Interviews

My lesson plan involves using excel for interviews. This would be ideal at the middle school or high school level when students will have to interview individuals on various topics for projects/assignments. This lesson utilizes the "worksheet" capability of a spreadsheet which allows you to organize your work better than a word processor. This is a good activity to use when students have to interview numerous people about numerous questions. By doing this on excel, students can see all the interviews quickly and efficiently. I remember a project I had to do in my 8th grade social studies class in which I had to interview five people all from different decades. I had to ask them all the same questions. This lesson plan would be perfect for that project!

Here is the link: http://www.fi.edu/fellows/fellow4/may99/ss-interview.html

Countdown Spreadsheet

I found an interesting way to use Excel for a fun project. You can make a countdown spreadsheet to count down days until important events such as birthdays, graduations, projects, events, etc. I found this from http://library.thinkquest.org/J0110054/ and it even gives you a template already made on this page. You use functions like TODAY, and simple subtraction formulas to count down the days! :)

Lemonade Stand

http://www.microsoft.com/education/makingmoney.mspx

This lesson plan is aimed towards older elementary school students or middle school students. It is supposed to allow the student to calculate the amount of profit being made from selling lemonade. I like this lesson plan because it does allow for the teacher to have some freedom. The students could choose their own item to sell rather than them all selling lemonade or depending on what the class is discussing the teacher can assign something else to sell. The plan calls for this to be a multiple day activity but the teacher could set it up to be a one day activity if there isn't enough time.

Water Down the Drain

How much water do you use in a day?

I found a wonderful resource that used Excel as a graph for a lesson for middle and high school students in science and math. On one Saturday the entire class or school would track how much water was used by the family, and then try to find ways to reduce that usage. The webpage link is http://www.microsoft.com/education/wateruse.mspx . It has the links for the questionnaire, the Excel chart (complete with directions printed on it, places to answer questions, and plot the data already set for you), and Publisher. Once the class finished their personal charts, they could combine it for the class average, or even the school average. It has many opportunities to use this application. I am not quite sure if the directions will be printed in the box below the chart. If not check online for your very own copy.

Saturday Water Usage by the ________________ family.
	# per Saturday	Gallons	# of minutes	Total # of Gallons Used
Baths		50		0.00
Showers		2	15	0.00
Teeth Brushing		1		0.00
Hand and Face Washing		1		0.00
Shaving		1		0.00
Dishwasher		20		0.00
Dishwashing by hand		5		0.00
Laundry (Machine)		10		0.00
Toilet Flushes		3		0.00
Glasses of Water		0.0625		0.00
Total Gallons Used				0.00
# of family members	1
Gallons per family member	0

Roadtrip across North Carolina: 4th grade

http://www.microsoft.com/education/roadtrip.mspx

I love this lesson because it uses multiple microsoft programs and can be turned into a project, group work, or individual work. I plan on teaching elementary school so this would be ideal for fourth grade when students learn about north carolina and state history. I could have some students do this lesson as if they were in the present and some as if they were in the past. This way we could compare what our roadtrips would be like in modern day North Carolina and historic North Carolina. Instead of using microsoft word for all of the lists i would use excel because i believe it will help students be more organized and have their material easier to read. I will do some manipulating of the lesson to make it more fourth grade friendly since it is originally created for middle school, and i will make it more specific to state history, and historic spots across our state.

Calculate your carbon footprint

In this lesson, small groups of students work together to collect data and to calculate their carbon footprint using the Excel Web App. Their data is averaged and applied to the population of the country in which they live to demonstrate a practical application of exponential growth and sustainability. Each group will then collaborate on a report using the Word Web App to discuss their findings and to present solutions for improving their carbon footprint.

http://www.microsoft.com/education/lessonplans/carbon_footprint.mspx#EZG

Students could keep a weekly track using Excel to see how much electricity and water they use and how much waste they throw out. Then they would compare it to the population. It would not only teach them how to use Excel but also teach them how to be more sustainable.

Play 60!

