Why Teach Spreadsheets?
Terry Freedman, Educational ICT ConsultantI often read blogs or articles which allude to the exciting nature of the possibilities of using video and podcasting in the curriculum, as opposed to spreadsheets. I think this raises a number of issues:
Firstly, why even bother to teach spreadsheets given the apparently more exciting possibilities offered by video and so on?
Secondly, is it true to say that spreadsheets are, in their very nature, boring?
Thirdly, even if they are, does it matter?
Why teach spreadsheets?
The short answer is that you don't have to. According to England and Wales' National Curriculum Programme of Study for ICT, you have to teach modelling and sequencing. You could certainly teach the latter through a curriculum centred on podcasting and other media. You could probably teach modelling too, but it would need to be thought through very carefully in order to avoid the danger of it's becoming too superficial.
Spreadsheets, however, are ideally suited to the teaching of modelling because that's exactly what they're designed to do. If you take the basic modelling question as being "What if?", using spreadsheets is, to coin an expression, a no-brainer.
But is it not the case that for spreadsheets to be useful, lots of numbers have to be involved? Well, not necessarily. I read some years ago an article by a teacher who was using spreadsheets in English to demonstrate the progression of a work of literature over time.
If, for example, you take a novel such as The Picture of Dorian Gray, you could plot the number of witticisms per chapter in a spreadsheet and then generate a graph showing how they decline as the book progresses.
Or you could take a work by Shakespeare and plot the number of jokes per scene alongside the number of killings per scene, the instances of dramatic irony per scene and anything else of interest, and then look at the resulting graph.
What that sort of thing will do is illustrate very effectively how the nature of the play or novel changes from start to finish, but it's not the only possibility. At the Online Information conference I attended in 2008 someone showed a screenshot from someone's MA thesis in which the student had used Excel to showcase the different kinds of rhyme in English poetry.
These are good examples of modelling, but you don't have to be quite so avant guard. There are lots of opportunities for modelling of the number-crunching kind, but I'll come on to those in a moment.
Let's not forget sequencing. Contrary to what some people have said, control hasn't so much disappeared from the curriculum as morphed into "sequencing", a much better term because it's more accurately descriptive and also wider in scope:
[Pupils should be able to ... ]use ICT to make things happen by planning, testing and modifying a sequence of instructions, recognising where a group of instructions needs repeating, and automating frequently used processes by constructing efficient procedures that are fit for purpose
That's exactly the kind of thing that spreadsheets are good for, which is why I decided to approach my chapter on sequencing in the latest ICT for Life (for Year 8, ie 13 year olds) through the use of a spreadsheet. It makes use of the IF function, which can be seen as a rudimentary example of sequencing, and macros, which encapsulate both sequencing and automation.
It seems to me that if you're going to decide to teach these skills through, say, video podcasting, you will have a tough time ensuring that the work is demanding enough to meet the criteria of the National Curriculum in a real, as opposed to superficial, sense.
For example, I think that it involves more than deciding on who in the class is doing what, and in what order, and then going out with a pocket camcorder and hoping for the best. You'd need to think of things like editing, which could address both sequencing and modelling, and even issues like background music (which can affect audience reactions and assumptions) as part of the attention to modelling. But, not being an expert in such matters, I think all that sounds more challenging than coming up with a good idea centred on the use of spreadsheet.
Are spreadsheets intrinsically boring?
I think if you regard a spreadsheet as little more than a glorified calculator then you would be hard put to find much of interest there. But there are two sides to the question of whether spreadsheets are boring.
Firstly, it's a matter of functionality. In a fully-featured spreadsheet like Excel, there are all sorts of ways in which you can approach "what if?" questions, from the relatively simple IF function, through conditional formatting and scenarios, to goal-seeking and pivot tables.
Secondly, and more importantly I think, is what you do with them. Over a decade ago I devised a spreadsheet which was quite complex behind the scenes, but easy to use. It was a party planner, and what you had to do was decide how many bottles of fizzy drink and so on you should buy. The rules were that you were not allowed to overspend or underspend (the spreadsheet would alert you if you did), and you had to buy everything on the list.
