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Posts tagged data
BBC Dimensions: exploring the human scale of events and places in history
33 months ago
Dimensions is an experimental project from the BBC that allows you to compare the scale of different types of events with something that we can all recognise. There are two parts of the project “How many really?” and “How big really?“
“How many really?” is all about the numbers of people that were involved in a whole range of different events throughout history. The tool allows you to either add in your own numbers, for example 30, the number of children in your class, connect with Facebook or Twitter and compare your networks or even the number of people who can board a double decker bus or a Boeing 747.
You are then shown a visual comparison with the number of people involved in the event that you have chosen. The events fall into the following categories:
- Battles
- Civilisations
- Current Affairs
- Disasters
- Diseases
- Entertainment
- Modern Society
- Religion
- Slavery
- War
“How big really?” is all about getting a better understanding for the scale of different historical events and locations compared to our own map location.
We want to bring home the human scale of events and places in history. The D-Day landing beaches measured from London to Norfolk in the UK. How far would the Titanic stretch down your street?
Dimensions simply juxtaposes the size of historical events with your home and neighbourhood, overlaying important places, events and things on a satellite view of where you live. Certain “Dimensions” can be transformed into short walks, so you can get a physical appreciation of the distances involved.
The tool provides a range of example categories to explore including:
- The War on Terror
- Space
- Depths
- Ancient Worlds
- Environmental Disasters
- Festivals and Spectacles
- WW2 – Battle of Britain
- The Industrial Age
- Cities in History
From the Ancient Worlds category you can place all sorts of significant monuments, like the Colosseum, on top of your own location. It gives you a true understanding of the scale of these structures. This would be great for classes to begin to really appreciate these huge monuments. What would be even better would be seeing a 3D model – as in Google Earth or Maps - on your location and then being able to pan and zoom around it.
The Dimensions tools would be interesting to use within a history class but also within maths to help children and classes get a better appreciation of different sizes. It will eventually be integrated into the online history resources at the BBC depending on user feedback.
A History of Teaching and Learning from 500 Billion Words
23 months ago
By analysing over 500 billion words the Google Books Ngram Viewer allows you to compare the history of terminology and language from approximately 5 million digitised books.
The graph above shows my search for the terms “teaching” and “learning” in publications between the years 1500 and 2010.
What fascinates me is how the popularity or usage of the different terms climbed and fell throughout this period. The term “Teaching” has been used more frequently since the turn of the 18th century, somewhat settling into a plateau in the last 60 years. In comparison the term “learning” seems to have more of a rollercoaster frequency in the last 500 years.
References to “learning” from 1800 fell notably in the following 100 years, to a point where “teaching” was referenced more. And then began a 75 year period where “teaching” was clearly more frequently used or referred to in published literature. Why would there have been such a decline or change in frequencies?
If you look at the references to “learning’ there seems to be some peak and trough pattern amidst an upward trend. I wonder why this was the case? Similarly why did references to “learning” fall away at the turn of the 19th century only to climb steadily again in the last 100 years? What perceptions of “learning” or cultural differences were there between the 1700s (“learning” references increase) and the 1800s (“learning” references decrease.)?
I am no historian and I am sure many of you reading this will be able to explain the information better than me – needless to say it would be interesting to explore any broad reasons or background that might effect such results.
One Question Surveys – What do you want to find out about?
28 months ago
I have started a little project that wil post some simple surveys on education and/or technology. The Apple v Android survey managed to draw well over 1000 responses and I would like to attempt the same for a wider group of questions.
Go to >> http://onequestionsurveys.posterous.com
You can do three different things on the site:
>VOTE – add your preferences or votes to open surveys
>RESULTS – explore the outcomes of the completed surveys and add your comments, results will be published after 1000 responses – chunky results!
>SUGGEST – make a suggestion about a question to survey, I will try and make as many worthwhile questions active surveys as I can. In fact you can make a suggestion in the form below right now – it could be anything from preferences, tech choices, future of education, other school or tech related issues.