Excel is a great way to document. Keep a timeline of progress, while developing good habits and maintaining a healthy schedule. I have always thought teachers should emphasize the importance of exercising or "playing." This is for all ages, and can be incorporated by having an activity to enhance their playing. Have students pledge to making sure they Play 60 minutes everyday. Have 5 or 10 minutes at the beginning of class every Friday to have play in the classroom, maybe a game like "silent ball" or if you have courtyard space than have organized games like tag and capture the flag. Anything is better than nothing, but if the class really gets in to it than it will be easy to come up with ideas for fun games. Unorganized play is key as well. Playing with them helps. Offer time for them to play, maybe ask if kids would like to play more at lunchtime or before school, and be a supervisor of the "play".
Here is the website that gave me the idea. I see the commercial for it on ESPN all the time and think it is a great idea for getting kids excited about playing and exercising!
http://www.nflrush.com/play60/
Have a chart in the classroom or through the computer on Excel to document their playtime.

Fruit, Kids, and Excel

Teachers and students can use Excel for all kinds of things. Whether it be for a science lab, math (graphing of course), or just as a tally for class favorites, excel can help make a lesson more hands on for kids. In my lesson could be teaching my students about making graphs or talking about nutrition or using it as a “getting-to-know-you” tool. The teacher could fill out the chart while it is being projected or they could have the kids find the data and fill it in themselves, then starts an oral discussion for the class to fill out together. As a teacher we can take a simple subject as fruit and make it useful to kids learning about computers and Excel…which I think is pretty cool. My excel book is based on the Classes Favorite Fruits Each student's name is listed and they can choose from Apples Oranges Bananas Mangoes or grapes. The whole class participates and after all the data is collected you can make it into a graph for the kids to see how their numbers corespond to the graph. When they see it in color as a graph numbers become more intriguing and students respond and understand more when it comes to questions.

How Many Calories Is That?

This is an exercise students would use when they are learning about nutrition. In this lesson students need to research their favorite fast food restaurant, then the students will decided what they would eat for a normal meal at this restaurant. They will find the calories for each item they would eat, they could do this for multiple places as well. Excel can total the amount of calories the student would have in that meal alone. This is a great way for students, especially beginners, use Excel and its an interesting way to learn about food and nutrition.

http://www.wmburgweb.com/Resources/Lesson/index.htm

This is not a spreadsheet but this is where I got the idea and it gives more detailed instructions.

When Life Hands You Lemons...

The Microsoft website has a number of resources for educators incorporating software into various lessons. This particular lesson is called "Making Money From Lemons." This is a fun lesson that combines math skills with new technology skills, specifically in Excel. Students must make predictions and calculations, thinking logically about customer behavior and everything that might affect it. I thought this would be a great activity because once you complete the virtual project with the class, you can set up an actual lemonade stand and have the students really connect with what they are learning. There are plenty of ways to expand this lesson into other subject areas as well; students can write stories about their experience with the lemonade stand, use chemistry to figure out the best sugar to lemon ratio, and design posters and flyers that will attract the most customers. I just thought that this lesson was a great example of how to seamlessly incorporate software and technology into the classroom.
This is a not-quite-perfect web version of the spreadsheet that Microsoft provides in the lesson plan.

Generation Gap

This lesson plan involves students using Excel to “design, administer, and analyze a generation gap survey.” This lesson plan is for high school students. This activity allows the students to form a hypothesis and then design a questionnaire to test their hypothesis. After administering the survey, the students will chart their findings in Excel. This can be used as a lesson in History, Language Arts, or even Math. Not only will the students get to experiment with Excel, but Word and PowerPoint as well. I felt that this could be a beneficial activity for older students to help improve their skills with using different Microsoft software and get to ask questions a variety of people. They can use this assignment to look at how our generation differs from those before us. I think that this will be very helpful for the students in many ways.

http://www.microsoft.com/education/gengap.mspx#ETF

Using Excel to Compare!

I found this website, which demonstrates how students can use Excel when comparing information given in Social Studies. The lesson plan is essentially to explore different cultures and make a chart which easily outlines different aspects of these cultures.  This example uses Egyptian, Grecian, and Roman cultures to make a comparison of ancient civilizations.  Transportation, clothing, education, and climate are some of the different aspects this example explores.  The goal is to organize aspects of different civilizations into a table where students can easily see the similarities and differences between cultures.  By the end of the lesson, students will have learned not only more about the civilizations; but they have knowledge of a new manner in which they may organize information and how to do so digitally. 

(I couldn't get the file to upload, but the link takes you to the home page. It's under "Social Studies" and then "Ancient Civilization Graphic Organizer." From there, it allows you to view through PDF or Excel.)

