I had an interesting problem arise yesterday which led me to reflect on how important it is to teach the use of spreadsheets at all grade levels and across all subject areas. I have not previously given spreadsheets much thought beyond creating graphs for science experiments. But, I'm beginning to realize that spreadsheets are a critical tool we need to introduce early and often to address the need for data literacy skills.

 

First the problem: I had a list of student IDs that needed to have the same number of digits in each one. They varied in length from 4 digits to 6 digits. So I needed a formula that would add leading zeroes to each number, resulting in every number having 9 digits. For example, the number 1234 would need 5 zeroes in front and the number 12345 would need 4 zeroes. One of our brilliant programmers in the Information Technology Department (thank you, Richard!) provided this simple formula: =RIGHT(CONCATENATE("00000000",A1),9) For those of you not familiar with formulas, this basically says to combine (concatenate) a set of 8 zeroes and the given number in cell A1, then trim the new number by giving me nine digits, counting from the right. I used the fill down function and instantly had my new list with 9 digit ID numbers.  

 

This got me thinking about the math involved. First is number sense - the fact that you can add as many zeroes to the front of a number as you want and it doesn't change the value. The next idea is order of operations and the role that parentheses play. And, once you figure out the mathematical operations you need performed, you need to figure out how to represent it using a formula so it can be repeated for any given input. Starting in 4th grade, students learn how to use function tables to do this - check your skills with this 4th grade quiz!

 

So, now to my point - we need to have students applying these concepts using modern technology tools such as spreadsheets. Here's an example of a function table in a spreadsheet. What formula do you think I used for each column? Well, column A increases by 2, so in cell A2 I entered =A1+2 and I used fill down to repeat this in cells A3 through A20. When you fill, the spreadsheet automatically changes the formula in each row so that cell A3 has the formula =A2+2, cell A4 has =A3+2, and so on. In column B, the formula is dependent on column A, so the formula in cell B2 is =A1*4 and I used fill down to repeat this formula in every cell in the B column. Notice that applying the mathetical concepts to a spreadsheet requires students to structure the formula in a different way than the function tables they are presented in their math quiz. They have to transfer their mathematical understanding to a new context.

 

If you made it through the techie talk and mathematical mumbo-jumbo, good job! But, you might be asking, "What's the instructional value of doing this? Why take instructional time to have students create spreadsheets?" My answer goes back to the beginning of this post - because today's workers need mathematical skills to deal with data and they need experience applying modern data tools such as spreadsheets to a variety of data tasks. So I'll end this post with a challenge: think about how you can incorporate the use of data and data tools (such as spreadsheets) in your instruction. Check out this list of ideas for using spreadsheets in various subject areas. Teachers in Rialto can access online tutorials to learn how to use spreadsheets. And, if you have used spreadsheets in your class, please add a comment to this post to share your idea!

 

Data is everywhere and impacts every field of work. Are your students learning data skills? Get started with spreadsheets!