tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-90929701770461426442024-03-04T22:14:50.840-08:00Excel for EducatorsThe Science Goddesshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02846516022505481326noreply@blogger.comBlogger126125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9092970177046142644.post-25666033937493134502020-03-28T09:07:00.001-07:002020-03-28T09:07:54.844-07:00The Next WaveIn February and early March, I had the opportunity to teach my first college-level course. My audience was student teachers and the topic was effective data use.<br />
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I was both excited and a little terrified. It was a great opportunity to share some learning on an important topic that doesn't often get much attention as teachers prepare to join the workforce. But, it was designated as a 10-hour elective, so I made myself think of it as an extended workshop. A few years ago, I did a <a href="http://blog.whatitslikeontheinside.com/2017/09/introducing-data-academy.html">Data Academy</a> in my district that consisted of six 90-minute sessions...so it didn't feel like too big of a stretch to do five 2-hour sessions. Since the Data Academy, I have also developed and presented a lot of other content at various conferences and in other spaces. The twist on all of this was that I needed to target an entirely new audience.<br />
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<span style="font-size: small;"><span style="color: #660000;"><span><span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">Syllabus</span></span></span></span><br />
I used a framework from this article to organize the course: Mandinach, E. B., & Gummer, E. S. (2016). <a href="https://github.com/tlricherson/TESC_MIT_Data/blob/master/handouts/What%20does%20it%20mean%20for%20teachers%20to%20be%20data%20literate.pdf">What does it mean for teachers to be data literate: Laying out the skills, knowledge, and dispositions.</a> Teaching and Teacher Education, 60, 366-376. During the first session, I had the students identify their level of familiarity with each of the five major areas of the framework, along with the items under each that they'd most like to learn. This provided me with some direction for the rest of the sessions.<br />
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You can access my course materials here: <a href="https://github.com/tlricherson/TESC_MIT_Data">https://github.com/tlricherson/TESC_MIT_Data</a>.<br />
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<span style="font-size: small;"><span style="color: #660000;"><span><span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">How it all went down</span></span></span></span><br />
I didn't do much in the way of assignments. I asked them to read two research articles and we used two examples from <a href="https://www.amazon.com/Observe-Collect-Draw-Visual-Journal/dp/1616897147/ref=sr_1_3?crid=218053BTBTAWF&dchild=1&keywords=giorgia+lupi&qid=1585410068&sprefix=giorgia+lup%2Caps%2C268&sr=8-3">Observe, Collect, Draw</a> to provide them with some practice collecting and representing data. I really just wanted them to immerse themselves in the discussions during our time together. It was, after all, an elective...and they were plenty stressed out with other coursework. I wanted them to have a positive experience with data.<br />
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We also did some activities modified from the <a href="https://datatherapy.org/activities/">Data Therapy</a> project. These included the <a href="https://databasic.io/en/culture/paper-spreadsheet">paper spreadsheet</a>, <a href="https://datatherapy.org/activities/activity-finding-a-story-in-data/">find a story</a>, and <a href="https://databasic.io/en/culture/build-a-sculpture">build a sculpture</a>. I had been wanting to try some of these for awhile and hadn't had a group for this. My favourite was the sculpture activity. I've had the coloured blocks and tiles for a couple of years and it was great to provide them, along with some data, and have small groups of students physically model a story they thought was important to tell from the data. I didn't allow them to write or annotate until the very end. (We did three rounds of data/revision.) I really enjoyed hearing their thoughts about that experience. Many of them noticed the same things that I have about manipulating data physically with your hands. It's such a powerful and personal experience. Magical.<br />
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<span style="font-size: small;"><span style="color: #660000;"><span><span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">Lessons learned</span></span></span></span><br />
I think I did an okay job. Most of the time, I paced things well and brought the right resources. As always, I should have aimed for "Less me, more them." I would have liked to structure the discussions a bit better and given them more time to practice using data when we were together. We didn't have access to a computer lab and not everyone had a laptop, so I didn't spend any time on Excel basics, which I think would have been one of the most useful things to send them out the door with. But, I did give them some rich opportunities to think with data...and that will serve them well.<br />
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I heard from a professor in the program that students talked about my class a lot in their other classes...that they were showing her lots of great pictures of their work...and that a few had said it was the highlight of the winter quarter for them. The students themselves gave me a wonderful thank you card, a $50 gift card, and a little notebook to use for capturing data. Very sweet of them!<br />
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I don't know if I'll get the opportunity to teach the class again. This particular format was brand new for the university and they will need to evaluate its success before making decisions about next year. I am so grateful for the opportunity...and also that I was able to finish the class just moments before the transition to all classes being online. I greatly enjoyed being with these almost-beginning teachers. The next wave coming to our classrooms is going to be amazing. <br />