My Spanish class lesson plan is a timeline too. I could use the timeline idea to teach some use of Excel, as well. To do that, I would start the lesson out by having everyone write out the dates they want to put in the timeline, together with any information they want to associate with the dates, in a notebook before they start working with Excel. Then I would have them open a new, blank Excel worksheet, write in a title, put the dates in horizontal cells, put the information in the cells above the dates, then format everything to get angled text, colors, bullet points, arrows, whatever else would make the dates more meaningful and easier to remember.
I chose a timeline because I believe it is a useful tool to give an easy visual aspect to the progress of history, whether through epochs or just through what they did that morning.
I got the instructions for this idea from the Microsoft website, at

http://www.microsoft.com/education/CreateTimeline.aspx

Candy Activity

A lesson plan that I have seen a few teachers use before, especially in younger elementary grades, is using Excel for a candy activity around holidays - like Halloween or Christmas. Every group of students would be given Skittles or M&M's (some type of candy with several different colors). First, students must estimate how many of each color they think they will have. Then, they would count to find the actual number. All of this information can be recorded on a spreadsheet. When finished, teachers could have each group create a graph that shows how many of each color the groups have.

Attached is a download link of a simple example I made: http://www.sendspace.com/file/9t295m

Countdown to important dates

My excel lesson plan: First you can teach the students simply how to use excel. Then you come up with dates that are important to the classroom. For example, test days, quiz days, holidays, spring or fall breaks, or even party days for the class. Then as a class you would make the excel table with the right formulas so that when you insert the date you want, it tells you how many days it is away. I made my own example counting down how many days christmas, my birthday, halloween, and what day the blog is due is away.

This is the website that I got the example from: http://library.thinkquest.org/J0110054

p.s. The example I made myself will not upload or copy paste in this text box. But if you would like to see it I can email it to you. ;-)

Counting Money

This lesson plan can be used for mostly 1st, 2nd, and 3rd grade students. This activity uses excel to show different items and their costs. The students will figure out how many pennies, nickels, dimes, and quarters it will take to buy each object and the different number of coins that will work. The students are able to fill in the different cells with the quantity of pennies, nickels, dimes and quarters that they think will be needed to buy that particular item. This is a great activity to help teach students the value of coins and how to add coins. On the website that I have listed below there is a link that takes you to the actual spreadsheet so you can see exactly what it is and how it works.
http://www.northcanton.sparcc.org/~technology/excel/files/counting_money.html

Timeline

The lesson plan I have come up with could be used at almost every grade level. This plan is to have your students make a timeline of their lives. They would mark down the big moments in their life. They will start on the day they were born and go all the way to the present. They can share these with their families and classmates. It is a fun activity while still learning how to work excel.

http://www.microsoft.com/Education/CreateTimeline.aspx

What day of the week were you born?

Although there are a multitude of possible uses for Excel in the classroom, I chose to focus on one elementary lesson that provides students with informative, yet fun information. By creating a spreadsheet on Excel and then typing a particular students birthdates into a cell in the aforementioned sheet and pressing enter a kind of game is created. Once enter is selected the cell becomes active. By then selecting number formatting and then long date a days of the week component is added to the spreadsheet. After performing the aforementioned the original cell in which students birthdays were located will then house the day of the week on which they were born. This spreadsheet method can be integrated into lesson plans to help learn days of the week and help students attain important dates. By manipulating the date within the cell a plethora of important dates can be committed to memory. This lesson can incorporate all kinds of number tricks and help students learn the order of month, day, year when writing dates. By learning other student’s birthdays a scavenger hunt of days of the week could be played. All of these and many more options abound from just one simple feature on a spreadsheet.

http://spreadsheets.about.com/od/spreadsheetlessonplans/qt/090727-on-what-day-was--i-born.htm

Software

A growing number of educators feel that students should be taught the software applications they will have to know to succeed in the workplace. From the applications presented in this chapter, make a list of five applications you think every student should learn, from more important to less important. Explain your ranking. State how you will teach you students to use NEW software? What examples, tips, recommendations are available? Respond by commenting on this post.

Excel in K-12 education

Use “New Post” on the Login-page to create your own thread.  Then describe a lesson plan that involves the use of Excel. You can find an example from the internet, other sources, or create your own. Provide the spreadsheet if possible (e.g., add an attachment, link, etc). Respond to someone’s thread by commenting on their idea. For instance what are the strengths/weaknesses of the lesson? How can this idea be adapted by grade level, subject level, or modified to become interdisciplinary?