GAIN - Sheets

While most people find any kind of spreadsheet as intimidating and scary, I hit them head on, despite how much I hate them. For the past year and a half I have been working as an accounting assistant and the main thing I have learned in my time as an accountant is that there is a spreadsheet for anything, and accountants will find any reason to make a spreadsheet....and I really do mean ANY reason. I once made a spreadsheet to analyze a spreadsheet I made. Now that we have all simultaneously cringed together at THAT thought, I can move on.

Using Google Sheets is a lot like using its Microsoft counterpart, Microsoft Excel. The basic appearance of the spreadsheet is very similar to that of Excel. There are options at the top of the page, for editing, and the columns and rows are numbered and lettered. The part that I like the best about Sheets is the simplicity of it. While I have been using Excel for quite a while, I will admit that I used shortcuts that probably aren't the best to get the results that I needed, especially if I was printing and no one would see my formulas. However, after a few short tutorial videos, I was able to make formulas on Sheets that I was never able to do with Excel. To me, I think this is the best way to enter students, and even adults who have never used Excel, into the spreadsheet world.

Being a teacher, the best reason to use this application is for the grade book. Teachers are expected to pull up their student's grades at any given moment for where they are at that given time. There are ways that we can build spreadsheets that will automatically update the grade as you enter in grades. I built a hypothetical grade book that you can see by clicking here. As you can see, I have created a tab for the average, the weighted average, and what letter grade that average would translate out to. My grade book is completed for the semester, so I have already entered in the letter grade. However, if I wanted to use this grade book throughout the whole semester, I could create the formulas at the beginning and they would update as assignments were completed. This way, if a parent calls at any time demanding their child's grade, I can pull it up from any computer since it is on the cloud and be able to discuss the grade. There is also a way to add comments to a single particular cell, which would be incredibly helpful, especially for when there is a zero on an assignment, you can put a little reminder to yourself about the situation, or even for attendance.

Aside from teacher use, this app has many possibilities for students to use as well. There is a lot of math involved in spreadsheets, and with Google Sheets, there is the possibility of manipulating the data to make charts and graphs. According to Graham in Google Apps Meets Common Core, "Using Google Spreadsheets to integrate mathematics into other classes is important for learning about decision making." (p. 92). While some might say that spreadsheets is doing the math for the students, it is actually helping them to expand on their already acquired math skills, to manipulate and create ways of explaining their math. These functions meet many common core standards, while giving them the knowledge they need to be successful in their college and career life.