Spreadsheets make it very easy to switch axes and add graphs. They enable students to play with what may have been difficult and abstract concepts like the inverse of a function. You may want to approach the inverse of a function by challenging students to fill in a table of values with a rule that creates a mirror of that function. So you can approach the inverse of a function either as the interchange of axes or as a symmetry issue. Either one works well on spreadsheets.
Category: Labs
Rule of 72
The rule of 72 is an old banker’s rule of thumb to find out how long it will take to double your money at different interest rates. Financial literacy has become an increasingly important topic for K-12 education and we believe spreadsheets and headmath or mental estimation should be central to it. Rule of 72 combines both and gets students calculating compound interest. They can also see how expensive high credit card interest rates can be to them.
Peter’s Taxi
There are a wide variety of financial literacy problems. This is the kind of problem that appears on many tests. It does not ask you directly to find the cost of a taxi ride which includes both a fixed and variable amount. See if you can use this Lab to make this problem and problems like it easy for you to solve.
Place Value: Thousands
We extend the place value generator to 100’s of thousands to show you how the pattern of 1’s, 10’s, 100’s, continues to 1,000’s, 10,000’s, 100,000’s. Enter numbers and watch the expanded and compact forms of place value change. Pay special attention to using text units and take a look at the rule we used to add those units to the number while letting the number change.
Place Value: Decimals
We take our place value generator to decimals to help students see the simplicity of the place value pattern going right as well as left.