I would like the survey outcomes to be used in combination with each other so that they might form a wider picture of an issue. For example after a time you might pull all the mobile surveys together or all the results tagged “curriculum”. All the content is CC-A-NC-SA licensed so you can use them in your presentations or blog posts.
I hope you can lend your support to this little project.
Posting from Create-a-Graph to a Posterous Blog (and Blogger too)
21 year ago
One of the nice features of the Create-a-Graph site from the NCES is the ability to email the completed chart. In the past I have used this when working with Google Apps for Edu – the children handed their work in to me by sending it to my school email. We had my inbox open on the board so the children could see their submissions.
We have been using Posterous as our class blog platform since September. It is a fantastic site for school or class blogging due to it’s simplicity. I made the link with Create-a-Graph because Posterous is built around being able to email content to a specific address which will then post to the blog.
In a nutshell I have worked out a way for my children to post their charts and graphs from Create-a-Graph directly to the class blog.
Here is how to do it.
**Requirements - the following instructions are only for a Posterous blog, but the idea will work if you have a Blogger site. You can find the email you need in your Blogger “Settings” under “Email & Mobile”. If you have a post via email option for your blogging platform in theory this should also work**
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1. Send a graph from Create-a-Graph to your own email. Now locate the sender’s email address – it should be something like kidszone@ed.gov
2. By default a Posterous blog only allows agreed contributors to post – you need to make kidszone@ed.gov a contributor to your blog, basically saying content from that source is OK.
3. Go to the Settings of your Posterous account and click on Contributors, add a new contributor and paste the email address we have for Create-a-Graph: kidszone@ed.gov
4. Now you are ready to post from Create-a-Graph (worth testing this before the kids get a go) – the email you need is the one for contributors as the additional email you have added is not recognised as the primary one for the site. The email address you will need will be at the bottom of the Contributors page (see screenshot above)
5. Add this email into the Create-a-Graph “email this graph” box (leave it as html) and hit send.
6. Your graph should be posted – the nice thing about Posterous is that it will automatically resize the image to suit your blog, which saves a lot of fiddling around with multiple posts. Here is an example blog post we did this week from someone in my class, we were looking at the climate of Australia.
That is pretty much the top and bottom of it – for Blogger just use your unique email address in step 5. Over the period of time we have done this I have a few tips to share:
- Expect to have multiple posts, children click send numerous times as they are unsure it has been done – it takes a bit of tidying up. (I also take a few moments to add the children’s names as tags to the posts so that I am collating work on the class blog)
- Ask the children to add their name to the Graph Title in Create-a-Graph – this is under Data. The graph title will appear as the blog post title and will now include the child’s name for you to see who owns it easily.
- If you display the blog refreshing on the board you can check work quickly and children can have the reassurance their work has been submitted.
- Once submitted the children can still edit their graphs – if you see something you need them to change, delete the post and ask them to correct it and resend.
I hope you find that an interesting tip to perhaps try – good luck with it and let me know how you get on.
80+ Google Forms for the Classroom
1063 years ago
Google Forms is a great tool and I hope to use it more throughout this year. Take a look here for a more detailed introduction and guide to using and creating a Google Form – this was written prior to Google bringing forms into the NEW menu.
I have created example forms for each of the different topics, follow the links in each of the ten sections. With help from a Googler I have included a link so that you can get your own copy of the form – click on the appropriate link and it should open in your docs home.
1 ) Get to know your class
Use this form to gather some indication from your new class about their likes and dislikes, their favourite lessons or after school clubs they enjoy. It will help you to build your relationships with children as you quickly learn more about them. Get your own copy.
2 ) Emotion graph
An emotion graph is a simple line graph comparing a range of happiness to sadness against different points (time) in a story or film. This technique of graphing the emotional ups and down within a story really helps children to visualise the whole story in a different way. Use a Google Form to gather the children’s responses to different parts of any type of linear narrative, written or visual. We used it here in a film narrative literacy unit. You can read a more detailed explanation of how to generate the line graph from the form here. Get your own copy.