The starting point
Information is provided in real-time...
... which is just as well!
Obviously very simple, but put the students to work in pairs and discuss their purchases and it starts to take on a life of its own. It is actually quite hard to spend exactly a given amount of money without resorting to desperate measures like buying 200 bags of peanuts and nothing else!
Then you can start to throw in "curved balls", such as:
"Sorry, class, but I've just found out that your dad couldn't work overtime this week, so you can only spend £25 instead of £40." Or:
"Hey, I just found out that some of the people coming along are vegetarian, so make sure you buy something they can eat and drink too."
As a homework exercise beforehand you can ask them to do some research into what sorts of tings people buy for parties, and part of the lesson can involve getting onto the internet to try and find the lowest prices.
So, in a sense, the spreadsheet itself is boring: after all, all the pupils are doing is entering numbers because everything has been set up for them. But they're starting to learn what modelling is, in a way that is interesting to them.
But where this sort of approach really starts to take off is afterwards, when you say, in effect, OK, let's take the lid off and see how this thing works. You can ask the pupils, what do you think is actually happening behind the scenes to give you a message like "Sorry, but you have overspent by £14.16."?
The idea is to get them to understand the logic of what is happening, expressed in ordinary language. Once that's been achieved, you can start to construct a spreadsheet model using syntax that the spreadsheet program will understand.
If your spreadsheet work consists of (and I've seen this) getting the pupils to type in rows and rows of football scores and then find the average score and the highest score, then I agree with you: that is mind-numblingly boring. It's tedious, pointless (why not give them an already-populated spreadsheet?) and mundane.
With older students you can push the boat out a bit further. We're accustomed to spreadsheet models being concerned with business or sports, but how about science fiction for a change?
In The Cold Equations, Tom Godwin posits the idea of a supply spaceship that has almost precisely the right amount of fuel for its return journey, taking into account weight and distance. What happens when the pilot discovers a stowaway on board? I won't spoil the story for you by telling you (read it, especially if part of your job is to discuss moral issues with your students), but what a great starting point for a spreadsheet exercise! Can you construct a simple model showing what happens to fuel consumption when one of the critical factors (weight or distance) goes over a certain limit?
Again, this activity can be enriched by asking the pupils to do research into this area -- not necessarily in the area of space flight, but in the more accessible realm of fuel consumption by cars.
Even if spreadsheet are boring, does it matter?
I thought I'd throw this one in. I do think it matters, up to a point, which is why I wrote the book "Go on: bore 'em: how to make ICT lessons excruciatingly dull". However, I do think there is a danger of falling into the trap of thinking that school has to be entertaining all the time. It's a fact of life that some activities are boring, but possibly necessary.
What springs immediately to my mind is preparing my invoices. I love the work I do, and when I finish one assignment I like to move on to the next. Instead, I have to find time to sort out the paperwork and get an invoice sent off to the client. That's just plain boring as far as I'm concerned. But if I didn't do it, we wouldn't eat!
I'm not suggesting that we try and bore kids as part of their preparation for adult life! But neither do I think we should tear our hair out and rent our clothes if school activities are not always as action-packed and fun-filled as kids would often have us believe they want them to be.
In fact, it's a con on their part, perhaps an inadvertent one. What kids want at school is not necessarily to be entertained, but to be kept interested, and to feel that they're learning something useful. Spreadsheets have the potential to form the basis of activities that help to achieve exactly those goals.
This is an updated version of an article that was first published on 24th December 2008.
Reader Comments (4)
I found this article chimed very strongly with debates I've been having. Without trying to make any particular point I wonder if I can add a few thoughts into the debate?
I love spreadsheets - if I only had one piece of software on a (business) computer then this would be it. They are intrinsicall 'fun' to me. I accept that ths isn't the majority view however and I wonder if this has anything to do with aptitudes, sompeople love sport, art, debate, literature, science etc etc .. I like exploring number. So .... I wonder if there is a way of making modelling more interesting by making it less mathematical?
