Spreadsheets and Databases

After reading and reviewing all of the provided websites regarding spreadsheets and databases as well as the ones I discovered on my own, it is amazing to me how many ways these two items can be implemented in any classroom . There are many ways in which to utilize these technologies and perhaps some teachers might have the want to product such items but may not even realize the capabilities that are available to make that happen. This is where it is not only unfair to the teacher that these technologies are not available or unheard of but also for the student.

Spreadsheets are most commonly used for rosters, inventories (i.e. classroom materials), charts, tracking and analyzing data and creating budgets. I believe spreadsheets are extremely beneficial when using them to creat a master roster as well as individual rosters, attendance rosters, sports rosters, material inventories for the beginning and end of the year and thing along those lines.

I personally use spreadsheets for just about every kind of list that I make throughout the school year as I am a list making kind of person to begin with. I also use it to create seating charts and basketball rosters.

Databases are used for organizing and tracking data for generating a multitude of reports and/or graphs.

I most commonly use databases to show test scores amongsh my students whether I am comparing boys and girls or free and reduced lunch children against the buyers. These are aspects that we are asked to look at daily while using the CATS calculator in referring to common assessments. While I never show the students the results from the free and reduced and buyers, I often times show them graphs and charts between their results as a class and compare/contrast them to other classes or even boys versus girls.

Spreadsheets: http://www.amphi.com/~psteffen/excel.html

The website above gives tutorials, lesson plans, activitiy and lesson plan ideas, and other useful information in terms of creating and implementing spreadsheets in the classroom.

I am most surprised at how far some of the activities dig into spreadsheets as I always assumed that spreadsheets might be difficult for students in elementary and middle school, however, it is relatively easy to creat, maintain, manipulate, and analyze if given useful information in order to it with.

I have used spreadsheets for the students to analyze a variety of data and I suppose I never thought about allowing them to use their own data to create spreadsheets themselves. I am excited to get back into the classroom and give this responsibility to the students as I know they will accept the challenge and end up learning so much more about how the information and data relate.