Microsoft Office for Teachers - Using MS Office to tackle educational technology problems

One of the reasons that the ICT (information and Communications Technology) was discarded and replaced by Computing in 2014 is that many people thought (a) no programming was included in the ICT Programme of Study and (b) all that was going on in ICT lessons was Microsoft Office.

Microsoft Office for Teachers - Using MS Office to tackle educational technology problems indicates that these assumptions were mistaken. For a start, there certainly was programming included in the Programme of Study, although at one point it was called ‘Sequencing’ — perhaps that confused some people. Secondly, at least some of us were using the tools at hand — which included Microsoft Office, to show pupils how to solve problems and create games through programming — specifically Visual Basic and Visual Basic for Applications.

This document was written and published by ACITT, the Association for secondary teachers of ICT, back in 1995! It was accompanied by a diskette, which so far in my sorting of the Freedman archives remains elusive.

Nevertheless, this is still a useful document because it shows what you can (still) do in Word, Excel, PowerPoint and Access with a bit of imagination. Also, some of the code given may still work, but even if it doesn’t you will be able to see the logic behind it.

Microsoft Office for Teachers - Using MS Office to tackle educational technology problems