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Thursday Jun 15, 2006
Spreadsheets
Spreadsheets are considered one of the Mindtools that can be used for ?amplifying mental functioning.? Specifically, they can be used to represent, reflect and calculate quantitative information. (Jonassen, 1998) Spreadsheets are commonly used in mathematical applications, but they can be used for science and social studies, as well. Basically a spreadsheet is a huge table with columns and rows that are identified by letter and numbers. Each space that is created by the intersecting lines is called a cell. The cell holds the value that is to be calculated, sorted or graphed. You can also enter a formula or function in a cell that will calculate the values in other cells, so that a change in one cell can affect other cells depending on the formula or function.
The article, Scaffolding Math Learning with Spreadsheets, outlines five activities where students in grades 6-12 use spreadsheets to solve mathematical problems. What I thought was most interesting is that these activities were designed to help teach the spreadsheet as well as the math skill, so that learning the technology does not interfere with learning mathematics. I liked that the students were learning the parts of the spreadsheet and how they interact at the same time that they were exploring math concepts like order of operation. Teachers? curricular responsibilities are so extensive that in order to cover as much as possible, contents have to be integrated and integrating content areas makes the learning more authentic and exciting for the students. I especially liked Problem 2 which had the students find the pattern for a group of numbers, then extend the pattern to the 1000th value. This exercise encouraged higher level thinking because the students had to think abstractly about the pattern in order to create the formula. At the same time, the students learned the spreadsheet skill of how to copy formulas from cell to cell.
I have used spreadsheets in grades 3-5 for Social Studies and Science applications and we have primarily used the sorting and the graphing functions of Microsoft Excel. Next year, I would like to use one of the problems from the article to begin teaching the students how to create formulas to have the spreadsheet perform calculations. I might begin with Problem 3, where the students are asked to create a multiplication table. This would be a great review of the math skill for 4th graders and a good introduction to spreadsheets. Because they are familiar with what the results should be, they can check their own formulas to see if they work. Both the 4th and 5th graders learn about Mean, Median and Mode and I wonder if that might be a good application that may also help the students to abstract the mathematical idea from concrete numbers to cell addresses. We could integrate this with social studies and have the students compare resources in Canada, US and Mexico, enter the data (say population or highest altitude) create a graph comparing, and enter the formulas to find the mean, median and mode. I would also like to come up with an activity that uses a ?what if? question. I think that they would love to see how the spreadsheet can manipulate data for them. Posted at 05:01PM Jun 15, 2006 by LEOUSIS, REBECCA in General | Comments[0] Comments:
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