Meeting Overview

Students are introduced to the purpose of spreadsheets and learn how Microsoft Excel and Google Sheets are organized.

Learning Objectives

By the end of the meeting, students should be able to:

• Explain common personal and workplace uses for spreadsheets
• Identify workbooks, worksheets, rows, columns, cells, and ranges
• Navigate the Excel and Google Sheets interfaces
• Select and enter information into cells
• Create, rename, save, and reopen a spreadsheet file

Topics

• What spreadsheets are and how businesses use them
• Microsoft Excel compared with Google Sheets
• Workbook and worksheet terminology
• Rows, columns, cells, and cell addresses
• The ribbon, menus, toolbar, formula bar, and sheet tabs
• Creating and saving a new file
• Local storage compared with cloud storage

Guided Activity

Students create a simple contact list containing:

• First name
• Last name
• Phone number
• Email address
• Company or organization

Independent Practice

Students add at least ten sample contacts and practice:

• Selecting cells and ranges
• Editing cell contents
• Moving between cells
• Renaming the worksheet
• Saving the file with a clear filename

Assignment

Create a personal or professional contact directory with at least 15 entries.