Hit me over the head, please.

What up Wednesday? I'm trying to stick to my web Wednesday plan. So what is up this Wednesday? Excel is up. My week ended last week with Excel and started this week with Excel and here it is the middle of the week...and guess what? Still Excel. I have never opened Excel as much as I have these past two weeks.

The week started with a district support staff training on advanced Excel topics. Scott Swindells and I combined sessions so that we could troubleshoot and support each other rather than go it alone. As it turns out I was hit over the head this weekend and needed the extra body help to present. We covered some serious Excel work in our sessions: tables, charts, mail merge graphing, formulas, formatting and other extras. Some topics went more smoothly than others and we helped everyone as the questions popped up. The questions we could not answer directly, sometimes someone else from the group who uses Excel every day had the answer. It turned out to be an excellent use of best practices. Scott and I sometimes presented something in the very standard step by step approach and then someone in the group would speak up and relate a shorter way to accomplish the same task. It was training powered by experience...and it worked.

After our lunch break we got to kick back with the security staff and some basic Word and Outlook skills. There has not been one security guard at the high school that I have seen since that session that has not told me that they learned something from my class. I think they truly did not expect to get anything from a tech workshop. Imagine! There was actually one person that stayed later to try to figure out something because he had an immediate use for it at home. Technology beyond the school walls...anyone can do it with the proper training AND it does not exist only at school/work.

So the week started out a little hectic, but working together and using real world examples to promote the learning seemed to make all things right again. And to complete my "Excel"ing for the week, I created a basic learning model to be followed by 6th graders. Going from Advanced to eager to elementary learners...it is quite a diverse grouping with this job. Sometimes the juggling changes from beanbags to chainsaws and back again all in the same day. So what have I learned this week? I learned that it is okay to see things from a different perspective other than my own. That people do not always focus on what is accomplished but on what is not accomplished. That there will always be someone who learns in a classroom, and that the learning does not have to originate with me. The learning could come from something the person next to you says, or another presenter or simply yourself...maybe you were looking at the answer all along.

More importantly, I have finally reached the point to where I can open up Excel and not cringe...hit me over the head...it isn't nearly as evil a program as I always imagined it to be. See...I learned something too.