Technology & Inquiry Projects:What I’ve Learned from Teaching with Data

Jennifer LeimbererChicago Public Schools: Boone, NKO Charter

LETUS Center, Northwestern University

ALM Project, University of Illinois at Chicago

How & Why I Got Computers into My Classroom

• I wanted my kids to be analyzing all kinds of DATA!– Real-time earthquake data for science

– Primary documents for Social Studies

– Images: photographs, images from space

• Technology gave my students:– Access to data

– Tools to analyze it, and

– Ways to reflect and share

What We Did at Boone

• 1st grant we wrote: 6 desktop computers– Why the classroom instead of the lab?

• Big school = Little access to a lab! (once every 2 weeks?)

• Wanted kids to have access when they need it & want it

• More access provides proficiency!

– Where to put the computers?• Started with them all on one wall – where the power plug was!

• Too many kids in too small a space!

• Spread computers around the room – lots of extension cords!

• 2nd grant: 8 laptops with wireless Internet

Pictures of Classroom

Pictures of classroom

Pictures of groups presenting

Inquiry Projects

• Struggle for Survival

• Growth Rate

• Hands On Universe

• Family History

Example of a project:Struggle for Survival

• Students get a database– Finch population data– 5 years in Galapogos– Beak size, weight, field notes– What changes have happened in the population?– Why did some survive & others not?

• What I liked about this project– Got them into complex data– Many kinds of data: tables, scatterplots, bar graphs– Kids did not create the graphs, they interpreted them– Focus was on the analysis of data, making explanations

Struggle Data Base: BGuILE

Example of a project:Family History

• Story of their family’s immigration or migration– Why they left, what it was like, why they came– Interviewed family members, wrote letters back home

• Transcribed interviews – hard!• Scanned letters & annotated them: What did you find?

• Studied differences between cultural groups, histories– Internet research on their home countries’ histories– Became our History Fair projects!

• What I liked about this project– Students learned to choose good Internet sources– A very personal project, students connected, celebrated cultures– Their interviews became DATA: evidence for later research– Used their Social Studies data ACTIVELY, not passive history

Example of a project:Growth Rate

• Every month collected data– Kids decided what to measure at beginning of year– Height, arm span, foot length, etc– Put data into Excel spreadsheet, added to it all year

• Every month did a different kind of analysis– What is “typical”? Mean, median, mode, etc– Where did I fit into the data set?– Comparing subsets within the class– Change over time, how kids grow differently (7th – 8th grade!)

• Every month took digital photo of themselves– Great affective connection: Personal connection to the math– With pictures, find student that is median height– Could do: scale, ratios (arm span to height)

Example of a project:Hands On Universe

• Students get real telescope images– Planets, stars, galaxies, moons– Students request their own images

• We requested Jupiter every 60 minutes for one whole night

– Kids analyzed the images• Stacked them in software to measure movement• Determined speed of each moon• Which moon is which? What Galileo did

• What I liked about this project– Application of math to a real question: Which moon?– Analyzed their own images – like a real astronomer!– Kids had to come up with a real answer

Tracking Jupiter’s Moons

Tracking Jupiter’s Moons

What We’ve Learned About Managing These Projects

• Small groups are great because ...– More kids are talking & sharing ideas

• Small groups can look for evidence for their own ideas• Kids’ conversation around the data is important!

– Differentiate instruction: Address different kids’ needs

• What will they turn in after computer time???– How do I know they were working? what they learned?

• Kids need to keep notebooks, screen captures, pictures

– Get the data OUT of the computer and INTO the room!• Student create a model, picture, graph, map – make it visible!• Gives teacher a chance to respond, assess, give feedback

• Have something to do while others are on the computers!!

Bring the Data OUT of the Computer

What did my students get out of these projects?

• Learning to do inquiry

• Play with REAL data

• More than "just the facts"

• They remember the experience

• Benefits for high- and low- students