Learning and Leading - November 2009

a program. To enable this process of manipulation, computer scientists organize this data in structures known as arrays, lists, trees, tables, stacks, queues and “heaps.” A database, similarly, is an organized collection of data, usually stored as records in tables.

Fortunately, we have access to spreadsheet software such as Microsoft Excel and database management software such as Microsoft Access that could be used to introduce students to the fundamentals of data structures for organization and management. Free or low-cost alternatives of such software are also available.

Spreadsheets can teach students how to organize data in simple, intuitive ways for easy access and retrieval. Children should be encouraged to use spreadsheets often and for a variety of data-organization tasks. For example, students could list and organize websites they visit for a school project or while researching a topic. Have students add keywords or tags to another column in the spreadsheet. They can organize the website data in separate worksheets for different units in a subject so that the organization helps delineate data that doesn’t necessarily belong together while still keeping related materials together. Spreadsheets can also be used for storing and organizing data for planning field trips or events, or for data collected in science or social studies projects. Google Spreadsheets allow several students to work on the same spreadsheet.

Teachers should also use spreadsheets to introduce students to the idea of sorting and ordering data. When does it make sense to sort or order data, and when is unordered data just as useable? Will sorting help future storage and retrieval? If so, how should the data be sorted? Such questions will get students thinking about the basics of organizing data in ways that make manipulation easy.

Students in middle school who have been exposed to spreadsheets could

graduate to databases with a database management tool like Microsoft Access. Through the process of database design, students learn to analyze the information they are working with and identify the underlying dimensions of the content to organize it for meaningful search and retrieval. They learn to identify relationships between different types of data. Through the act of simple database querying, students can bring to bear their knowledge of Boolean logic and constructs such as and, or, and not while getting a sense of how the process of Internet search is conducted.

Teachers can get their students to engage in simple projects with clearly defined goals. A database that helps retrieve children’s books in the library by genre is one example. Such a project would require students to analyze the nature or elements of the data to be organized, design the database, populate the tables with data, and, finally, formulate and run simple queries. Database design also helps students build analytical, critical-thinking, and problem-solving skills.

At a time when we all grapple with a surfeit of data and information, being able to classify and organize it for sense-making as well as easy and intuitive access and retrieval is certainly a skill that children of this Information Age should develop early in school.

All three skills and concepts described above—algorithmic thinking, Boolean logic, and data structures— could be easily integrated into the elementary and middle school math, language arts, social studies, science, and technology curriculum, and would work well to expose students to a few basic ideas of the “science of computing.”

—Shuchi Grover is an educational technologist
with graduate degrees in computer science and
education. An alumnus of Harvard University,
she is currently pursuing a PhD in the Learning
Sciences and Technology Design Program
at Stanford University.

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