Microsoft Excel: A Useful Tool for Teachers

My prior experience in using Microsoft Excel has been entering simple data and evaluating prepared results. I had also been informed of the effectiveness of Excel in developing, calculating and maintaining data, in general. However, I had not experienced the extent of which this program could be useful for teachers—especially in terms of developing gradebooks, for example.

Excel is among the most popular productivity software programs in the market. It is, more specifically, a spreadsheet software program which allows organizing numeric data in rows and columns (Shelly, Gunter, & Gunter, 2010). In general, the productivity software programs are “designed to make people more effective and efficient while performing daily activities,” (Shelly et al., 2010, p. 144) among which spreadsheet programs and more specifically excel are widely used.

Given that I had mostly used programs such as Bloackbud and RenWeb (provided by the schools) to manage students’ overall data, grades, etc., I had hardly required the need to use Excel. Moreover, in case of some limited requirements and needs, I had used Microsoft Word—mainly a words processing software—in the past. I must confess that during the hands-on exercise—developing, editing, and modifying students’ numeric data, i.e., gradebook—I was both surprised and challenged by the program’s potentials, procedures, and results.

I was pleasantly surprised to experience Excel’s capability to help me, as a teacher, to calculate grades and provide data exactly in the format which I would want it to be. I also found the program challenging especially in terms of determining the appropriate formulas, learning their proper syntax, and applying them to each set of data. Moreover, I must admit that initially, I was somewhat overwhelmed by the complexity of the program.

To overcome this challenge—and accomplish the necessary steps in the hands-on exercise—, I used few online tutorial lessons on Excel which proved to be quite helpful. In fact, I have now become very interested in the program, and plan to allocate an appropriate time for learn it more comprehensively.

Reference

Shelly, G. B., Gunter, G. A., Gunter, R. E. (2010). Integrating technology and digital media in the classroom. (6th ed.). Boston: Course Technology.