Google Spreadsheets

First of all I would just like to say that I love Google Docs. I find it extremely useful and love that I can save any information at any time from any place. The one thing I'm not a big fan of though is the spreadsheet application. I've never had a more difficult time getting things to copy and paste and to be honest I eventually had to go to Excel to get the project done. I think with more practice I could come to like Google Spreadsheets as much as I love Google Docs, but at this period in time I'm just not there yet.

Again I can see a practical use for Google Spreadsheets. I'm not tied down to any one computer and I can access information whenever I want to look at it. For teachers this means they can do some of the work at home. They can look more closely at a students progress throughout a term and make arrangements with a student if they need more help in a paticular area.

Above this post you will have noticed that I have placed a chart with data conveying how a group of students did over the course of five tests. The the chart I generated to shows the growth of these students made. As you can see, the majority of the students made progress in their scores. The majority of them started out with fairly low scores compared to the other students in the class, but by the last test they had made growth toward joining the other students. It is important that as a teacher I am able to see how each student is doing throughout the year. A spreadsheet allows me to see my students data and than graph that data. This will make it easier for me to see which of my students are struggling and need more of my attention and which students don't need more attention when it comes to their test taking abilities.

If you would like to see more data about this class and the students who made growth over the last five tests, please follow the link below to my spreadsheets and graph.

http://spreadsheets.google.com/pub?key=teFBFJjx5w-1dpJiHvwEjCg&single=true&gid=1&output=html