I always thought of the program as mainly a business program,but this week, I looked at it from a teacher's point of view. How can I use this in my classroom? How can I integrate this program into my lessons? The first thing that came to mind was tying it to my unit plan about seasons. I decided I would use excel to make a seasons survey. I listed every student in my classroom and asked them to rank the seasons, 1 is the least favorite and 4 is the most favorite. The Excel program took the numbers and totaled each column. Because the program quickly found the sum, I was able to see which season was the most popular.
Though my program was created by the teacher, Excel is a program that can be used by students to create their own projects. This type of project could be used in an inquiry based project. For example, the teacher could show students the basic functions of of Excel, and then create guidelines for a project. Students then must solve a problem by adding functions. Students can conduct their own surveys and have the program calculate the totals. They could also create a budget list for toys, clothing, etc. There are a few questions a teacher should consider asking students while they are working on these projects.
- How can Excel help you and/or your parents in your everyday lives?
- Why is Excel sometimes more helpful than Word?
- What Excel functions did you find helpful during your project? Why?
The seasons survey is a great idea! I hadn't thought of using Excel in that way. I've always had it in my mind that Excel could be very useful in the classroom. That's mainly because I use it nearly everyday in my job. But seeing your survey opens up even more ideas in my mind.
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