3 ) Spelling test
For your weekly spelling test use simple 1-10 or 1-20 numbered form (with a name question too of course) and ask the children to type in their answers as you read out the list of words. Once these are submitted apply formula to judge if they are correct or not and it becomes self marking. Steve Kirkpatrick had this brainwave a while back so check out his excellent post for more information about setting up the spreadsheet. Danny also added in his comment about using the font Wingdings for smiley faces which is a nice idea although this font is not available in Google Spreadsheets. Get your own copy.
4 ) Comprehension questions
I spent quite a bit of time last year looking for some reading comprehension resources that could be used on a class set of laptops. A Google Form could be created as a way to collate the children’s comprehension answers in one place for any given text. You could also share the answers with the class so that they can review what their peers are doing. This could be a formalised assessment of their understanding of a text or something more informal to start class discussions. Again Steve has grabbed this idea by the horns and tried it with his kids – well worth a look, especially at his reflective comments and lessons learned. Get your own copy.
5 ) Weekly reading record
The children in our school have a reading diary that they use to record information about times that they read during the week. They take it home as well as using it at school. A form could be created by the children as a place to enter data about their reading. I hear “I haven’t got my reading diary,” so many times during the year, this way they have no excuses and can access it from any computer. Alternatively a class form could also be setup to gather together everyone’s record. Get your own copy.
6 ) Maths data handling
Perhaps the easiest to pick up and run with, the idea of using a form to gather together maths data handling information. The form could be a simple way of collecting information about the class – shoe size, eye colour etc. It is obviously about what you do with the data that counts but their is no reason why children couldn’t design and implement their own forms – with the attached spreadsheet for analysis – as part of independent data investigations. Get your own copy.
7 ) Guided reading record
As part of the old literacy hour in England we take part in small focused group reading sessions. They are guided sessions usually 15-20 minutes long and we talk and work on a piece of text that is relevant to the work going on in that unit. Sometimes small written tasks are completed or it may just be a speaking and listening activity. It is widely practiced in English primary schools and this form could act as a class record for those sessions. Get your own copy.
8 ) Prior learning assessment
Use a form to assess what the children already know about any given topic that you are beginning. The form could be a formalised assessment with specific questions about the topic or it could be more general and open for the children to explain what they know. Either way such an assessment would allow you to have a better understanding of the current level of knowledge the children have about a topic. This same form could be returned to at the end of the unit of work to help review what they have learned. Get your own copy.
9 ) Library book review
We have a little corner of our classroom dedicated to our library. There is a broad range of fiction and non-fiction books for the children to enjoy whenever they want. This form could be a simple way of collecting the children’s thoughts about what they read. The children in the class could use it as a reference to help them choose a book to read. A simple and easy way to collate book reviews. Get your own copy.
10 ) Learning success
This is one of the ten ideas I would most like to explore this year as we continue to use Google Docs as part of our tech toolbox. Use a form to assess the relative success of the learning that has taken place during a single lesson or after a series of lessons on a topic. Invite the children to assess their own confidence after practice of something – such as a lesson on one of the written multiplication methods. The form would collate the views of all of the class very quickly and allow you to make a quick judgement in terms of pupil feedback, about whether to consolidate what has taken place, to start afresh or in fact to move on. We make our learning targets for the lesson so clear these days, along with work scrutiny, dialogue with the students, a generic student response form would allow you to further judge the lesson’s success.
This is very much dependant on the quick and easy availability of a computer in the classroom – this after all should be a small 2 minute task as part of a plenary. If the lesson involves the use of the computers then that is easier – but if it does not then perhaps a handful scattered at the side of the room for students to go to at the end of the task or as directed. Of course the students completing such a form as if it were second nature to them, would be what you aim for – so the laptop, form and technology disappear and you are left with a lucid evaluation from your students. Get your own copy.
I hope that you have found something to inspire you here or perhaps you can use these straight away. If you have not had time to explore Google Forms it is most definitely worth a look. If you have time drop me a note saying how you got on with your own ideas.
UPDATE
Here are more than 70 further ideas to keep you going.