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I was taking a break from presenting this year. And then I got asked to share some of my data stories at a conference session in December...and asked to develop this university course...and a couple of other things, too. I said "Yes" to all of them, even if they were daunting. I am glad that as the world becomes more closed for the next year or so that I had the opportunity to reach out in those ways. I have to believe that there will be chances to do so again. I hope all of you are finding ways to share and connect and celebrate learning from wherever you are holding in place. <br />
<br />The Science Goddesshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02846516022505481326noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9092970177046142644.post-62796308289826180692020-03-21T11:14:00.000-07:002020-03-21T11:20:29.230-07:00Pause. Breathe. Rest. Fight.Well, there is apparently one thing that can stop a dream in its tracks: COVID-19.<br />
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After months of planning and getting ready for our big community data story for the spring Arts Walk...it's canceled. And while I am in 100% supportive of the decision to cancel the event, I also know that it is okay to express personal disappointment. I am grateful that I'm (currently) healthy...as are all my friends and extended family...but I admit that I'm quite sad about having to postpone things.<br />
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I know it isn't forever. When this pandemic is over, there will be other Arts Walk. We will finish the project, even if it doesn't go on display for awhile.<br />
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So, let me tell you just how far we got and what we've been learning along the way. If you need to catch up on the background of this project, you can read an <a href="http://excelforeducators.blogspot.com/2020/02/creating-connections.html">overview</a> or my <a href="http://excelforeducators.blogspot.com/2020/02/were-going-to-need-bigger-dream.html">first reflection</a> on the process.<br />
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During the month of February, my assistant and I built relationships with all of the six Boys and Girls Clubs in our county. We visited each one in person to talk about the project and get input from directors about the needs they were seeing with students. By the end of the month, we had returned to four of the clubs to conduct focus groups with K - 12 students. Our conversations were framed around the role of neighbours and friends in their lives. For older students, we also devoted part of the conversation to the community at large.<br />
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Some interesting things came out of these conversations. For example, in every group a single (and unexpected) statement was made: <i>We had to move because our neighbours were too loud</i>. We heard this from urban students who live in apartments and rural kids who live in trailers that are out in the woods. We heard it from homeless kids and ones from homes with a stable income. And while we didn't lean into that statement, we did wonder what it was code for. Did it mean their parents couldn't make the rent and didn't want kids to worry...so they just blamed the move on the neighbours? Did it refer to domestic violence or drugs or other environmental factors? Or was it really just plain noise? Another thing that was consistently said across groups had to do with dogs. Kids everywhere talked about being barked at, bitten by, and generally displeased with dogs. Maybe you have a very good boy at home...but a lot of kids are having to manage community spaces where they are feeling threatened by these animals.While neither of these pieces made it into our final survey, they will be reflected in our final display.<br />
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Also during that time frame, we worked with a carpenter to build the six frames (one example is above) and 12 boards (one is in the background of the picture above). We partnered with a local upholstery shop to test out different threads and put in our order for our final choice. We secured the rest of the materials we thought we'd need.<br />
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By the first week in March we transitioned to the individual surveys. Here are five questions we identified:<br />
<ol>
<li>I am in grades Kindergarten, 1, 2, 3, 4, or 5. </li>
<li>If I see someone new at school, I introduce myself. </li>
<li>It is important to me to know my neighbors. </li>
<li>I try to build relationships with my neighbors. </li>
<li>I do things in my community that make a difference. </li>
</ol>
Because the beads are on a ring, we needed a way to consistently tell which question was the first one. But this wasn't quite enough, because even if you could identify question number one, you couldn't tell which was question two. So, we ended up creating two questions with binary answers and using two sets of colours (white, grey for Q1 and beige, brown for Q2) to start things off. Questions 3, 4, and 5 use a three-response option (often, sometimes, rarely).<br />
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We were able to get one afternoon of surveying in before schools were closed. If things were different...if this pandemic was something that would have swept through in a month and been gone...then we did have a plan to capture more data. Our Boys and Girls Clubs are open to provide childcare for first responders and other emergency service workers (in addition to their regular clientele...in groups of no more than 50) and we could have asked them to do paper surveys and then string the beads later.<br />
