Digital Spreadsheets

Students run their own anonymous survey of school life and analyse the answers across ten 60-minute lessons: a survey linked to a spreadsheet, data cleaning with a cleaning log, COUNTIF and AVERAGEIF summaries with absolute references, percentages and colour scales, IF and IFS bands, an XLOOKUP explorer with a drop-down list, pivot tables, honest fully labelled charts and a protected one-screen dashboard. In Lesson 10 students write a findings note with a recommendation and present it in groups of four. Every lesson includes sample data on screen, so no student is held up by too few answers. Every step-by-step covers Excel for the web with Microsoft Forms, and Google Sheets with Google Forms, on Windows, Mac and Chromebook.

Explore the Course

Click any lesson with to preview it

Survey Design and Data Collection
Ask a Question Worth Answering
Data Cleaning
Clean It Before You Trust It

Counting and Comparing
Count What Matters
Percentages and Comparisons
Bands, Lookups and Pivot Tables
Formulas That Decide
Look It Up
Pivot Tables: Summaries in Seconds

Honest Charts and Dashboards
Charts That Tell the Truth
A Dashboard on One Screen
Findings and Presentation
Findings Day

Survey Design and Data Collection
Ask a Question Worth Answering
Data Cleaning
Clean It Before You Trust It

Counting and Comparing
Count What Matters
Percentages and Comparisons
Bands, Lookups and Pivot Tables
Formulas That Decide
Look It Up
Pivot Tables: Summaries in Seconds

Honest Charts and Dashboards
Charts That Tell the Truth
A Dashboard on One Screen
Findings and Presentation
Findings Day

Teacher Resources

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Curriculum Mapping

See exactly how this course maps to official curriculum specifications

NCCA Transition Year Programme Statement (2025)

Curriculum Area

Outcomes

Personal Growth

P.1 P.2 P.3 P.4 P.5 P.6 P.7 P.8 P.9 P.10 P.11

Being a Learner

B.1 B.2 B.3 B.4 B.5 B.6 B.7 B.8 B.9 B.10 B.11 B.12

Civic and Community Engagement

C.1 C.2 C.3 C.4 C.5 C.6 C.7 C.8 C.9 C.10 C.11

Career Exploration

CE.1 CE.2 CE.3 CE.4 CE.5 CE.6 CE.7 CE.8

The curriculum does not include official reference codes for individual learning outcomes, so we have assigned a code scheme to make it easier to identify and track coverage.

What Students Will Learn

Learning Goals

Design an anonymous survey with answers that can be counted, linked to a spreadsheet.
Clean real data and record every change.
Summarise and compare groups with COUNTIF, percentages, bands, lookups and pivot tables.
Present data honestly with labelled charts and a one-screen dashboard.
Write findings that say how sure the data lets you be, with a recommendation.

Build a full TY year around Digital Spreadsheets

This module is one of 7 Transition Year modules you can combine into a complete Year-Long TY Digital Skills Programme, shaped around your timetable and the students in front of you.

Run the same pathway for every student, or set different pathways for different groups. Students also get access to the modules they're not doing in class, which is ideal for the keen ones who finish early or want to explore further on their own time.

Prefer a deeper tech focus? Swap in Advanced Coding or Robotics and Automation. Each module is 10 to 15 lessons of 40-60 minutes, leaving room for school events, mid-terms and everything else TY throws at you.

Why TY coordinators choose it

One decision, a year's content

No more stitching resources together every term.

Flexible per class, per student

Run different pathways side by side.

Certificates after each module

Great for TY portfolios, open days and reports home.

Sets students up for Senior Cycle

Broad exposure so they choose subjects with confidence.

Sample Year Plan

ICT + Coding focus

Computer Skills
Gets everyone on a level footing
Introduction to Coding
Real, working projects from week one
Exploring Digital Media
Video, design and storytelling
Exploring Artificial Intelligence
The topic your students keep asking about
Enterprise and Business Basics
A pitch-and-launch project to close out the year

Digital Spreadsheets

Explore the Course

1 Collect and Clean 2 lessons

2 Analyse 5 lessons

3 Show and Tell 3 lessons