Recently, I have been connecting with more and more educators around the use of Google Data Studio in schools. Google Data Studio (GDS) is a free resource from Google (of course). It allows users to create data visualizations through reports and dynamic dashboards. It was originally created as an advanced version of the Google Analytics tool used to monitor web traffic and users. GDS is now being used in many, many ways, including the field of education.
Internal & External Assessments
In my role as a Data & Innovation Specialist, I use GDS for many different purposes in school. We have been using GDS for the most obvious reason being to visualize and monitor academic data to improve student learning. We do this by triangulating both internal and external assessment data. Teachers use the interactive dashboards to identify certain groups of students so they can prepare for interventions and extensions. Click on the image below to be taken to a live example.
Student Profile Dashboard for Elementary School
Digital Placement Cards
We have also started using GDS for our digital placement cards. These cards were typically pieces of paper handed to teachers at the beginning of the school year. However, teachers needed to go through all of the individual pages. If there was any information they wanted to keep track of, they would have to create their own system. Through the use of the dashboard, we have been able to create reports for teachers with live, dynamic data. Much of the data comes directly from our Student Information System (SIS). As students join their class, their dashboard is updated automatically. You can see an example of that here.
Elementary School Student Placement Dashboard
Team Monitoring
As a member of a technology and innovation team in the elementary school, we wanted a way to check if the work we were doing was the right work. Were we spending the right amount of time on the right work? We developed a system to collect, analyze and visualize the things we do in school with our students and teachers by connecting Google Calendar, Google Sheets and Google Data Studio. With this data, we have been able to use this information as a starting point for discussions and as a way to reflect. The system for collection has not added anything extra to what we were already doing. The dashboard has helped us quickly see where we are spending our time and have conversations about making adjustments as needed.
Team Monitoring Dashboard using data from Google Calendar
GDS Course for Educators
Learning Google Data Studio can be a bit of a steep climb at first. You can really customize it to meet your needs and to showcase lots of different types of data. If you are looking for a way to learn about using Google Data Studio in an educational context, you can check out my course on the Team Monitoring Dashboard. Although this course is geared more towards an intermediate user of data and spreadsheets, I will guide you through the entire process, from start to finish. You can find out more about it here.
We know that many students around the world have suffered physically, academically, and mentally as a result of prolonged periods of COVID-related lockdowns. But, to what extent, is this true? What factors might be associated with this extent?
I have used Qualtrics to help answer questions like these at my school.
Qualtrics provides advanced, yet easy to use, survey-based data services for educators wishing to make smarter decisions and who want to glean novel insights into their school community.
Qualtrics is great for many reasons but let me share just two. The beauty of one feature, called ‘Crosstabs’, is that it allows you to reconcile results from two different questions. For example, I recently surveyed my students on a variety of topics related to remote learning. With two particular questions, I wanted to know, first, the extent to which students believed :
the volume of time spent in lessons and working on assignments during remote learning had increased, decreased, or stayed the same; and,
their mental health during remote learning had also either increased, decreased, or stayed the same.
The results received for each question were pretty straightforward: respondents generally reported increases on both measures. Just as nice is the ability to see how each Grade answered such questions, as show below:
Clearly, most students in each Grade reported a general increase in the amount of time spent in lessons and on school work during remote learning as compared to on-campus learning. However, I remained interested in knowing the percentage of respondents above who ALSO reported an associated change in mental health challenges.
Using Qualtrics’ Crosstabs feature, I was able to explore a relationship between volume of work and mental health. The results were pretty interesting, to say the least.
This means that, of those who said that the amount of time spent in lessons and on school work since remote learning began ‘has increased a lot’, 61.3 percent also said their mental well-being since remote learning began ‘is much worse’. It is also possible to categorise these results by respondents’ Grade.
The realisation that about 40 of my students needed immediate attention kickstarted a flurry of meetings and discussions that have included students, parents, faculty, and board members. Of course, worsening mental health does not mean poor mental health. It does mean that these students are doing ‘less well’ than they should be.
In the short term, these findings prompted the formation of a Mental Health Task Force consisting of students, parents, faculty, including counsellors. Our counsellors can now make more informed decisions when prioritising their time. In the medium-term, we can compare changes in responses year-on-year. In the longer-term, findings can help with decisions related to resource allocation, staffing, and budgeting.
