Making Data-Driven Decisions Meaningful for International Schools

[Learning 2.008 Conference]

International schools aren’t weighed down by the burdens of No Child Left Behind. We have the freedom to collect and analyze whatever student data we feel is appropriate. Are teachers in your school using data in meaningful ways to improve learning? At AES, we’ve generated a culture of data analysis. I’ll share some of our successes and demonstrate the technological tools we use for creating meaningful information.

Presenter: Warren Apel
Room: MS204

[Warren Apel]

I'll post all my notes and share some extra stuff here. One tool that I've found really useful is TinkerPlots by Key Curriculum Press. It's not a brand-new fancy graphing package, but it's powerful and much easier to use than Excel. If you get a site license, teachers can use it with students - it makes a great way to teach 21st Century skills like visual literacy and graph interpretation.

[Warren Apel]

Here's a graph created in Swivel. Once you make it, you can embed it in your blog. Handy way to include charts in a blog.

[Glenda Baker]

Thanks Warren, I'm hoping your topic may touch on assessment & evaluation. I'd like to hear about the philosphy behind using data analysis.

[Warren Apel]

Thanks Glenda - I'll be sure to show some concrete examples of how we use data in our classroom assessments.

[Warren Apel]

and here are some links:
Hans Rosling's TED talk
http://www.ted.com/index.php/talks/hans_rosling_shows_the_best_stat...

http://www.swivel.com/graphs/show/28476290

http://services.alphaworks.ibm.com/manyeyes/

[Warren Apel]

Here's a graph created in ManyEyes

[Chris Rose]

Data gathering is done at beginning or middle of cycle to inform teaching and learning right away

[Robyn Hamilton]

It is important to use the data you are collecting to improve student learning.

A lot of the time we are presenting the information in ways that don't help us to inform our practice.
Other times we can get good information but it takes a long time to input and to get the info out.

tinker plots is a data base that allows schools to gather information then the programme can redisplay it in different categories which allows us to make much better decisions.

The focus must be on student learning - not on teacher evaluation. It must be a safe environment. The demographics of each class are so different in international schools. It is possible to look at the data and see which classes are doing really well and see if the teachers in those classes have ideas to share.

Tinker plots advantages:
Maths and science teachers could already be using it
Cheap, get a site license
It links to Visual literacy and to data mashups

Swivel is like YouTube for graphs
People from all over the world can comment on the graphs - revisualise it and repost their own graphs.

Many Eyes is the same idea, but more complex - suitable for Secondary Students

Discussion about making the data transparent to parents, (or not) and also about using the data to identify teachers who are not performing at a high enough level.

[Clint Hamada]

The data cycle

Technology helps to speed up this cycle so the analysis happens immediately.

A lot of admin support at AES.

How does a good visual help to inform decisions?

Reading pre-assessment to help set goals for the year.
Bar graph v. box and whisker in excel, but no interactivity
stacked bar graph

using tinkerplots to visualize this data.
What is your student info system?

have a discussion and record it, interactive, instantaneous, humanizes the data

admin must be clear that this is not an evaluative process against the teacher: this is for learning purposes. this is about best practice, not worst practice.

a snapshot of one bit of data.

how do collect and aggregate that data? centralized DB? mash it up?

this process can be used to validate the assessment tool as well, if used correctly.

Edward Tufty (sp?)

AES has a data person to help facilitate this.

Swivel is YouTube for graphs.

Many Eyes?

[Warren Apel]

Hi Clint,
We use Skyward for our SIS. It's powerful, but it has its drawbacks.
Here's the PowerPoint I used during the session.

and here's a screenshot of that same data as displayed in TinkerPlots:

Once you get the information into TinkerPlots, you can really move it around and analyze it more deeply. Plus, it humanizes the data - each point is an actual student, so you can select and explore an individual or a similar group of individuals.

[Warren Apel]

Edward Tufte's site is at EdwardTufte.com
Excellent one-day workshop for people interested in the visual display of quantitative data.

[Warren Apel]

I've had a few people ask for more data to play with. I've got piles and piles, and I can pretty easily scramble student names for privacy. Email me ([e-mail]) if you are interested in getting some data you and your school data team can work with. I'd be happy to answer any questions about the data cycle or the processes we use at AES.