Submitted by Jim Moulton (not verified) on June 25, 2006 - 02:00.
Ron - When I am doing a residency and find myself working with disengaged middle school students in a 1:1 school, I often use the term "cheat" openly. I show them how to use a spreadsheet to build their own calculators.
"OK, I am going to show you how to cheat," I begin, guaranteeing that I get their attention. "I'm gonna' show you how to build a calculator that will give you the area of any rectangle - it'll do some of your homework for you. Who knows the formula for the area of a rectangle? Come on... if you don't know the formula, then we can't build this thing... Come on... some one has to know it..."
Then I head to the board, use markers and we "remember" it... And then it is on to the spreadsheet where we build the calculator, and hey, if we can build that, then we can build one for a triangle, but, "...we have to know the formula..."
In a short time I have the kids who show us time and again that they, "don't care," who far too often are found bunched up in the low groups in a school that tracks, using and understanding formulae like =product(a2,b2) and =product(e2,f2)/2 and =product(3.14,g1,g1).
And before they know it, we can begin to create the mother of all spreadsheets - the one that allows a diner to navigate and, dare I say, master, the oftentimes bizarre pricing structure of one of my daughter's favorite restaurants - Pizza Hut. At the Hut a medium pizza may be on special, but the large is buy one get one free, and smalls are 2 for $8.99... Arrgghhh! What is a shopper to do???
But soon the kids and I are figuring it out and taking charge of our ordering by simply finding out how many square inches of pie we are getting for how many cents and then dividing to get the all important PpSIoP(price per square inch of pizza). And hey, even I, with the help of a spreadsheet, can figure that one out!
Ron - When I am doing a
Submitted by Jim Moulton (not verified) on June 25, 2006 - 02:00.
Ron - When I am doing a residency and find myself working with disengaged middle school students in a 1:1 school, I often use the term "cheat" openly. I show them how to use a spreadsheet to build their own calculators.
"OK, I am going to show you how to cheat," I begin, guaranteeing that I get their attention. "I'm gonna' show you how to build a calculator that will give you the area of any rectangle - it'll do some of your homework for you. Who knows the formula for the area of a rectangle? Come on... if you don't know the formula, then we can't build this thing... Come on... some one has to know it..."
Then I head to the board, use markers and we "remember" it... And then it is on to the spreadsheet where we build the calculator, and hey, if we can build that, then we can build one for a triangle, but, "...we have to know the formula..."
In a short time I have the kids who show us time and again that they, "don't care," who far too often are found bunched up in the low groups in a school that tracks, using and understanding formulae like =product(a2,b2) and =product(e2,f2)/2 and =product(3.14,g1,g1).
And before they know it, we can begin to create the mother of all spreadsheets - the one that allows a diner to navigate and, dare I say, master, the oftentimes bizarre pricing structure of one of my daughter's favorite restaurants - Pizza Hut. At the Hut a medium pizza may be on special, but the large is buy one get one free, and smalls are 2 for $8.99... Arrgghhh! What is a shopper to do???
But soon the kids and I are figuring it out and taking charge of our ordering by simply finding out how many square inches of pie we are getting for how many cents and then dividing to get the all important PpSIoP(price per square inch of pizza). And hey, even I, with the help of a spreadsheet, can figure that one out!
Cheat on, eh? ;-}