Publisher

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Overview

Publisher is a great tool that is easy for students to use because it is based on other Microsoft programs and has similar or same icons for students to click. Lots of different types of documents can be created with publisher and the program comes with inbuilt templates for documents including advertisements, award certificates, brochures, business cards, business forms, calendars, catalogs, envelopes, flyers, cards, letterhead, menus, newsletters, postcards, resumes, signs, websites, with compliments cards.

Strength
Ease of use due to similarity to other Windows based programs. Endless opportunities for students to jazz up their documents and for teachers to create visually impressive documents.

Weakness
The content still needs to be clear and concise for maximum impact images used in the publication needs to be relevant to the topic. Relevant images may be hard or time consuming to find (this is minimised with Microsoft clip art available online. Maybe hard for students that have limited creativity to fully connect with the task. Students need to have at least an intermediate skill level in Microsoft Word to be able to use publisher or the teacher or helper will need to sit next to student for one-on-one support.

Opportunity
Publisher is great for creating documents. Teachers can create design briefs, menus, mock newsletter, the list is almost endless, most subjects are suitable for use with publisher. Great for students who are visual or creative and for students with disabilities. Creates time management and high order thinking skills.

Threat
Using Publisher can be time consuming, definite time limits need to be set and adhered to, to ensure that students are not caught up in the creative and miss the necessary content of the project.

Compatibility to learning styles
Highly compatible to visual learners and students with a disability.

What learning theory it is most used for (links to this blog site)
Publisher can be used for Constructivism or Social Constructivism.

Meaning to me
Publisher is an excellent tool that I have used successfully for years but really I have just scratched the surface of what it can do. About 4 years ago I undertook a project for a backpacker company to create a map of Fraser Island for 4wd hire, huge learning curve, totally loved it. You can also draw a picture in paint and copy and paste into Publisher, I did a free hand drawing of Fraser Island for the A2 map. One issue that I have found with publisher is that if you are going to send it out for commercial printing you need to convert it to a PDF or they may refuse to print it. In order to do this I purchased DocuDesk which converts documents in Publisher, Word, etc, through showing another printer in your printing options. Caution is needed, the document when converted needs to be thoroughly checked because some of the fonts did not convert properly. People have told me since that you can get a free version of a PDF converter, but I still like using DocuDesk and will stick to a program that I am comfortable with.

You will also have to convert to an alternative format to upload to a blog.

An example of documents I have created (I selected all, then copy and pasted into Paint):