Usually when I look at the list of Microsoft Office applications, I usually click on Word, PowerPoint, Excel, or Publisher. I have never thought about exploring the other programs or even had a clue what they did. I was excited to give Access a try and was pleasantly surprised with it.
This week's assignment was actually pretty challenging for me. I first wanted to learn what Microsoft Access was and how it is used. When I was looking into it, I thought it seemed similar to Excel and did not understand what the difference between the two. I went through the tutorials and started to learn more about the program. I thought I had a good handle on how to use it but once I began the assignment, I got a little lost. I walked through the assignment with the tutorial as a guide. I slowly started to make progress on it. But then it came to the queries and I was lost again. The first query we were asked to make wanted us to only show presents over the price of $40.00. I searched through the tutorials to find something to help me and played around for awhile before I realized I was stuck. Finally I used the Microsoft Help and found an article that explained all the different criteria you could use. After I figured this out I flew through the assignment.
I quickly fell in love with Access. This program could be so useful for teachers. This would be a great way for teachers to track students progress. Special Education teachers could use this to track students' goals to see if they have met it. Being able to draw the information you need out of these tables can really be useful for teachers. When grouping students by skill level you can figure out which students grades are averaged above a 90 or below a 60. I really think that Access will be very helpful to me as a teacher!
I had the same experience! I blogged about how I have used Access before just for the data entry part. From there, someone else analyzed the data with queries, I assume. I also got very stuck during the queries and had to use the Microsoft Help button, which was surprisingly very important. It's like Excel in that there is a specific way to plug in the function you are using for the specific program. I do like this program though a lot and think as teachers we might have more information than just test scores (imagine that) that we can input about our students, such as their interests, birthdays, etc. and for all of that information Access can be used!
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