Microsoft Office,
Artificial Intelligence?
Word
Microsoft Word is a fantastic piece of software for teaching. The features are endless. It allows you to
create music booklets, programmes and tickets for concerts. I have used it to
create work schedules, calendars with deadlines for my students or simply to make a bullet point list of
things to do. You can highlight, colour code and ‘justify’ your text. There are 'track changes' which is a feature that allows the teacher and student to have a conversation in the margins when a piece of work is being marked.
With Word, you don’t even have to learn how to spell! Word highlights any faults and corrects them automatically. It even has the ability to create a bibliography without you having do go and to all the fiddly bits! Word made my two degrees a whole lot easier. Its' like my best friend.
With Word, you don’t even have to learn how to spell! Word highlights any faults and corrects them automatically. It even has the ability to create a bibliography without you having do go and to all the fiddly bits! Word made my two degrees a whole lot easier. Its' like my best friend.
What will happen when you stand up in front of thirty teenagers and begin to write terminology on the board without use of spell checker? What will you say when your students correct your spelling? What will you do when your students ask you how to reference correctly? Are you going to just tell them to put it into Word? Are we creating a whole generation of people who are hiding behind a persona of artificial intelligence?
Personally, my spelling is dreadful. When I told my MA tutor about this she commented that she had never noticed. Thus I myself have created this academic persona which is not particularly representative of my true abilities.
What I have come to learn is that this program is
extremely useful but there is a danger that we can become too reliant upon these technologies. For example, when Word highlights a spelling error, most users will simply select one of the suggested words from a dropdown list rather than trying to come up with the correct spelling themselves.
During interviews, or classroom teaching we have to learn to cope without these mechanisms in place. Microsoft Office thus is an aid to teachers in the short term but seems to have little effect upon our intelligence in the long term.
During interviews, or classroom teaching we have to learn to cope without these mechanisms in place. Microsoft Office thus is an aid to teachers in the short term but seems to have little effect upon our intelligence in the long term.
Excel
Excel is not particularly designed for music teaching purposes, however it is used daily in the teaching profession. Institutions and colleges require a
constant update of predicted grades and electronic registers for records and
safety purposes.
One of the downsides is that entering data into a computer leaves much room for human error. To remedy this, many teachers take a paper register first and then enter this data, at a later date, into the spreadsheet.
Similar to Word, the program isn't without its faults and we must ensure that we use these technologies only when necessary. When used efficiently, these programs can be highly useful to the teaching profession. However they are not essential elements when teaching a music lesson.
As Malala Yousafzai reminds us,
One of the downsides is that entering data into a computer leaves much room for human error. To remedy this, many teachers take a paper register first and then enter this data, at a later date, into the spreadsheet.
Similar to Word, the program isn't without its faults and we must ensure that we use these technologies only when necessary. When used efficiently, these programs can be highly useful to the teaching profession. However they are not essential elements when teaching a music lesson.
As Malala Yousafzai reminds us,
“One child, one teacher, one book, one pen can change the world”.
Pen and paper can change your life.
Let it.
Let it.
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