Just a lil excel spreadsheeting!
Last week for my week 7 tutorial with Mark Lee we embarked on a lesson dedicated to spreadsheets. As this lesson was more so an introduction to spreadsheets i picked up on a lot of helpful tips when using the program. What puzzled me though was that this appears to be such a great program that teachers can utilise for keeping rolls and students’ marks up to date, although i have never seen the teacher i am currently completing my practical teaching with use it. I suppose that she is still stuck in the Stone Age… marking a roll book and recording marks… such is life. But regardless, when I am a teacher I can definitely say even at this point in time that spreadsheets are going to cater to all of my organisational needs! According to Newby, 2004: Examples of uses for Excel spreadsheets-
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By the teacher |
By the student |
| -Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Grade books and recording marks-Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â School class expense budget-Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Creating socio-grams for tracking friendship relationships-Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Create class seating charts-Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Camping and excursion budgets-Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Designing spelling lists-Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Class lists | -Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Maths assignments-Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Assignment planners-Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Personal budgets-Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Science reports for calculating and reporting results-Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Chart personal goals and progress-Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Graphing weather patterns |
 When looking at this table I can see myself adapting a number of these spreadsheet uses for when I am a teacher. From using the excel program as a storage for grades and marks, to create class seating charts, designing spelling lists for tests and keeping track of attendance I can see that excel is going to become my adopted ‘baby’. I think that excel will also have major benefits for the students I will be working with from helping them create charts with goals and graphing of the weather for mathematics tasks. On my practical in the coming weeks I am going to definitely question the teacher I am working with about her knowledge, understanding and implementation of excel in the classroom for my personal knowledge. It was also in this week 7 workshop that I decided to in fact take some of the excel tutorials recommended by Mark. I found that by completing these tutorials I was more adept at being able to keep pace with Mark in the following lesson when creating my spreadsheet and utilising the many formulas. I found this tutorial extremely helpful in getting to know the basics of the formulas and their explicit applications. Instead of simply calculating the sum of a students marks myself I will simply be able to utilise the sum function, saving me both time and effort.
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Formulas: |
| Sum |
| Average |
| Maximum |
| Minimum |
I was never exactly confident about working with spreadsheets… but! Now I can conclude that I will be more than happy to implement them within my classroom. My students will be a group who hopefully will be technology adept under my careful guidance and knowledge.
Thats all for this week! 
xoxo