However, how would I have known to take these actions and considerations without using Qualtric’s Crosstab feature? I cannot overestimate the value of it. Still, Qualtrics has many more. Let me give you one more example.
I was also interested in learning how much physical exercise my students were getting during a recent, extended period of remote learning. I first looked at the following simple results:
This indicates that students were not getting a reasonable amount of daily exercise at the time. However, I also wanted to know the relationship of these responses to students’ self-declared sense of happiness. I suspected that students getting the most exercise would also report relatively higher levels of happiness. I used another Qualtrics feature called ‘Stats iQ’ to test my hypothesis. All I had to do was simply drag the results of each question into two available analysis fields. Doing so gave me the following results below.
Not sure what this means? No problem: Qualtrics makes it easy. By hovering over the shaded circles with the letter ‘i’ in the middle, easy to understand explanations for both P-Value and Effect Size are given. The P-Value explanation given tells me that I can be quite confident in the reported Effect Size’s validity. The latter tells that the effect of daily exercise on student happiness is not large; that it has a ‘medium’ effect. Or, in other words, student exercise at the height of my school’s lockdown, indeed, had a noticeable effect on their happiness. It would be fair to say that my hypothesis has some truth to it. Based on this analysis, I ended up letting students, parents, and teachers know in various contexts that students getting daily exercise at the height of our most recent lockdown were adding benefits, not only to their health, but also to their happiness. Has this enabled parents, and students themselves, to make better decisions? You betcha!
We can make data analysis as complicated as we want. But it can be quite simple, too. Qualtrics just tells you what you need to know. It has many other features which I may share in the future but I hope this article has piqued your interest. Full Disclaimer: I receive no financial benefit for touting the benefits of using Qualtrics. But maybe I should! Nonetheless, I would love to learn more about how other educators are also using Qualtrics to improve decision making and experiences for their students, parents, and teachers. Get in touch with me!
By Timothy Veale (Secondary Principal at International School of Hamburg)
I often talk with fellow educators that work in district offices or technology departments at their schools. They ask for advice on getting their data organized so it can be useful. It is clear that schools are collecting data. Lots and lots of data. Collecting it doesn’t seem to be a problem. There is a general void in the understanding of collecting data to visualizing data for information.
Most questions I get go along the lines of “What system do you use?”, “What program do you use?” “How do you connect it all together?”, “Where do you keep it?”, “Who manages it?” While these are all great questions, my response is usually something along the lines of “It’s complicated.” In order to be able to answer these and similar questions, it’s important to know the context of the situation. For the people that want to work with data or have been designated to work with data in schools, they need to understand the process or the data ecosystem, data road map, data pipeline, or whatever term you would like to call it.
data process
What can data be?
Data doesn’t have to be just numbers and test scores. There are tons and tons of different forms of data we collect in educational institutions. We collect demographic information such as addresses, phone numbers, birthdates, citizenship, and so on. We also collect information about relationships such as parent names and contact information, brothers and sisters, whether a child has an IEP or other types of special reports. These are just some of the pieces of data we collect.
On top of that is the data that an individual teacher might collect about a student. This could be assessment information, anecdotal notes, reading levels, attendance, friendships, reading groups, and the list could go on and on. Keep in mind though, more data doesn’t always mean better data.
Schools collect lots of data, but then sometimes they don’t know what to do with it. They might not know how to distinguish what is important. There are a few things to keep in mind when deciding what data is going to be useful.
Not all data is good data
accurate valid complete
According to Harvard Business School’s Data Science Ready Program, data worth using is accurate, valid and complete. Data that is accurate is free of errors. Therefore, you know that the data is reliable and comes from a trusted source. Data is valid. This means that the data is providing us with the information we are expecting. Complete data does not have missing values. Finding data that is 100% perfect is nearly impossible. There will usually be something wrong with it. However, even if data is not perfect, it can still be used.
Data by itself isn’t very helpful to most educators or people in schools. It doesn’t provide any real information. In order for it to be useful, it needs to be organized. There are lots of ways to arrange data depending on what is being collected and what the potential outcome is to be. In a recent article, I wrote about different ways to collect and organize the same data for students. Data is regularly ordered by date, time, or location. Data can also be categorized by demographics like age, citizenship, or gender.
Filling in the gap
data workflow
Let’s take a look at the entire process and the various parts in it. This will help shed some light on how data gets from “data” to “information.” This is what we need to make informed decisions. There are a number of steps along the way. Depending on what type of data you are working with, some of these steps might not be necessary. However, these are the main parts of the process.
