This website directly from Microsoft actually provides some ideas for lesson plans using different software. Some of them use excel and I thought it was very interesting because the ideas give you everything you would need for your lesson including objectives, learning outcomes, lesson procedure, and a conclusion.
Here is a link to the website:
One thing that I thought was very interesting about database usage was the idea that “excel can easily make your spreadsheets into web pages.” While I often think with an elementary school mind because that’s the type of school I’m currently working in, I think it would be great to utilize this for high schoolers. High schoolers could learn to create their own web pages and insert charts and graphs straight to these websites. Doing this would be extremely career oriented. Students could learn to carry this over to their jobs whether it be sharing numbers online for a sales department or sharing a presentation in the entertainment field on Billboard hits. Not only could this prepare students for a career, it could also prepare them for college. The article states that “many university students use this feature of excel to share projects with other students.” It would be really neat if that could be a skill they could learn in high school.
Link to source:
Teaching scripted programs in special education hasn’t really given me much opportunity to use spreadsheets or databases with students. In the past, I have use Excel in several of my careers. This would mostly be for databases with phone numbers, addresses, etc. As a teacher, I have really only used Excel to create a sign-out sheet for our i-pod touches. This is my first year though. As a student in high school I was taught to use Excel. I was one of not many students who were taught to use the program though, because I was taking a business-oriented class. The class gave me a lot of data to enter and then would give me instructions on how to create bar graphs, pie charts, scatter plots, and more. I found making these interesting and kind of fun, and I never realized how much I would use it once I got into college and into my first job as an administrative assistant.
Although I have never used Excel as a teacher before, I think it is definitely something that should be incorporated in the classroom. Kids can always benefit from using new technologies, especially ones that are widely used in the business world. By reviewing the Microsoft website I posted earlier and thinking about some of the math classes I collaborate with, I am starting to get some ideas about how I can use Excel more in the future.
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