Technology Standards - Communications

This 4th and final blog for Technology Standards is about Communication. The TEKS I chose 10c - students will be able to use data collected in spreadsheets to produce graphs and charts for information or presentations.

I discovered two interesting web sites that not only give examples and instructions for this individual task but many others as well.

The first site is www.ehow.com/how_9698_create-bar-graph.html. eHow is a site that gives a vast amount of instruction on just about anything from food to weddings and everything in between. The slogan on the site is "How To Do Just About Everything". The particular article that I read gave step-by-step instructions for creating a spreadsheet in excel and using the data to create the graph of your choice. This would be beneficial if a student was doing a presentation about weather trends. If the student put the data on high/low temperatures in a an excel document over a period of time, they could use this data to create different graphs to show trends in the weather. This is just one example of how a spreadsheet could be used to store data and then turn it into a table or graph.

The second site I found is www.internet4classrooms.com/excel_creat_chart.htm. This site also lists steps in creating graphs from an excel spreadsheet. It goes a step further by using pictures to show what you should be looking for on your screen - the pages and menus from excel itself uploaded into the instructions! How much easier this makes it for some students! This is extremely important to some students as well as teachers because a student could go by this information to make sure they are doing things right. The teacher is left to tend to other students who are having trouble doing other things because he/she does not have to check and make sure the student is on the right page or doing the right thing. This site also has an abundance of information that can be used to do other things as well as what I described.
I think both of these web sites are worthy of being added to your 'favorites.' I have added them to mine and will definitely be visiting them many more times.