1. How much instruction did you give the students on how
to use a spreadsheet?
We did use spreadsheets in our math curriculum
when we collected information. So, the kids were familiar with the
cells. They knew what a cell was. They knew how to click on a cell
and put information into that cell. When we went to the money spreadsheet,
I spent about an hour with the kids going over each line item and
teaching them where they had to put each individual entry and then
basically because the wonder of a spreadsheet is it does it for
you—the mathematical calculations if you put in the correct
formula—once the kids understood what line item went where,
they were able to use it quite quickly with about an hour of instruction
on "this is where this goes" and that of sort of thing.
