Spreadsheets can be used strategically to connect the visual and the symbolic. For example, students can apply elements of color and manipulate types of presentation format spreadsheets as an aide to visualizing principles of multiplication, division, fractions, percents, and decimals. Spreadsheets have an advantage of engaging students immediately because they have a game-like quality and are more novel than traditional schoolwork. In the service of helping students master problem-solving skills, spreadsheets can model or provide a visual representation of the problem and crunch the calculations. With spreadsheet applications, students, like Mike, who are turned off by tedious calculations and who need multiple representations of data, can now focus their attention on understanding the mathematical operations.
Spreadsheet software is readily available.
For many teachers, the issue becomes one of securing the hardware to run it. Even with only one computer in the classroom, Woodward has found that teachers can still use the approach. His solution is an LCD panel connected to a computer and overhead projector. Teachers plan their lessons to be delivered with the entire group. During instruction, students analyze the data and ask questions of it.