Digital manipulative are pictures on a spread sheet page. They are moved and edited by the same delete, select/copy/paste commands used to edit text and, on newer versions of Excel©, the rotate, stretch/shrink commands of a graphic editor. They permit the user to create a new picture or move and manage the pictures already created.

    If the user doesn't interact with the graphics, doesn't manipulate the graphics, there is no DIGITAL MANIPULATIVE.

On this page learn how to:
• start
• select just one, delete, COPY!
• move (drag)
• rotate
• stretch/shrink
• select one, select many a different way, move a different way (cut & paste)
• claim it for your own

    Go to the index page through this link or the spread sheet notes button at the left for other spread sheet techniques.

1st: Copy (by Saving It), make one of a workbook or spread sheet, if you are downloading it from the web.

2nd: Close the spread sheet.

3rd: Open Excel© and work in Excel©.

    With the mouse, right click on an image.

    This done, you are ready to delete (just hit the delete button), move (just drag the graphic from a point not on a button), resize (using those dots on the corners, midpoints, and the extension with the green button on the end).

    With one graphic clicked, you could continue holding down the shift key and click on another graphic or two or more selecting each of them. At the left, three graphics are selected.

    Now the magic begins. Now graphics become DIGITAL MANIPULATIVES.

    Still holding the shift key, drag the graphic with the mouse to a new location. They move. .

    They are no longer static pictures, but, active manipulatives, DIGITAL MANIPULATIVES.

    With the shift key still held down, they are still all selected, still treated as a group.

    Check out how that 1/9th manipulative on the left tucks behind the larger 1/1 grahic. Once you decide what you want to do with the manipulatives, you can treat that one seperately if needed with a right click on the mouse and selection on the desired option.

    With the shift key still held down, all 3 manipulatives are still selected and not placed.

    Mouse-over or mouse-near any one of the green buttons that are the endpoint of the extension. The rotation feature of the graphic automatically engages and the manipulative may be spun or rotated.

    If you were to release the shift key now, all the manipulatives/graphics would remain in that tilted orientation and that location.

    For my purposes the stretch and shrink feature has been more benefit in preparing the inital DIGITAL MANIPULATIVE spread sheet than in using the graphic as a digital manipulative -- the MOVEMENT is what makes the graphic a digital manipulative and all the features discussed on this page make it a powerful creation tool for teachers and students, alike.

    Above on the left, one of the corner buttons was pulled out from the center stretching the graphic uniformly.

    If the button had been pushed to the center, the graphic would have shrink uniformly in scale.

    If a midpoint button is moved only that dimension is shrunk or stretched as desired.

    It is possible to select one or more graphics and then move or copy them by selecting the cells in which the graphics are located.

    This has been extremely useful when moving a bunch of stuff to a working work sheet from a storage work sheet.

    Just as with a text editor,

• select (Shift & drag or Shift + Curser Movement) the passage or graphics you wish
• moved (Ctrl+X --for cut, then Ctrl +V -- for paste),
• copied (Ctrl + C -- for copy), or
• deleted (Delete button)

    When you're done, release the cell(s) by clicking on somewhere else and the select boundaries will go away.

    As has been stated on this and other pages, use and edit this stuff as desired, just be sure to state the appropriate source as with footnotes or headers on the spread sheets and lower on that same page DIGITAL MANIPULATIVE spread sheets.

    Go play and create!