1. Data sourcing & collecting: Where the sources of data are and what raw data is taken from those sources.
2. Data wrangling: Raw data from the data source needs to be put into a form that is usable. This is where data wrangling comes in. This might also include where the data will actually be stored.
3. Data cleaning: (some people combine data wrangling and data cleaning) This is where the raw data gets organized. Missing data is checked and and errors are located. The formatting of the data becomes consistent between data sources. The data becomes easier to process.
4. Data analysis: This is where you start to transform and explore the data to help answer your questions about the original data. As data from multiple sources can be complex, those with skills and training such as data scientists, can help tremendously in this area.
5. Data visualization: this is the final product where you see the charts, reports, and dashboards that help people interpret the data as information. If set up well, the visualizations should reduce the cognitive load needed to understand the data.
Graphs don’t just happen
There is a lot of work that goes into setting up and using data correctly. Collecting data and creating data visualizations are only a small part of the entire process. Therefore, it is important to think carefully about the types of data that are being collected by schools. Remember, just because you have the data, doesn’t mean you need to use all the data. Consider what types of questions you have as a school or as a district. Then, seek the help of your school’s data team to assist you in answering these questions.
If you don’t have a data team or someone responsible for data at your school, I would highly recommend looking into the role as a critical step moving forward in ensuring your school is using data to inform instruction. You should also consider the current staff you have. Perhaps someone on your team is eager to be able to do more. Seek out those Data Knights and Data Dreamers. Look for ways to give those people more opportunities to grow by learning and helping your school.
If you are not sure where to get started, feel free to reach out to our team and we’d be happy to give you some guidance and training.
This great share was contributed to VisualizeYourLearning by Iliana Lourie
Several years ago, I was looking to digitize my science and math notebooks and ran into a little gold mine. I found The Scientific Teacher website and discovered the Digital Science notebooks and Learning Logs that revolutionized my practice. I created several variations (first with Zoho Docs and then with OneNote) inspired by The Scientific Teacher’s digital notebook, which allowed me to provide students with timely feedback.
The school adopted the Sheltered Instruction Observation Protocol (SIOP) to help students improve their English Language Proficiency levels and implemented student-led conferences (SLC) quarterly. Both of these were factors in the students’ notebooks’ adaptation, which directly connected to the sections in students’ Learning Logs:
Vocabulary
Essential Objectives (which were a reflection of Essential Questions, but formatted deliberately as objectives to support English Language Learners)
Journal (Inquiry-based activities or laboratories)
The elements in the first two sections were aligned to the NGSS, providing necessary background knowledge and vocabulary to meet the standards. The third section of the students’ notebook was dedicated to activities that explicitly developed the crosscutting concepts and specific vocabulary of the NGSS. This section encouraged students to build a logical and scientifically-based view of the world around them.
The elements in the first two sections were aligned to the NGSS, providing necessary background knowledge and vocabulary to meet the standards. The third section of the students’ notebook was dedicated to activities that explicitly developed the crosscutting concepts and specific vocabulary of the NGSS. This section encouraged students to build a logical and scientifically-based view of the world around them.
Tracking their progress became a classroom routine. Every Friday (or almost every Friday), students were given time at the end of class to record their grades into their learning logs and reflect. To help them with the reflection, each section of the learning log had a hyperlink to relevant activities addressing the learning goals such as Quizlets, Kahoots, Nearpod lessons, readings, or simulations.
At first, students struggled with the reflection piece of the log and sometimes left my classroom without recording any reflections, yet I was determined to make this part of our classroom culture. I would go back to their Learning Logs and note who needed support and took a bit more instructional time in the beginning when the process was introduced.
After a while, the kids caught on and were able to do it more independently. Throughout the year, I would also change it up a bit and pair up students to brainstorm ways to enhance their learning. Some of these conversations were amazing! Students can come up with very creative ideas on how to help their friends improve their grades and meet their learning goals. Students could also track a Personal Goal in their log. To make sure this was an academic, content-specific personal goal, I scaffolded SMART goals aligned with the expectations for Student Led Conferences. It didn’t feel like additional work because instead of scrambling for evidence at the last minute, they were always able to refer back to their Personal Goal graph in Science class. A bonus was the communication established with parents. I witnessed many SLC’s where parents who came from a different educational background than their children struggled to understand their children’s explanation during these conferences. Yet, they could easily understand a rising graph or changing colors, which prompted meaningful conversations with their children about their learning.
