Week 4 - Using Excel in the Classroom

5 Ways of incorporating excel into classroom curriculum:

1) Excel could be incorporated into the social studies curriculum.  For example, when learning about different battles, students could use a spreadsheet to chart the battles, including where and when they occurred.  This would be a good study technique, for example.  It may help students organize information better and help them remember important dates and events in History. Students could also use graphs to determine how many battles, including percentage, occurred in each state etc.  Spreadsheets could also be used to to record timelines.
2) Excel could be incorporated into math, as well.  One example would be when learning about probability.  For example, students could be broken up into groups and toss a coin to determine the probability of getting heads versus tails.  The data could be recorded in a spreadsheet and formulas could be used to figure out the average, etc.  Graphs could also be used to show a visual image of the percentages. 
3) Another math lesson that could incorporate excel is when learning about area.  Excel would allow the students to see a shape and figure out the area by using the cells.  Each cell could equal one unit.  The students would have to count the cells in the shapes to determine the area.  Students could also create their own shapes with a pre-determined area.  This would be a good exercise for students to practice what they know about area.
4) Excel could also be incorporated into science curriculum.  For example, when learning about global warming, students could graph the data and predict future trends.  Excel spreadsheets could also be used to chart the effect of earthquakes.  Spreadsheets would give students a better understanding of how these concepts work, as well as give them a visual to based the information on.
5)  As for language arts, students could use excel spreadsheets to examine things such as character traits.  Students could list the characters and the traits they posses and compare and contrast the data. 

These activities are some examples I would present.  They offer ideas on how to incorporate excel into each content area.  I believe they are a good starting point and would give other teachers ideas on how to incorporate Excel into their classroom.