Google Shared Spreadsheets

In class today, my students accessed a Google shared spreadsheet that I set up for our What's for lunch? data collection. Each day this week different students are taking photos of four lunches of their classmates. Today I partnered them up to help each other with the data entry.

After teaching the class how to log in and access the spreadsheets - they began entering data. The student were completely engaged in the activity. They loved the fact that after everytime you entered a piece of data into the cell - the program automatically saved and updated everyone's page.

I observed:

• Students helping each other insert rows in the spreadsheet
  
• Students searching and finding nutrional data about food items
• Comments like: "This is so cool", "this is amazing".
• Students asking each other where they found their information.
  
• Students actively working on the assignment for over 40 minutes.

The novelty of the shared spreadsheet engaged the students in the activity and they completed most of the data entry during the class period. One student commented that she was going to finish up from home (another benefit of Google).

I was pleasantly surprised with their enthusiasm.