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The week of September 8-12, 2003, our class used data gathered from a survey to make a bar graph. While this may sound like a normal activity for a third grade class, we used laptop computers to collect, add up, and graph the data.
We started with a vote. What did we want to find out? We decided on two questions: What shoes are you wearing now? What is your favorite toy? Ms. Gregory wrote a letter to the other classes, which we proofread. Then we selected the classes we wanted to participate. We printed copies of the letter and delivered them to classes in first through fifth grade.
Then Friday came. We were excited to be using the computers, and we all grinned when Mrs. Hummel, our librarian wheeled the cart into our classroom. We took the data from the responses we received and put it into Excel in a chart that looked like this. The neat part was that we didn't have to add all those numbers. The computer did it for us!
Once we had all of our data organized, we gathered around one of the big computers where Ms. Gregory was working. She showed us that the computer makes graphs, too. (Our little computers don't have enough space to do that.) We made a graph of the shoes people were wearing. Then we did the graph for favorite toys.