Monday, July 9, 2012

Week Two: Using spreadsheets and databases in the classroom

          After researching databases and spreadsheets used in the classroom, I came across this site  http://alicechristie.org/edtech/ss/. This site is wonderful in showing how spreadsheets and databases have been put to use in K-12 classrooms. It's multiple sites all linked together in this site, each of the other sites are ways teachers and students have put to use spreadsheets in the classroom.  The site also gives you online lessons using spreadsheets, interactive data, and other resources.
        Something I found that surprised me about spreadsheets is that they can be used for anything.I already knew they could be used in math lessons, but to be used in science and language arts really surprised me. Using a spreadsheet for vocabulary words is a wonderful idea. It allows students to view the words and organize them in a way that they can understand better. If anything helps a student learn better I think is a wonderful tool. Also to use the spreadsheets in science is wonderful too, because it gives science a new perspective. It allows students to take their data they have collected put their hypothesis and conclusion into their spreadsheets and chart their work.
         When I was in school I didn't use spreadsheets often but when I did it was more for my business classes and math classes. In my school technology wasn't available like it is today. In my high school we only had computers in our library and technology labs. We didn't have access to them everyday. So or us to use a spreadsheet it was a project that we maybe worked on for a few weeks in that particular year. I remember in one of my algebra classes having to do a spreadsheet. I'm not exactly sure what the topic was, but I remember being very unfamiliar with spreadsheets, because it was something I didn't use often. Now classrooms and teachers are starting to use them at a very young age, and I feel that is excellent. Spreadsheets can be extremely helpful in the learning process. So starting students off early and making them familiar with the resource will help them in their future learning.

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