Week 10 Using Excel to create databases and spreadsheets for K-12 student use

(Look at technology standards. Which standards might be addressed by spreadsheets/databases?)

1. Explore ways that K-12 teachers have used databases/spreadsheets

• Visit this website and spend 15 minutes reading through some of these examples. http://www.lttechno.com/links/spreadsheets.html
• Choose a least one example that you find valuable. Email (in Taskstream) to classmembers, explain why you think this is valuable and what would this technique do to improve learning?
• Guidelines (step-by-step) for using Excel

2. Open "excel" in Microsoft Office: create an excel spreadsheet during this class activity

• create fields for pets (class discussion)
• record classmates information
• create at least three operations (sums, averages etc.)
• create at least three graphs on the same data and compare the usefulness of different graphs for different types of data
• analysis (on a Word document):
  • What questions might these data be addressing?
  • What conclusions might one draw from these data?
  • What would you do differently next time?

3. Next week each person needs to bring in a cereal box (can be empty). You will be creating your our own cereal box study. Here is a preview of what we will be doing next week.

• Open Excel
• Examine Cereal boxes
  • Examine all parts of your cereal box.
  • Make a list of possible data sources on your cereal.
• Make an accompanying Word document to answer the following questions:
  • After completing the data sorting etc., what summaries, inferences and generalizations can you make about the data and the process you completed?
  • What did you learn? How might you change this if you were to conduct this study again?
  • How would you adapt this lesson for K-12?
  • In Taskstream, make a folder and upload both the excel documents and this accompanying word document.

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