The notebook on its own was a great tool for me to evaluate student learning. I was able to assess my students’ responses in real-time and make any necessary corrections through feedback promptly. The transformational power of the notebook, however, was the connection to the students’ learning log. Initially motivated to provide students with a tool to use during SLC’s, the Learning Logs proved to be a much more essential component of students’ learning.
In my experience, data’s transformational power is evident when we teach children to interpret, analyze, and take action steps based on their data observations and goals. This way, we can educate them to be critical thinkers responsible for their learning and actions.
Iliana Lourie
Iliana is an Instructional Technology Coach and K-12 Technology Coordinator for Shanghai American School – Puxi Campus.She has taught Biology, Chemistry, Math, and Middle School Science. Iliana is passionate about Teaching & Learning and using instructional technology to reimagine our classrooms.Connect with Iliana on twitter @IlianaLourie.
Recently, I wrote about using Datawrapper for creating choropleth maps. Hopefully, you had a chance to look around Datawrapper and see some of the other cool graphs and charts that could be made. All for free.
Another request from teachers and students was to be able to make maps about their local area. There is another map in Datawrapper that can help accomplish parts of the following C3 Framework Standards:
D2.Geo.1.3-5. Construct maps and other graphic representations of both familiar and unfamiliar places. D2.Geo.2.3-5. Use maps, satellite images, photographs, and other representations to explain relationships between the locations of places and regions and their environmental characteristics.
Video
I’ve created a video that explains how to walk through the process. You can watch the video for yourself and you can also share it with your students. This, along with the handout, makes planning for this lesson very easy. There is very little for you to do besides printing out the guide or sharing the video link with your students.
Directions
Time needed: 15 minutes
How to make a locator map with Datawrapper
Getting started
In your web browser go to datawrapper.de. Click on the start creating button and it’ll open up a new window.
Choosing a map
At the top of the page click on new map. From there, we have three choices. We are going to use the locator map.
Adding Locations
Let’s add our items to the map. Think of the search bar as being like using Google maps. Look at the search bar and start typing your location. If it is a well-known location you can try to type it in. You’ll see it starting to think about it. Once the menu pops up, if you find the one you want, you can go ahead and click directly on the one that you want and it will automatically add a marker to your map and zoom in to that location.
Customize markers
Let’s go ahead and customize our marker. We might not need all of this information. You can erase the address and leave just the title. There are lots of presets that we can use if we want to highlight our location. If you click on the symbol you can change what the symbol looks like. This will become helpful when you create a legend later on.
Changing fonts
When you click on more options you can adjust the font size and the color of the font. You can make it bold or italics, make it all capital or even change letter spacing. You can outline it with different colors if you like. Then, you can put a box around the words, a rounded box, or have just the text.
Connector Lines
You can also choose to draw a line between the marker and a text. There are different arrows to choose from and different line types. You can also decide how far away you want your line to be.
Finding locations that don’t show in search
Sometimes, you’re typing something and it might not show up on your map when you type it in. If this is the case, you can find the address in Google maps and type in the direct address. Then your item should appear.
Map Styles
Once you have added all of your locations, go down to the proceed button at the bottom of the screen. This will take you to the map style section. There are several options to choose from. You can change to an earth view, a gray view, a maritime view.
3D buildings and tilt
When your map is complete, there are some other neat things you can do like tilting and rotating. As you start tilting and then zoom in on areas that have buildings, you’ll see how the 3-D buildings show up. Depending on the type of map that you want to have this to be really useful.
Rotating your map
The rotate button allows you to get the exact view that you would like to have. You’ll get a completely different view depending on how you rotate and how you zoom. Make sure you take the time to align it so that you include all of the parts that you like on your map.
Map Extras
Another neat feature is the map extras. Here you can add a scale bar, a north arrow, and an inset map depending on your location.
Add a title and description
Next is the title section. Choose an appropriate title for your map and add a description with more details. You can add your name in the byline.
Add a map key or legend
If you would like to add a key or legend for your map, in the add key for marker section click on show key. Here you’ll get options for all of your markers. You’ll see them automatically in your map. In the section below you can click and then assign each marker a name. As you assign the markers the names they will show up in your map. When you are done adding your markers at the bottom of the page click on proceed.
