Let’s discuss graphing tools. I have used excel with my students many times and they pick it up lots faster than adults. A kid friendly tool for creating graphs is http://nces.ed.gov/nceskids/ .The National Center for Educational Statistics has a kids site that allows teachers and students to use math in fun and educational ways. The site includes This Day In History, Mind Benders (jokes and riddles), polls, data snapshots, and word of the day. Additionally they have tabs for tools, graphs, dare to compare, grab bag, and chances. Tools brings up search engines for schools. Dare to Compare allows students to take quizzes to take to compare with students around the world. Grab Bag has multiple choices for games and learning. Chances is a probability dice game.
Today I want to focus on the Graphing tab of the site. Students can select bar, line, area, pie, or XY graphs. Once you select the type of graph, you the direction, shape, and style. Next, you add the data and labels. Then, you can preview the graph. If it is correct and to their liking they can print and save the graph. This easy way to graph will allow students to create, read, and understand graphs.
A few other websites for graphing:
http://www.kidsmathgamesonline.com/numbers/mathdata.html
http://www.cookie.com/kids/games/graph-and-tally.html
http://www.chartgo.com/
As with all tech items, please play with the sites before you try to use them with students. My kids will be studying baseball math soon and we will use the chart maker to show batting averages and scores. Please take a moment to look over the websites and comment on how you can use this tool in your class.