Following an introduction to spreadsheets by playing battleships, I have created this theme park project for lower senior students in order to build their knowledge, skills and understanding of how spreadsheets can be used in the real world.  The idea behind this project is for students to build on their skills of cell formatting, develop an understanding of how formulae can be used to calculate costs, and learn how to insert pie charts into spreadsheets.

Step 1.

Step 2.

Step 3.

From tab 1 (represented on the first page below), students must use the information contained within the Key Information sheet to design their theme park on the template (found on the second tab).  Once they have finished their design, students need to use the correct formulae to calculate the costs of building their theme park.  Students have a total of $500,000 to spend, and they should update their design as necessary to keep within this budget.  On each of the cost spreadsheets, a pie chart should be included that illustrates the relative costs of each material, and then on the last tab, the pie chart inserted should illustrate the relative spending on each ride, attraction and service.

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Last week our school had its first official Technology Week, which gave teachers and students the opportunity to use new technologies both within their Computing & ICT lessons and across the school curriculum.  As part of this event, I delivered assemblies to highlight the new technologies that we’ve been using, showcase students’ work and award prizes.

This trailer provides a glimpse of what we did during the week.

The following new technologies were used by teachers and students:

1. Dash & Dot – Programmable robots that provide coding challenges for all ages, the video below shows one example of how students have been using this technology.

2. 3D Doodler Pens – These pens rapidly melt and cool plastic, enabling the user to literally draw 3D models.  We used the GooDee 3D Printer Pen model, and our students had great fun building 3D shapes and hipster glasses.

3. Adobe Voice – This iPad app has been used successfully across our school to create digital biographies.  Easy to use, students just record their voiceovers one slide at a time.  During students’ English lessons, they used the app to put together biographies of famous mathematicians and scientists.  The video below shows a couple of examples.  

4. Makey Makeys – Turning anything that conducts electricity into a remote control, these tools have proved to be brilliant for teaching students about electrical circuits.  Students particularly enjoyed creating a remote control out of playdoh to use with Kodu.

5. Picoboards – Circuitboards that contain several sensors (including sound, light and motion), these tools are accessories for Scratch.  Using the picoboards, our students created several programs that respond to the external world.

6. Plickers – A simple teaching tool that collects realtime assessment data of students’ answers to multiple choice questions.  Our maths coordinator used this tool on his smartphone to scan students’ answers to multiple choice questions.  At the end of the quiz, students were able to see their results from the quiz projected on the whiteboard.

7. Osmo Apps – A fantastic accessory for the iPad, these apps help to bridge the digital world with the physical world, providing students with some challenging puzzles.  Tangram was particularly well received by students.

8. Minecraft – Students created virtual worlds, which posed different maths problems.  By creating various digital artefacts in Minecraft like walls, swimming pools and water fountains, the students made signposts with different questions about shapes.

 9. Google Sheets (for collaborative shape investigation) – Making use of the chrome books, students have been able to work in groups of three or four to complete a mini-project with shapes.

10. Augmented Reality – The augmented reality apps have been used a lot by students in all sorts of different ways – for example, to develop vocabulary, learn about space and develop their understanding of shapes.  

11. Purple Mash software (2DIY 3D & 2Design & Make) – Particularly useful for the younger students, these two Purple Mash apps have been brilliant for helping to develop their spatial awareness and understanding of nets & shapes.  

12. 3D Cube Printer – Having designed a 3D badge in Sketchup to mark our Technology Week, we were able to 3D print many of these to award to students for their work with technology. 

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Spreadsheets are an important part of any ICT curriculum.  They can, however, be quite a dull topic for students – unless they’re introduced creatively.  One of the first spreadsheet activities I have got my students doing is to play battleships using spreadsheets.  This is a brilliant way of introducing students of all ages to spreadsheets; in just one session of battleships, they learn how to format cells, locate cell references and navigate the spreadsheet interface.  As shown in the video below, once students have made their battleship templates, the teacher can then proceed to call out cell references in an attempt to destroy the vessels!  As students’ vessels are hit, they must change their colour to black.

For the subsequent lesson, I ask students to make a design of a theme park using spreadsheets.  (I have also adapted this activity to include designs of villages and holiday resorts).  After the students have made their designs, they have to work out the costs of building what they have designed.  In the example of a theme park, this means that students have to enter the appropriate formula to calculate the costs of building different rides, restaurants and other attractions.  Each worksheet becomes gradually more difficult, as students move on to entering additional data into the spreadsheets.  The tasks can then be further differentiated to provide students with a budget and to get them to calculate whether or not they have gone over their budget.  These respurces are ready to be downloaded above.

This is a quick tutorial video I have made for setting up the battleship game: