Level Up: A New Idea for Teacher Professional Development

I have decided that “game-changing” is now an overused word.  So, let’s “level up” our conversation on teacher professional development with the Microsoft Office Ribbon Hero!  Last week, I got an email on this new way to learn about features in Office 2007 and Office 2010.  It’s really a novel way to rethink how we learn new software in a contemporary and  social context.

Ribbon Hero takes you through a series of challenges in Microsoft Word, Excel and PowerPoint 2007 and 2010.  Moreover, you earn points and achievements as you use the program.  The Office Casual team has also included a social networking component of Ribbon Hero.  With your permission, Ribbon Hero can connect to Facebook so that you can challenge your friends to see who can score the most points in using Microsoft Office.  It’s a little more relevant to day to day work for teachers and professors than Farmville or Mafia Wars.

I actually discovered new and improved features in Office 2010 to help make my PowerPoint presentations pop. So often, we get new software and continue to use it the same way we used the last version without discovering how to be better communicators and teachers.  Ribbon Hero shifts that paradigm by making learning Office both fun, social, and competitive.

I encourage faculty and staff to download Ribbon Hero and try it with Microsoft Office 2007.  If you are more adventurous and want to score more points, download the Office 2010 Beta here.