The use of Spreadsheets in school

The use of spreadsheets in school, is from my experience, mainly an administration tool used by the teachers. This is unfortunate, but I have to admit that the idea of spreadsheets have had me running to the hills to avoid them for many years. This is probably because many years ago I was trained in the very first version of the Microsoft Excel spreadsheet ever created in my first job, and there was no short cuts, all formulas had to be typed and remembered in full. (Very scary!!!) This was only a little over ten years ago and I can understand why teachers may feel daunted at the prospect of teaching this to the children in their class. However, there is so much help out there on the web and already made resources and applications that with a little bit of time playing and trial and error a lot can be learnt.


Some suggestions and Ideas from the web of how to use spreadsheets:
Excel spreadsheets
If you have Excel version 5:0/95 or above, you can use these sheets directly. Click on the underlined links in blue to download. To use off-line, you need to save into a folder or onto a floppy disc.
The Doubling Machine
Click on the blue cell and enter a number. To reset, click Undo on the Excel toolbar:
The Halving Machine
http://www.kented.org.uk/ngfl/subjects/numeracy/sheets/double-double.xls

This sheet is used in the same way. It aims to show the ease of finding four times a number by doubling it twice. To reset, click Undo on the Excel toolbar:
What's my number?
This is a book of three sheets which give the sum and product of two mystery numbers. The numbers in the coloured cells can be altered to control the difficulty, by setting the maximum and minimum values for the two random numbers. Changing these values gives a new problem. Alternatively, click on the Sheet2 and Sheet3 tabs.
If you scroll the sheet down, the answers are revealed!
For more spreadsheets and MyWorld screens, visitDeal Parochial's web site