Direct Instruction - Excel formulas

For the career project, I want the students to collect authentic career data to place into Excel so they can organize, analyze, and graph the results of their research.

I quickly checked to see how many students had used Excel before and when I realized that more than 2/3 were not familiar with Excel, I took a class period to stop research and teach a basic lesson in how to write formulas in Excel.

I had the students take 5 minutes to set up a simple spreadsheet that included some data so I could introduce the following functions: SUM, AVERAGE, MIN, MAX, AND COUNT. I felt like these would be the most beneficial when they began analyzing their career data. I purposely decided NOT to use their career data for this lesson because I wanted that experience to be more authentic - but later on during the lesson - I questioned this decision.

I spent most of the period demonstrating how to write a formula in Excel as the students followed along and practiced on their own computers. Most students did a good job of following the directions and I only had to stop one or twice for clarification or demonstration. Students liked learning about some of the time-saving features, like AutoSum and the copy fill handle.

At one point during the lesson I felt like I had regressed back to my old teaching habits of being the "sage on the stage". I am conflicted - on one hand the students were unfamiliar with Excel and needed some instruction to be successful - and on the other hand - I felt like I through out my constructivist methodology by NOT using authentic data and allowing them to figure it out for themselves.

Next week when I have them set up their career spreadsheets I am definitely going to explain to them what resources they have to figure out how to analyze their data and stand back and let them flounder a bit in groups to see what they can do for themselves. I think back to Vygotsky and his Zone of Proximal Development. These kids are pretty bright - and I think I have given them some basic information that will help them in their analysis but I tried not to teach them everything they needed to know - and give them a chance to teach each other.

This "letting go" is a bit harder than I thought it would be.