Gone are the days when a teacher has to keep a Class Record Book in paperback, religiously writing each score or mark in tiny squares in red ink if a failing one. With the advent of spreadsheets like Excel, teachers are saved from such thing-of-the-past eye-boggling record keeping.
Excel basically does two things: calculation and data analysis. The right formula on a cell that computes the data on some referenced cells does the trick. With the right working formula in place, you don’t have to repeat the calculations every time a value on a particular referenced cell is changed. Excel does it automatically.
Sorting scores is one way a teacher can analyze the data. Do you want to see who got the higher score down to the lowest one in a particular quiz? You can do that in a few clicks with Excel.
Another advantage of Excel is that it has almost inexhaustible number of cells. My high school teachers’ record booklets didn’t last for two years. One who gave too many quizzes had to buy a new one shortly after the middle of the school year.
Trivia from Answers.com: In Microsoft office 2003, there are 16,777,216 cells. There are 256 columns (across) and 65,536 rows (down). 256 x 65536 = 16,777,216 . In Microsoft Office 2007 there are 16,384 columns and 1,048,576 rows. 16,384 x 1,048,576 = 17,179,869,184 cells.
Imagine that.
Well, I guess even Bill Gates himself hasn’t used up ALL of those cells in one spreadsheet for a single legitimate task. Prove me wrong.
Thanks to some classmates who knew better and were willing to educate others.
Here’s a video tutorial about one very important function of Excel, the VLOOKUP. I just hope the instructional media department of AIIAS will come up with its own sets of video tutorials.
For now, this will suffice.
Here’s the 143-page Excel 2007 Is Fun! eBook by Michael Girvin.
Don’t forget to check out the final page–a list of keyboard shortcuts all in one neat page!
