Spreadsheets

I want to give some thanks to Bob Frankston and Dan Bricklin for designing the first spreadsheet package, Visicalc, that was released for the Apple II in 1979.

"VisiCalc took 20 hours of work per week for some people and turned it out in 15 minutes and let them become much more creative." - Dan Bricklin

I use spreadsheets for almost everything in my work. I have an MS Excel Lesson Planner that uses vlookups and VBscript to allow me to efficiently and effectively plan my lessons and order my resources from my lab tech; she is shred into my planner as I have it saved in DropBox. I use a gamified social markbook with my students that is built in Google Sheets; it records everything about my students and functions as a database pulling in data from several other sheets generated from Google Forms...and grades the form responses!
Student test and assessment performances are recorded in a master spreadsheet. Spreadsheets are used to import data and reports into our LMS. Data from datalogging activities are analysed by the students. Students plot data from investigations into charts win GSheets and MS Excel. Exam performance practice is recorded in shared GSheets by the students. Historical climate data and weather data is recorded and charted in spreadsheets.
The automaticity that can be built into Google Sheets using Google Apps Script takes it to another level. My markbook emails my students to congratulate them on top effort! The ability to collaborate on GSheets has allowed me to guide students in real time in constructing the best table structure of their results when at home.

What is the relative advantage of spreadsheets? It is hard to imagine not having the functionality of spreadsheets at our fingertips, they simply make long and difficult tasks so much faster and simpler. So thank you Bob and Dan for Visicalc which became Lotus 1-2-3, which led to MS Excel and now GSheets; you saved millions of people millions of hours of work!

My spreadsheets in learning settings