Well this is spreadsheet week in the Tech Int. program and I have mixed reviews. I personally really enjoy working with spreadsheets, in fact I developed a spreadsheet this summer that I use with some guys I golf with. It was a lot of fun to keep track of our summer long competition. We created a relatively simple game that we could play involving fairways, greens and putts, along with some penalties. We used the spreadsheet to then calculate a score based on possible points. The spreadsheet allowed us to have a season long competition and have fun with our competitiveness. I've used spreadsheets occasionally in the past, but only for personal reasons like this or a job I had growing up.
I have never found much success using them in class. My class this year used a spreadsheet to compare statistical data from the countries of Asia in the CIA World Factbook, and group countries by region and some of the kids really enjoyed seeing the differences between countries. They really enjoyed looking at countries that have 'amazing' statistics like Afghanistan's 44 life expectancy, Turkmenistan's 40% unemployment and Singapore's 2.3 Infant Mortality Rate! Students also used the spreadsheet to compare country data with U.S. The problem I ran into with my spreadsheet in class was that for every person who was really excited about the comparisons I had two or three who really struggled with finding meaning or dissecting the numbers.
What this spreadsheet didn't do was to have any formulas in it. I suppose it could have calculated regional averages, continent averages or identified highs and lows. This will maybe be something I'll do when we work with European countries next quarter. Any other ideas for the spreadsheet would be greatly appreciated.
I too have difficultly integrating the use of spreadsheets into the curriculum of science other than to pool group data for basic analysis (averages etc.) I have yet to actually "teach" with the use of a spreadsheet - right now I tend to incorporate them only so that I don't have to have students copy all of their data onto the board, I have an easy way to save data for absent students and my students can avoid hauling out calculators and punching numbers for 10 minutes to get basic info. I guess you could say that I use spreadsheets mostly to save time. I still struggle with how to get students to use and build them for their benefit.
ReplyDeleteNext year my students will have ready access to GoogleDocs and so what I'm planning on doing is to create spreadsheets shared so that they can enter data and see the immediate impact their specific data has on the calculations. I don't think there is an easy way to do this right now, unless they can migrate from our current email to Gmail right now. I would imagine that if they had regular access to spreadsheets over the course of the year they could be constructing spreadsheets by the end of the year.
ReplyDeleteHi Jason-
ReplyDeleteI understand your struggle with spreadsheets. They can be difficult for seventh grade students to understand, even though you could incorporate them into your curriculum. I just wanted to post to say how excited I am that all of our students will have their own Google logins next year. I think it will open up many opportunities for them!
Have fun!
Erika
Perhaps using the spreadsheet collaboratively - each student adding some data - then use the sum to do calculations
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