Advanced ECDL - Spreadsheets
I took the spreadsheets exam for the Advanced ECDL today. It's significantly more challenging than the word-processing one, probably because spreadsheets are generally more complex beasts. While it didn't cover everything that can be done with Excel, it certainly has the most useful functions and tools, including tables, PivotTables, database and lookup functions, all of which are very useful but non-obvious how to use at first. Speaking for myself at least, I've frequently wanted to do things that needed database or lookup functions, but couldn't figure out their little foibles - like the fact that lookup lists have to be pre-sorted in ascending order unless you set a particular optional argument to false.
The exam was certainly more stretching than I expected - I nearly got tripped up by a question on password-protecting only a few cells within a sheet, but I had been taught enough that I could figure it out using the help functions (yes, you are allowed to use help in the exam - but it will use up time, so it's far better not to). I might have figured it out on my own given enough time, but there's no point if the help function's right there. This is another example of how the Advanced ECDL is much more relevant to real computer use than the basic ECDL.
I'd definitely recommend this to anyone who want to expand their knowledge and confidence in spreadsheeting.
The exam was certainly more stretching than I expected - I nearly got tripped up by a question on password-protecting only a few cells within a sheet, but I had been taught enough that I could figure it out using the help functions (yes, you are allowed to use help in the exam - but it will use up time, so it's far better not to). I might have figured it out on my own given enough time, but there's no point if the help function's right there. This is another example of how the Advanced ECDL is much more relevant to real computer use than the basic ECDL.
I'd definitely recommend this to anyone who want to expand their knowledge and confidence in spreadsheeting.