Excel Workshop for Teachers Debuts Excel is Awesome!

By Janet Caughlin, Workshop Books Published: 01/11/2001

I’ve used spreadsheets forever, but until I wrote Excel Workshop for Teachers--which has just been published by Tom Snyder Productions--and really got to know Excel, I had no idea how truly incredible it is!             " I had the best time writing this book! You won’t believe how cool Excel is!"                       Features in Excel such as AutoFill and "linking" make it so easy to create spreadsheets (Excel calls them worksheets), you won’t believe it! You and the kids can make a chart with only a few clicks, and if you change your mind, it’s easy to edit your work. Social Studies and business teachers will love the map feature. Using it, they can show sales trends or population statistics in a graphic way that kids can understand. You can make worksheets look incredibly professional by inserting color, WordArt, clip art, and Internet pictures. If you use Excel 2001, you can even insert movies (boy can that motivate kids!) I had always thought of spreadsheets as a way to crunch numbers and make charts. I was amazed at the variety of ways teachers use Excel. They create report cards, distance learning schedules, board games, grids and rubrics. You'll see that, Gary Schlapfer, one of the many teachers whose ideas and lessons I present in the book, uses Excel to organize his entire Florida aerospace trip in one workbook. He created an address book, graphic airplane, bus, and hotel assignment sheets, and a calling tree to make finding information a snap. Ruth Follen uses Excel to create worksheet for her PE students. Teachers also use Excel to make gradebooks of course, and you'll see they add an incredible variety of features. Jackie Howard assigns daily grades, then automatically calculates quarter and year-end grades. Gary Schlapfer’s gradebook includes an interactive chart that shows the averages for the class and changes whenever a grade is added. It also includes seating charts and project assignment lists. Hugh Stoddard’s gradebook allows him to excuse a student from an assignment, then calculates the average without that grade. They’re all on the CD-ROM that comes with the book, so I hope you'll take a look. I’m proud of this book, let me know what you think of it, OK?

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