Tech Literacy for Teachers/Staff

Think about the ways that your students could use a spreadsheet to manipulate and/or represent numerical data. Create an example spreadsheet to do what you think your students could do. While you are learning how these applications can enrich the curriculum that you teach, they will not feel like a natural part of the curriculum. Some ideas won't fit naturally, the only way to really tell what fits naturally into your curriculum is to work with the applications yourself and conduct research to find out all of the ways that application is used that could apply to your students' projects. A spreadsheet can be used to represent data in any project that is focused on presenting information. The trick is to find the best way to do that. That is actually the reason that it is important that our students use applications like this in classrooms that teach all subjects in the core curriculum. The more times that students use technology the wider their foundation will be. It is that wide foundation that will allow them to be innovative users of whatever technology is used in the careers that they choose. I also want to reinforce the idea of projects for students. Projects allow students to use technology and information in a way that simulates the way they are used in authentic situations. If students are allowed to be innovative when they are completing school projects, they will be able to be more innovative later in life.

The link below gives directions for creating a basic spreadsheet with formulas, to perform calculations, and a graph. Follow the instructions to create a spreadsheet with numerical data for a project your students may create. If you have trouble thinking of a project your students would make, then make one that uses grades or some other numerical data that you need to manage.

http://magnoliatech.wikispaces.com/Spreadsheets

Create 1 original post telling what your project is and attach the file. Then respond to two other posts telling a way that the project could be modified to fit something you teach, making a suggestion, or telling a specific way that the project would benefit students.