My hands-on spreadsheet experience!

Well, I must admit, I am not very proficient in spreadsheet use.  The few times I have attempted to use Excel, I have given up, gotten my calculator out and just added the data myself!  I have mixed emotions about spreadsheet use.  In theory, I know it is supposed to simplify life.  However, I struggle to figure out how to set up the formulas and make it all work correctly.  Then, I spend a bunch of time double checking the spreadsheet's work to make sure I have put the right formulas in.  I know this is just a beginners issue that I need to work out but up until now, I have had minimal use for a spreadsheet, and, as I said, the data that I do keep on it, I just calculate for myself.

That said, I did find this assignment useful.  It forced me to sit down, listen to all the atomic learning lessons about spreadsheets and to dive in and figure out how to use it.  Now, I can think of a couple of ways I can incorporate it into the bookkeeping aspect of my transcription business.  So, I guess I can say, "I learned quite a bit in the embarrassing number of hours I spent on this project!!"

Okay, so on a more formal note, here are some of the things I learned:

• How to set up formulas.  I now have a better grasp on how to write the formulas so that they work. When we started the project, I had no clue how to weight the different assignments.  After some research, and a bit of help from a friend, I now know how to make that happen.
• Formatting.  I had seen fill-color option and boxes used on spreadsheets before, but never taken the time to color code and organize the data.  
• Settings. The tutorials helped explain the importance of setting up your information under the settings tab.  For example, if you are working in currency, you can set the currency tab to default to "United States" and the program will know that you are working in dollars.  That is handy if you are working with collaborators who may not be working with the same currency.  It makes the conversions easier between international collaborations. The time zone setting can also be of benefit for collaborative settings in which collaborators are in different time zones.  For example, if there is a deadline that is to be met, having the time zones coordinated can be of great benefit. 
• Deleting.  If you delete a document from your GoogleDrive page and have synchronized with your desktop, that document will remain on your desktop, possibly in the trash folder, but if down the road you change your mind and need that document, there is a place it can be found.  I particularly like this feature of GoogleDrive because sometimes you want to clean the space that you are working from frequently but it is comforting to know that your document is floating out there somewhere-in this case, your desktop-just in case you change you mind about needing it. 
• Importing.  I learned that you can import documents from Excel.  In fact, in order to double check my work, I used both Google Spreadsheets and Excel.  I imported a portion of my work in attempt to learn a little bit more about both programs. 
• Organizing.  You documents can be organized into folders for easy access. 
• Charts.  I also found the feature to create charts to be very enticing.  With just the click of a button, your spreadsheet data can be converted to a chart.  
• Comments.  I found this to be a nice feature too.  On the attendance/discussion grade that we were required to put in our spreadsheet, I added notes to two of the students scores.  In the field of education, this is a nice feature so that you can remember the circumstances surrounding a particular grade when it is not a "black and white" assignment. 

There are a couple of things I still could not figure out that I would be interested in learning.  For example, it is a very simple thing, but I could not figure out how to re-size columns of data without resizing the entire document.  On that same note, I was not able to resize the titles of my boxes either  :(

So, those are just of few of the highlights I found in this lesson.  Overall, the learning experience came from the hand-on nature of the assignment.  I am a visual learner and doing a project such as this was very beneficial to my learning how to use the technology.