Week 4: Excel in the Classroom

Excel spreadsheets have such a wide variety of uses in the classroom, from a math graph, to a science weather log, to a social studies timeline. Five ways Excel could be incorporated into that classroom are:

1: Students can use Excel to explore order of operations and the effect of parentheses. They can input a mathematical expression, and alter it with parentheses to see how many different answers can be generated. Students can begin by entering an expression into the cell. They can then copy and paste that expression into the cell below. Then they can modify the expression in the formular bar by adding or removing parentheses. Students can later see how many different results they get from the original expression.

2: Students can gather information from their homes as to the number of pieces of technology their family owns - for example telephones, televisions, computers, etc. They can then plot this information into an Excel spreadsheet.

3: Students can use collected data to distinguish what pets they have or would like to have. They can correlate findings with Excel. At the end of the lesson they can tabulate a bar chart and present their findings to the class.

4: Students, working in pairs, can gather information about the cars in their teachers' parking lot. They can determine the total number of cars and the number of each different make/model of car. The students can then use this data to create a graph on Excel.

5: Students cab create a timeline of President Obama's life on Microsoft Excel. In this history lesson, students can research President Obama's life and sequence the important events of his life on a timeline. Students can use Microsoft Excel to create a spreadsheet of information.