That Blue Square Thing

School Trip Activities

I haven't taught Functional ICT for a few years now and was quite surprised to find out that it was still going. Some of the help sheets here were originally written for older versions of Office software, but they should more or less work for more up to date ones.

These activities are an introduction to Functional IT Skills tasks.

They're a good way to judge your skills. If you can do them quickly and easily then you're probably working at Level 2. If you find them a bit trickier then you'll need to work at your skill level before you can pass at Level 2.

There are three activities in this set:

Activity A - a trip costs spreadsheet with a simple graph (this page)

Activity B - a poster to advertise the trip

Activity C - a letter to send home to parents

Introduction:

A school trip to Pleasurewood Hills is being planned. You have been asked to help the student office staff to plan the trip.

There will be 45 Year 10 students going on the trip, with 6 members of staff. The trip will take place on the last Wednesday of the summer term.

Activity A - Trip Costs:

The student office have started to produce a spreadsheet to work out the costs for the trip. They have sent you some information using e-mail.

Task A1

email iconOpen the e-mail from the student office and read it carefully (right click and open in a new tab might be helpful)

Save a copy of the tripcost.xls spreadsheet to your computer

excel icontripcost.xls spreadsheet file (right click and Save As might be useful)

You will need to:

a) Find out the entry cost per person for a pre-paid school trip

b) Complete the spreadsheet using this information and the information in the e-mail from the student office

c) Enter formulae to calculate the cost per item

d) Use a function to calculate the total cost of the trip

e) Use a formula to work out the cost per student for the trip (remember: teachers always go free on school trips!)

Task A2

Once your spreadsheet is complete:

a) Improve the appearance of the spreadsheet to make it suitable for printing

b) Add your name, school and class in the footer of the spreadsheet

c) Save and print your spreadsheet making sure that all the data can be seen. Check that it is fit for purpose.

Task A3

The student office wants to use a chart to show how the cost of the trip is made up.

a) Use the spreadsheet to create a bar or column chart to show the costs of each item. This should be the total cost of each item on the spreadsheet (the travel costs, the entrance costs for students etc...)

b) Make sure your name, school and class are in the footer of the graph sheet

c) Save and print your chart. Check that it is fit for purpose.

Task A4

a) Display the formulae you have used to produce your sheet

b) Print the formulae view. You do not need to save the spreadsheet in this view.

PDF icon Download a PDF version of the trip costs tasks. You can take this file and print it if you need to (right click and Save As)

> Go on to Activity B - a poster to advertise the trip