Can You Solve It?

Well, after a little bit of frustration, I was finally able to make my crossword puzzle in Microsoft Excel. It was actually a great learning experience because I never knew that you could even make a crossword puzzle using Excel! I feel that this is a great tool to show students how to use....especially when integrating technology in the classroom. When students see the true value of what a program like Excel can do, I believe that they will be more open to using it. It would be very boring, and almost pointless, to just simply teach Excel as a stand-along software. I bet many students would say, "So what??" However, if you teach students how to use excel to create study tools, such as crossword puzzles, they will be able to see the relevance. For example, if a teacher wants to review science vocabulary for a test, he/she could pose an assignment to have students make a crossoword puzzle using graph paper. Then, he/she could pull the students together and show them how a cross word puzzle is constructed using Excel. Usually, students are very excited to try a new task with technology, so the students could then have the opportunity to make their crossword in Excel. Not only are they learning how to use new software, they are studying for their test! I think using Excel to make crossword puzzles is a wonderful tool for learning content vocabulary because it gets the students engaged, and it allows them to use their creativity to think of "clues." Students have a better chance of understanding the words through this process, rather than copying down definitions. Another fun idea would be to have the students print out their crosswords and randomly pass them out to each other to try to complete! Again, this acts as another study guide...and I bet they will LOVE to solve their friend's puzzle!
I also made a crossword puzzle using ED Helper. This program was so easy to use, and it also created an answer key! Though learning how to create a crossword puzzle using Excel was a good experience, it was very time consuming. ED Helper was quick, and the program automatically formatted everything for you. With my busy day to day schedule, I would have to say that I would use a program such as ED Helper to make a crossword puzzle for my students.