I wonder if modelling activities are not make more demanding by increasing the logical/mathematical complexity - can we devise ways of increasing the complexity in other ways? (artistic/linguistic/cultural etc).
You mention graphing in your article - this is one example of visualising data - GraphJam as some great ideas for fun that children could have with this rather that the usual 'plot rainfall over a month' type of idea.
I was in a shop recently, their till had broken and was displaying a windows error message - what about a till display ising a spreadsheet? A childs toy?
I liked the ideas associated with literature but I had the feeling that this was still working towards a mathematical analysis - great for those interested in mathematical analysis. Your point of the teacher throwing in additional variables is good - this leads nicely to pupils thinking of aditional ways to improve the realism themselves but made me think if we are unrealistic in our expectations of pupils - and this kind of rounds of the debate. Young pupils can create complex spreadsheet fairly easily - Y7s have no problems with macros in straightforward contexts but they do struggle in abstract concepts like 'variables' and in bringing increasing realism to their work (especially when it's your problem and not theirs) - isn't this the difference between 'spreadsheets' and 'modelling'. Basically - building a spreadsheet is easy - developping the model is complex.
Could it be that sometimes we try to make the spreadsheet more difficult by giving more complex models (both in terms of realism and in terms of mathematical complexity)?
In the earlier years would an option be to make the modelling an interim step to solving a bigger problem and not as an end in itself - after all it probably isn't the model that we're interested in ultimately but what it tells us.
Of course - nice debate but what about some practical ideas for the classroom?
My (current) thinking it to lean more towards spending more time with 'given' models and get pupils to work with these to develop additional concepts - presenting, combining, automating, data handling ... but most of all - problem solving.
The science fiction thought is a rich vein and definite scope that I would have thought. How about history condensed into a 24 hour clock - if we make the year '0' midnight, what 'time' was the battle of hastings? What else can you tell me? Present this in an interesting way .....
What about is 1 byte cost 1p what could you buy with a Kb, Mb Gb etc ...
anyway - there is a lot of room for thinking on this topic ..... When I have the answer I'll let you know :-)
I hope your article prompts many other teachers to think outside the square and use spreadsheets as "mindtools" wherever and whenever they are the best way of introducing topics or encouraging students to develop and enrich their understandings. I too love using the IF function, but it is surprising what you can do with more basic features of spreadsheets.
Recently I gave a Year Four class their first experience in using a spreadsheet program. They had already used other "Windows' programs and had basic mouse skills, so I just showed them how to make spreadsheet cells square-shaped and fill them with colour. Then I set them the task of finding out how many different shapes they could make by joining two, three, four, then five squares together along their sides. Lastly, I had them summarise their results in the form of a table.
About ten minutes into the lesson, one of the boys turned to me with a big grin on his face. "I have never played this [computer] game before!" he told me. It was a great moment of discovery for both of us. He had learnt that spreadsheets could be fun as well as useful. I had gained some further insight into why this could be so.
My young friend had challenged me to see spreadsheets as he saw them. Perhaps spreadsheets are like computer games in that they too can be used as "virtual environments" where you can imagine yourself doing things like exploring ideas and situations and solving problems (particularly those with mathematical and logical solutions). Why should we limit ourselves to thinking of them as just boring "electronic ledgers" as many adults seem to do?
Spreadsheets like other software do have their practical limitations of course. I have to remind myself sometimes that they were invented about thirty years ago.. For all their latest "bells and whistles', they remain software that can be used in basically three ways:
(A) LIke a piece of grid paper e.g. to record and display information
(B) Like a hand-held calculator (Try typing =3+5*4 into a spreadsheet cell) and
(C) Like a simple programming language, e.g. to give your computer a list of instructions to follow.
What teachers do to use spreadsheets to teach lessons and promote student learning within these practical boundaries, however, is largely limited only by their imaginations and their willingness to let their talents for creativity run free..