Reflection on Spreadsheets and Databases

Since I missed class last night, I looked through some of the databases and spreadsheets provided on Angel in order to gain a better understanding of how to use them effectively in my classroom. I looked at a lot of the databases that were focused on history topics, like the Explorer one , the Revoltutionary war one, and the Civil War one. I found it really cool once I started to manipulate the databases by sorting them according to different characteristics. For example, you could filter the Explorer database by country of origin, or by reasons why they explored. I think this would be good for studying or even for organizing information. I actually do a chart very similar to the Revolutionary war database with my kids. But, using technology to do it would add a lot more potential to that chart. The speed in which you can group, sort, and filter is really amazing. And having the kids research, make their own categories, and manipulate this type of database is really reaching those "higher-level" thinking skills that we all strive to hit, as educators.

I didn't really like any of the spreadsheets I looked at, and I looked at most of them. I think maybe because the examples were mostly math-oriented. It was difficult for me to see how I could use these in my social studies classroom. Simply put, I could use them to produce graphs, which I do now. For example, we as a class recently made charts representing our ancestors country of origin and then made conclusions about immigration in the U.S. If that is what spreadsheets should be used for, then I am already doing it. But, I didn't know if I was missing something and that there is more to these spreadsheets than what I was seeing.

Overall, the databases really opened my eyes to the possibilities of using them in a classroom. I'm definitely going to use them as I get into more difficult topics, or topics that have a lot of information that comes with them, because I think using databases are a great way to organize information and visualize the information as well.