5th Assignment- Interactive Grade Book Using Excel

Investigate: I found most of my information from Excel help and the website (http://www.internet4classrooms.com/excel_grade.htm) and this source was very useful but it didnt give me all the information I needed. I got part of the imformation for Excel help. With Excel help that was the part that helped me make the gradebook interactive. This assignment is very useful to teachers around the world because it makes it easier to organize the grades of each of the students, find averages, and find the total grade for the quarter or maybe year that the student deserves. When investigating I was asked to look for information on how to make the gradebook and I wanted to know how, especially, to make it interavtive so that the final grade depends on tthe other averages. My guiding question was...How do you make an interactivce grade book using Excel?

Design: To make the basic design of my grade book I just followed the directions of the website but to give it a personal touch I made each column in different shades of purple.

Plan:

ENTER DATA
To make a spreadsheet of students' grades:

1. I opened a new spreadsheet: Click Microsoft Excel on my desktop or in the Start menu. (You also might find Excel in Start>Programs>Microsoft Office>Microsoft Excel.)
2. The new spreadsheet is made up of many small squares; those squares are called cells. The cells are arranged in columns across the top of the spreadsheet (A, B, C…) and in rows down the left side of the spreadsheet (1, 2, 3…). The top left cell in the spreadsheet is cell A1.
3. I clicked in cell A1 and typed Names. Then I hit Enter
4. I then clicked in cell A2, typed a student's name, and then I hit Enter.
5. In cell A3, I typed another student's name, and hit Enter. I continue down the page until all 14 students' names were entered.
6. I clicked in cell B1 and type a name for the assignment I was recording, (vocabulary test). Hit Enter.
7. In cell B2, I typed the first student's grade and I hit Enter.
8. In cell B3, I typed the second student's grade and I hit Enter.
9. Continue down the page until all students' grades are recorded.
10. I clicked in C1 and typed the name for the other assignment whose scores I was recording, (Marketing Test). I then hit Enter.
11. In cell C2, I typed the first student's grade on the Marketing Test and then hit Enter.
12. In cell C3, typed the second student's grade on the Marketing Test and then I hit Enter.
13. Continue down the page until all grades are recorded.
14. Next I found the average for these two grades for each student.

USE A FORMULA
To average each student's grades:

1. Click File in the Excel menu bar and choose Save. Open the folder in which you want to save your file. Type a name for the file in the File Name blank. Click Save.
2. Click in cell D1 and type Current Average. (Don't worry if the words "bleed" into cell E1; just double click the line between the letter D and the letter E at the top of the spreadsheet and the column will automatically resize!)
3. Click in cell D2 and type =(B2+C2)/2. Hit Enter. The first student's average grade. Why? The formula =(B2+C2)/2 told Excel to add the numbers in cells B2 and C2 and then divide the sum by 2.)
4. Click in cell D2. Hold down the mouse button to highlight the rest of the students' grades. Release the mouse button.
5. Click Edit and choose Fill and Fill Down. (You don't have to retype the formula.) An average of each student's grades now should appear.

I did this for each of the students and I found averages for each of the different types of assessments: Tests, Participation and Projects. So I got three different averages. I then multiplied the average by how much percent of the total grade each kind of assessment was worth. Tests were worth 40%, Participation was worth 10%, and projects were worth 50%. For example on the Marketing test I multiplied the average 93 by 0.4 to get the percent because tests were worth 40%. I did the same method for each of the three kinds of assessments. For Participation I got the grades for homework and quarter participation found the average and multiplied that average by 0.1 because participation was worth 10%. I then found the grades for projects, found the average and then I multiplied this average by 0.5 because projects were worth 50%. I put all of the averages in different columns that correspond with which type of assessment they are related to. I also did that with the percentages.

Once I had found all the percentages I made a new column at the end (Column L) and I added all the percentages together to get the class grade. I called this column class grade. The formula I used was (=E2+I2+K2). This means that u added the percent in column E, the percentage in column I, and the percentage in column K. Then I figured out how to find out what the letter grade for the percentage was. To do so I went to Excel Help. It gave me an example of the formula to use. I copied it but I substituted the grades with my percentage grades and I put in the letter grades this percentage grade would be worth. This was the formula I used: =LOOKUP(L2,{94.5,98.45,80.15,85.35,87.5,86.55,94,88,98.6,87.45,80.75,64.6,88.7,94.95},{"A",
"A+","B-","B","B+","B+","A","B+","A+","B+","B-","D","B+","A"}). I did this for all the students but this was in column N that was named final grade because in column M it was the basic grade with minus and plus letter grades but in column N it had the plus and the minus'. For example, in column M the grade would be an A but in column N the grade would become and A+.

Conclusion:

I found this assignment very difficult. It was hard for me to find the information I needed because I didn’t understand the instructions very well because of the language used. A lot of the times I just copied the formulas but I didn’t really understand them. It took me a long time to really understand how to do it and I had to ask for some help. This was something that I had never done before so many techniques were new to me. The solutions to most of my problems with this project came from me looking in Excel help and trying many different things to find and answer. I don’t think that I will be using these techniques very much in the future but it is useful to know.

This assignment was assessed with MYP criteria.