Tuesday, June 25, 2013

Week 4: Material Generators

Many different options exist to help teachers with material generation -here are a few that I have used in the past:

Test generators - Most textbooks come with an exam generator - I used Holt's Examview software - it was great for suggesting a starting point for test questions - I usually modified the questions some from the suggestion, but it save tons of time.  I was also great for generating a study guide of questions for students to use to prepare for the test, or even sometime I would pass them out at the beginning of a section for students to follow along and guide them in note-taking.

Graphic Document Generators - Used to create certificates - I find that Powerpoint and/or Word are fine for this.  Powerpoint works especially well - you can import graphics (either found or created) and really make a pretty good looking certificate with it.

Graphics Programs - I used lots of diagrams and images and Photoshop is not only very expensive, but has a pretty steep learning curve.  For 99% of what I needed to do day-to-day, Paint.NET (freeware - available online) was a great easy to use tool for making diagrams, cropping & editing pictures, etc.  It's only available for Windows,  so on a Mac, the closest program is GIMP - again, available free online.

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