  The DidaTab project (Didactics of Spreadsheet, teaching and learning
spreadsheets) is a three year project (2005-2007) funded by the French Ministry
of Research and dedicated to the study of personal and classroom uses of
spreadsheets in the French context, focussing on the processes of appropriation
and uses by secondary school students. In this paper, we present an overview of
the project, briefly report the studies performed in the framework of the
DidaTab project, and give the main results we obtained. We then explore the new
research tracks we intend to develop, more in connection with EuSpRIG. Our main
result is that the use of spreadsheet during secondary education (grade 6 to
12) is rather sparse for school work (and even more seldom at home) and that
student competencies are weak. Curricula have to be reviewed to include more
training of dynamics tabular tools (including databases queries) in order to
ensure sufficient mastery of computer tools that have became necessary in many
educational activities.