Saving your work
From here you can decide to send an email to yourself with a picture, or you can also just take a screenshot of your map and save it that way. When you have the screenshot you’re able to upload this to another website or use it in a slide deck or however you would like to choose to use it on your own.
Conclusion
You can find a free teacher and student guide for creating location maps just below this article.
I hope you found the tutorial helpful. If you would like to know more about how to make choropleth maps in Datawrapper, you can check out my article here and also get the free download guide for teachers and students.
I would love to see what kind of maps you created. You can follow me on Instagram @smithvisualizations, or you can follow me @smithrchris. I hope to see your maps soon. Good luck!
This great share was contributed to VisualizeYourLearning by Andrew Mowat
Deepen The Learning Experience By Using Small Data Visualisation
When we think of data visualisation, we often connect the idea of data visualisation with big data. You’ve probably seen the gorgeous visualisations on David McCandless’s Ted Talk from 2010. One unintended outcome from work like this is that data visualisation can seem inaccessible to the average user – we assume that we don’t have the resources or expertise to create such visual elegance.
I’m here to say that this is not the case. There is a place for what some call small data, and there are apps and platforms that can convey numerical information in elegant and useful ways.
The first I want to explore is a favourite platform of mine – Mentimeter (https://www.mentimeter.com). Some of you may already be using this minimalistic yet highly useful site. My own use case is to create connection and insight in the minds of adult learners in the programs I run.
Rather than a one-way transmission of content, I use Mentimeter to collect user input after framing an idea, concept or model. After input, the aggregation and visualisation of the results provides strong provocation through explorative questions and group insight.
I think a part of the secret sauce here is that deeper engagement extends from ownership of the data. “This is about us…”. In the image below, presented to a workshop group exploring metacognition in teaching and learning, the group input was around working knowledge and classroom use of metacognitive strategies.
In this case, discussion, discovery and action were all mobilised by the group’s insight into levels of metacognition knowledge and practice being way lower than expected. While group ownership of the data is one element that contributes, the clean interface and the visual representation of the data points against the overall trend also strongly assist learning impact.
Mentimeter’s ability to use a variety of entry points into the data collection – links, numerical codes and QR codes – makes it easy for participants to add to the data story. Further, I use QR codes during my (synchronous) online training sessions, given that most people engage on a laptop and have a mobile device nearby.
Lastly, to close the loop, the results page (with a different link to the poll page) is able to be embedded. Again, my use case is to embed the results in a learning platform (I use Teachable and Learnworlds) for students to access asynchronously, and to continue the discussion.
Besides collecting data about the audience themselves, another use case is around an easy data collection instrument for students research needing ‘public’ polling.
Particularly useful in a number of IB (International Baccalaureate) projects, short links and QR codes make it easy for students to collect raw data, sometimes in innovative ways. The rich visualisation environment then promotes deeper analysis and conclusion.
This all helps the learning and engagement design move substantially along the SAMR scale deep into Modification and Redefinition.
Want to give it a go? Try out simple 2-page poll about this article by visiting https://www.menti.com/32imxsiju1or by scanning the QR code.
Without being able to do this here in this article, a neat thing to do is to embed the results as a code snippet into any platform capable of embedding.
For me, the only downside of Mentimeter is its price. On the free account, you have access to two slides, a third if you recommend a friend. After that, it is $US120 a year. One close alternative that has recently emerged is Ahaslides (https://ahaslides.com).
Ahaslides has many of the feature set of Mentimeter, either at the fee account level, or at a significantly lower cost. The only missing feature for me (in my discovery so far) is the lack of embed code for the results, though this may not be a show stopper for you.
Regardless of the app, the key here is to make visualisation accessible as a lever for deeper learning. Apps like Mentimeter and AhaSlides do the heavy lifting of engagement, cognitive work, and learner progression, especially when baked into robust learning design.
So what do you make of this? Do you use an app to dig into small data for your students or audience? What friction points have you discovered? You could use the example poll above to add your answers.
More than ever, data visualisation using small data is both more available than ever before, and the opportunity to deepen learning in a number of layers is there before us.
Andrew Mowat
Andrew is the Principal Partner of MetaLearn Education and the Lead Partner for Learning for Ignite EdTech, both of which are based in Singapore. He is somewhat intimidated by having been in education over 40 years, yet still loves and enjoys working in adult learning and professional development. He especially loves exploring the convergence of technology, neuroscience, and leadership. Contact links: https://linktr.ee/amowat
