to color, split and join these tables and how to control their headings over many pages
• Develop a communication hub through the use of hyperlinks that can connect your word processing document to the web, to other Word documents, to PowerPoint and to Excel.

MEETING ASSESSMENT & STANDARDS W/ TECHNOLOGY - PowerPoint 1; create slide presentations, handouts, overheads, signs, brochures with ease:

• Create various styles, sizes and types of text, providing information while communicating different emphases with the colors and sizes chosen
• Insert, adjust, and modify images (web-captured, clipart, digital) and original drawings to illustrate, expand, and clarify information and concepts
• Record audio components within your slides to enhance the multimedia aspects of the presentation
• Design organization charts that can express the relationships between functions, information, and concepts
• Use graphs to express quantitative information visually providing multiple ways to communicate ideas (and ensure understanding)
• Use the presentation features such as the automatic timing of slides and the various transition effects between slides to make your PowerPoint information accessible to large audiences -- even when you can not be present
• Create different types of printed presentations to serve as handouts, overheads, notes, or slide facsimiles with lines for notetaking
• Develop animated effects (where different elements on the slide can enter at different time) to create interest and to time the introduction of concepts to your audience
• Hyperlink/link text, image and buttons to the web, within PowerPoint, and to your own documents (spreadsheets and word processing) extending the network of items that are accessible from one location
• Consider the many ways that PowerPoint can support instruction or administration: projected slides; overheads and handouts; signs, directions and instructions, and poster sessions; brochures with complex picture and text layouts

Learn how PowerPoint can serve all your communication needs from unattended operations in school displays and lobbies (Parent's Nights, daily messages, cafeteria notes, student developed messages) to personally-delivered lectures and presentations.

MEETING ASSESSMENT & STANDARDS W/ TECHNOLOGY - Excel 1; spreadsheets from bookkeeping to visual, interactive learning of numeric information:

• Create automatically-updated basic and advanced gradebooks with weighted averages with basic statistics
• Design and format attractive spreadsheets using the many border and cell formats available
• Store and calculate data and use interactive what-if analysis to study the data (such as, determine pricing strategies for making profits at the class pizza sale then entering actual monies made)
• Graph any type of numeric data (from hours in after-school activities to rating of books read by students to field-trip data) working interactively with the graph and the data
• Develop databases then sort and filter (show only some entries) -- this data can be surveys, grades, lab data, library information, web-site hyperlinks, etc
• Insert and modify images from the web, digital cameras and clipart to clarify the meaning of the data or to provide interest
• Create drawings and composites that can improve communication; use callouts and comments to annotate important aspects of the work
• Hyperlink the spreadsheet to the web addresses, to other spreadsheets, or to wordprocessing or PowerPoint documents letting Excel serve as a "sortable" communication link to all your electronic resources - from student projects to government data on the web
• Reflect on instructional and bookkeeping aspects of Excel that can improve your instruction and job performance and provide interactive, visual ways that students can use and apply numeric information.

MEETING ASSESSMENT & STANDARDS W/ TECHNOLOGY - Access; store, sort, retrieve and manipulate large amounts of information:

• NOTE: this course is available on a limited basis; you must have already demonstrated skill in other Microsoft applications to be admitted into this course; state your interest when sending an email request
• Design data tables that hold information of different types (short text entries, longer memos, and numbers for student or survey data, grades, inventories, book lists)
• Apply validation rules (such as, allowing values only within certain limits)
• Develop a relational database with multiple table that can be linked, thereby allowing the maintenance of smaller, more manageable blocks of information (such as, separate linked tables for student personal data, for home data, and for grades)
• Create forms with drop-down boxes, written directions, and background images so others may easily enter data
• Create calculation boxes to generate statistics on either the entire database or subsets of the information
• Develop queries that gather selected information from the larger database (for instance, select parents' names and address of only students with grades below 70)
• Generate quick Access report of all or some of your database
• Merge Access tables and queries with Word for amplified reports, form letters and certificates
• Export/import data between Excel and Access to increase the analytical power of your work; gather data from the web and import it into Access.

Use Access for powerful control and manipulation of any quantifiable information such as student, class or school data, surveys, materials or supply inventories, discipline specific data (such as, historical events/dates or career data).

(NOTE: Access 1 contains the interactive design of all ILS/MAST courses but does not contain animations.).

Meeting Assessments & Standards
with Technology (MAST) TM