Topic 6: Spreadsheets

I love using spreadsheets for both my personal life and for my classroom use. I am not in a TAKS subject, so most of my documentation that I need for growth rates of students is found in an online program that our district subscribes to.



My most current use of Spreadsheets is for our 8th grade field trips and activities. For payment plan services and to know who has and hasn't ordered shirts, we use spreadsheets to allow us to keep track of information. We also use a spreadsheet for our discipline guidelines to see when students received which punishments to see if they are eligible to go on the field trip at the end of the year.



In a personal stance, I use spreadsheets for budgeting purposes of my Savings account and different sinking funds that I have. I feel like in this aspect, I use more of what spreadsheets has to offer. I use the calculation purposes to see how much money I have extra in my savings to see what amount can go to my house extra principal and what needs to be saved for my taxes at the end of the year. I also use the graphs elements to see where my money is being spent in my daily spending and where our income is coming from. I like that I can easily copy and paste cells to a new date and that the program automatically allows me to do complex calculations.



The Roblyer text states that there are five different categories or benefits. Again, by writing each of these out, I will gather more resources when I go back to reading the blog.

Basic Features: One can line up information in row and columns, do basic and complex calculations, automatic recalculations, copy cells, sort data, and search and replace data if needed. Spreadsheets main advantage are the complex and basic calculations that can be performed.

Formatting Feature: You can align text, change the style and appearance, insert headers, footers, and pagination. These are helpful tools so that the document looks prettier and more formal.

Graphics/Interactive Features: This is a part of spreadsheets that I use, but not often. You can create charting, insert graphics or movies, or drawn figures. This allows for the document to go to the next level.

Web Features: You can save as a web page and insert "live" URLs. I have never used this feature before, but it allows you to go to the web directly from your spreadsheet or to be shown on the Internet.

Support features: There are wonderful templates that you can use as well as a way to save data to other formats.