Google Spreadsheets Group Assignment

Just like the other programs in Google documents, Google Spreadsheets provides solid alternative to its Microsoft counterpart while adding the functionality of being able to share your spreadsheet with anyone else with a Gmail account. I can see myself utilizing Google Spreadsheets in several ways, including uploading and maintaining grades, creating unique classroom projects, and sharing the most up to date classroom data with students and parents.

·         Uploading and maintaining grades- Google Spreadsheets provides an advantage to other spreadsheet programs in that anything I enter into the spreadsheet will instantly be accessible from any computer, so student grades can be viewed and edited from home, school, or a smartphone. Google Spreadsheets also eliminates the necessity of back-up.

·         Unique classroom projects- I can imagine setting up a math project that spands several classrooms, and is updated simultaneously in real-time by all the classrooms involved.

·         Sharing up to date classroom data with students and parents- I would set up a unique spreadsheet for each student that would include grades and any comments that I have on their assignments.

While I do have some experience with excel, I did experience somewhat of a learning curve in Google Spreadsheets because the menus are quite a bit different than what I am used to in Excel 2007; they remind me more of the menus in previous versions of Excel. Besides the basic functions of AVG, MIN, and MAX, the more complicated functions weren’t as easy to access and I missed some of the cell formatting templates that are available in Excel 2007.

My main contribution to the group was my previous knowledge of excel. Our final spreadsheet is here,  and my group's reflections on the project are here.