Excel and Teaching Students to Use the Internet as a Research Tool

I have always been relatively comfortable with excel but never truly applied its usefulness to the classroom. I have thought about creating rosters or grading sheets but never knew I could make them so “pretty” or thought of allowing students to use excel to record their data for experiments. Also seeing that I can compare and turn grades into percentages and averaging assignments will assist me in modifying my teaching and assigned activities. Overall, I see myself using excel for a few different uses in my classroom.

I liked the Teaching Students to Use the Internet as a Research Tool article. Not only will this come in handy when assessing the validity of sites for my research as a student, but also as a teacher presenting or quoting sites, as well as teaching students to look at websites with a more critical eye. Some of the ideas I had not thought of included if a site is a pay site is will usually be worth something, I usually think of pay sites as either really good or spam. Seeing the various databases out there available in specific curriculum areas made me aware that I can and should be using more subject specific search engines. Some sites listed that sounded of interest to me in the future included: ed.net briefs, teachers.net, and U.S. Department of Education. I never knew much about directories, but feel that I learned a little more about them in this article. I did not know they were usually not made without much human intervention. Finally, it is important to look at the author or lack of author. I have always wondered why some sites do not produce or site the author and the article puts it best. If this work is good and reliable why would you not want to take credit for it!?