I love spreadsheets. They have been a very important part of both my academic and personal life for several years. My dad started working with me on spreadsheets (mostly Microsoft Excel) when I was in high school. Since then I have been using it to keep track of my grades and my family's budget. This practice gradesheet was comfortable for me because I have done it before. When college semesters drew to a close, I used spreadsheets to figure out where I was and what grades I needed to achieve on the final exam to attain a certain final grade. For example, if I had an 88 through 80% of the class, I knew I had to get 100% on the final exam to get an A- 90 in the class. By calculating my needs, I could decide which classes on which to spend the most time studying before the final. Though I didn't keep a budget well in college, I have been using the spreadsheets regularly to make sure my wife and I don't overspend our budget.
Google Spreadsheets functions just about the same as Excel has in my experience. There were a few small things I couldn't figure out and didn't see a tutorial video for. One of them was the ability to shrink or widen the cells in a large group. In Excel, highlighting any multiple columns or rows and then changing the size of one changes all of the highlighted ones.
Google Spreadsheets will fit perfectly with CCSS. Where I was concerned over the remembered spell checking might become a crutch, the spreadsheet is a tool that can help reinforce the math requirements. Before a student can use all of the function features, they have to know the equations that they learn in class and know which cells or numbers should be placed in each function. I was a little skeptical of the need for collaboration on spreadsheets but reading about the charts, graphs, and statistics that can be used as evidence in history and science changed my mind. Besides its great usefulness in personal records, collaboration with spreadsheets will benefit students of all ages.
https://docs.google.com/spreadsheet/ccc?key=0AmOyKnkfSeGPdEZaLTZaQ3B0S3luZkxzVXp4aGdXQmc#gid=0
Excellent!
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