Excel Graphs vs. Graph Club

I work in an elementary school in Montgomery County Public Schools and our PCs come with a program called Graph Club which is created by Tom Snyder Productions through the Scholastic Company.  It is a very easy program that allows you to create bar graphs, circle graphs, line graphs and make them very colorful and kid-friendly.  The program even has a tutorial for the students so they can easily complete a graph step by step. 

I like the program and it gives the students a very good introduction on graphing, but since I teach 5th grade I want my students to be exposed to Excel.  I know this is a preference but I want my students technologically experienced, and to use the Windows package to its fullest.  The Graphing Wizard in MS Excel is also very easy to use and you can have a graph created in four steps. 

Obviously the Graph Club program is much more kid friendly with characters that look like they are right out of “Arthur.”  However it is the experiences and opportunities that I am trying to give to my students that I want.  The more they know about these programs and use them the better off they will be as they move on into higher level education.  As teachers we need to be thinking about our students future goals and opportunities so we need to give them those experiences.