In the chemistry classes at New Hartford High School such as those taught by Mrs. Melissa Hazard (pictured below working with some of her students), the use of technology has grown to become an important part of understanding and mastering the curriculum. One way this can be seen is how students regularly make use of spreadsheets to show deeper understanding of various scientific laws. For example, in one project proving Boyle’s Law, students must take data they are given, perform several unit conversions and calculations, then graph their results using trendlines to show patterns in what they discover. This activity, which is a reinforcement of lab activities they have already done, gives them opportunity to practice and understand some advanced spreadsheet skills such as building formulas for unit conversion as well as trendline creation. Although familiar with Excel, these are two skills many students are not knowledgeable of. Learning these skills benefits the students not only for other data analysis activities in this class but also for other science classes here at New Hartford where spreadsheets are used in the coursework as well as many future college courses where proficient spreadsheet use will be an expected norm. When asked about what she likes about the spreadsheet activities in the curriculum, Hazard says students enjoy these activities because not only does it gives them a chance to visualize the concepts they've been learning about in class but it also gives them practice in understanding and interpreting charts, which they will need be able to do for the Regents exam at the end of the course. Because of the successful and established use of spreadsheets in the curriculum, Chemistry students, such as those in Hazard’s classes, will likely be some of the first students in the very near future to use Spartan Docs, part of our school’s pilot implementation of Google Apps for Education, to bring their spreadsheets online. Once there, Spartan Docs will allow for access anytime, anyplace using just a web browser rather than an application on a computer like Excel! If your students use spreadsheets in your classroom and might be interested in piloting Spartan Docs in your classroom as well, you should contact the district Tech Team about your project ideas. We are looking for pilot groups now and would love to see how these emerging technologies can be used successfully to improve and increase students learning!