Microsoft Office Excel and Data Analysis for Beginners :)

Inspired by the theory of Pragmatism which hold the view of how education should be 'learning by doing', the digital technology has the key to this idea. The implementation of the digital technology would promote an active participation from learners, thus enhancing the process of acquiring knowledge. It helps teachers to implement the 21^st century environment in the classroom.

In today’s classroom, I introduced spreadsheet to my form 4 students. Microsoft Office Excel which is very famous for data logging, is a perfect software on plotting the data of the experiment.

The process of facilitating the students using Microsoft Office Excel.

The students are amazed of how changing the data will automatically change the plotted data. They can simply observe the changes of scales and trendlines. I made the template as a preparation for the class. The following is the screenshot of the file:

Templates of plotting data in Microsoft Office Excel

It is convenient for me to use Microsoft Office Excel as changing the data in table will automatically change the plotted data on graph. I managed to show the even scales to the students as the range of the scale changes with the plotted data as well. However, I failed to show the criteria of the best fit line as the trend line plotted on the data only limited to the data range. The trend line or the best fit line does not touch the axis. Nevertheless, teaching is always tricky! I managed to access the students’ understanding when I let them to explore the generated graph. They can identify this problem!

        

The recalling process of criteria in plotting graph before the exploration of their own graphs

Besides, the students are able to compare their graphs to the one that I plotted. They did the exploration based on the given criteria in a group of 5 students. I managed to identify their common mistakes, especially when it comes to drawing the best fit line. I can simply change the data in Microsoft Office excel into their data and show them the correct best fit line should be drawn.

The exploration activity on their graphs. The students need to determine the mistakes and do correction.

The introduction of the technology in my classroom is one of the cross curricular values that can be practiced in teaching. Although the Microsoft Office Excel seems as a simple software, the whole idea of data logging is a new knowledge for my students!

Stay tuned for my next entry on how I shared the template of Microsoft Office Excel to be used by my students :)