Spreadsheets

Paper based spreadsheets have been around for a long time. Basically they were being used for keeping records and for accounting. Spreadsheets has allowed teachers to adopt a middle course, compared to the extremes of fully coding an algorithm. Spreadsheets also concerns the absence of a number of desirable features, such as transportation of rows and columns, absence of regression lines on scatter graphs, and so on. All of these features are available in modern versions of spreadsheets such as Microsoft's Excel.

Using the spreadsheet as a platform, the student is lead to a position where they can write virtually a stand-alone program to support a simple or application, even from a position of little previous spreadsheet or computing experience. At the same time as spreadsheets, a number of computer packages have been developed that parallel business and educational applications. Spreadsheet assignments offer concrete ways to explore abstract concepts in mathematics and other subjects.

For more information check out this website:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spreadsheets