I was recently concerned about an online tutorial for Excel I viewed
recently for a course I'm doing.
I was fortunate when doing a business administration certificate level
course to get the basic back ground information on a number of tools and
tasks used in the work place.
Such as learning how to do book keeping manually so I could have more of an
understanding of how that works before using an of the "everything is done
for you" account keeping software.
My learning of spreadsheets and databases was done using Microsoft software
that was used before the Office suite was born.
The online tutorial of Excel I viewed that other day started off with
showing how to make a page look pretty.
Where as back several years ago I was told that the basic difference between
Spreadsheets and Databases (people often mistake excel as a database tool).
Spreadsheets are used as a "what if" tool.
Databases are a list of information - telephone directory is a database,
software like Access are used to work with electronic databases.
Quite often in my work in recent years, a lot of Excel use is for filling
out forms for various tasks.
Excel is a great tool for designing forms and you may often use very little
or none of the caculating functions.
Teachers of Excel should emphasise the basic purpose of Excel and basically
what spreadsheets are used for.
Instead of showing an example of a finished spreadsheets as an intro they
should work through the various aspects of the application.
For example the Excel documents is known as a book.
Data is entered onto sheets.
Then there's all the stuff about cells, columns, rows, charts and so on.
After having the basic fundamentas of Spreadsheets stamped on their brains.
Students should be taught how to enter basic information, basic calculations
and control how data should appear.
Then they should go furthur into other aspects of Excel such as sourcing
data from other sources and more complex calculations.
My knowledge of Excel may not be brilliant but my original learning of the
Microsoft Works suite and what Spreadhsheets are helped give me a headstart
on the Excel application.

Scott