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We also identified the questions from our statewide <a href="https://www.askhys.net/">Healthy Youth Survey</a> to pull from district-level data. Here are the questions we intend to showcase for each of the six districts, as a way to compliment the data from the six clubs in their respective areas: <br />
<ol>
<li>There are adults in my neighborhood or community I could talk to about something important.</li>
<li>My neighbors notice when I am doing a good job and let me know.</li>
<li>There are people in my neighborhood who encourage me to do my best.</li>
<li>There are people in my neighborhood or community who are proud of me when I do something well. </li>
</ol>
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We did not write the five questions for the community survey during Arts Walk (the interactive part with the string). We do intend to have one question that is the same for both the K - 12 survey and the adult survey. I suspect it will be question 3 or 4.<br />
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I won't pretend that the answers for six months from now won't be vastly different. At least, I suspect they will be after we get through this crisis. I think we will look at neighbours and our roles and responsibilities to the community very differently. I kinda wish we'd been able to finish this display before the outbreak...and then do something to look at these same questions through the lens of "after." <br />
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For now, everything is frozen in time. The display...the launch of my bigger dream (<a href="http://excelforeducators.blogspot.com/2020/01/coming-soon-data-lab.html">The Data Lab</a>)...and more. I am not the only one to find themselves in this situation. For all of us, we're in a type of stasis while other things get sorted out. I am trying to remind myself that this time to pause and reflect and rest will provide the resources to fight hard later.<br />
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And I will.The Science Goddesshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02846516022505481326noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9092970177046142644.post-37672341302409606652020-02-13T20:43:00.000-08:002020-02-13T20:43:27.664-08:00We're Going to Need a Bigger DreamThere is an exchange between the two main characters in the 1954 version of <a href="https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0047522/">A Star Is Born</a> that often sticks out in my mind. James Mason's "Norman Maine" has just discovered Judy Garland's "Vicki Lester." And as they get to know each other, the dialogue goes like this:<br />
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Vicki Lester: [Norman has finished looking through her scrapbook] You know as much about me as I do myself. But... you see how long it's taken me to get this far. Now, all I need is just a little luck. <br /><br /> Norman Maine: What kind of luck? <br /><br /> Vicki Lester: Oh, the kind of luck that every girl singer with a band dreams of - one night a big talent scout from a big record company might come in and he'll let me make a record. <br /><br /> Norman Maine: Yes, and then? <br /><br /> Vicki Lester: Well, the record will become number one on the Hit Parade, it'll be played on the jukeboxes all over the country... and I'll be made <br /><br /> [laughs self-deprecatingly at the implausibility] <br /><br /> Vicki Lester: End of dream. <br /><br /> Norman Maine: There's only one thing wrong with that. <br /><br /> Vicki Lester: I know - it won't happen! <br /><br /> Norman Maine: No, it might happen pretty easily - but the dream isn't big enough. </div>
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Someone once reminded me that we don't all have James Mason character's in our lives...someone who suggests that you shouldn't settle for the little dream...that you should move on to the bigger one. And this has been sitting with me as I've started down this road of the community-based data story that I described in the <a href="http://excelforeducators.blogspot.com/2020/02/creating-connections.html">previous post</a>. With every conversation, the dream gets bigger. This is mostly because it isn't just my dream anymore. Each person breathes a little more life into it and it is slowly inflating like a beautiful balloon. It also feels so much lighter and easier to carry as it grows. And while this seemed counter-intuitive to me at first, I have realized that with more and more hands to lift it, maybe it does make sense that my part isn't as heavy. I have also noticed that when I start to feel tired or overwhelmed by this whole thing that someone else steps up to offer to schedule the next meeting or make the next phone call. It is not dependent solely upon my focus and energy. Others are going to ensure that it happens.</div>
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I have never had this experience before, and I have to say that it feels pretty magical. It still feels a bit terrifying at times...like, can we really do this? And I also have brief periods of disbelief...like, is this really happening? But I am treating this like an adventure, or at least a journey of sorts. I am meeting all sorts of characters along the way. I am learning, sometimes the hard way, about questions I should ask and things I should have prepared for. Yet, we are moving forward with this grand design. A very chatty carpenter is building a display. A local car dealership donated all the keyrings we needed. The owner of an upholstery shop has helped us find the right thread, after reminiscing about the designs he used to make. </div>
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This is at once the most challenging, yet most fulfilling, thing I've ever done. There is power and energy here to make a difference and a lot of conversations about the future. It is exhausting, but oh so satisfying. Onward we go.</div>
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The Science Goddesshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02846516022505481326noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9092970177046142644.post-59893699856469255152020-02-03T21:05:00.003-08:002020-02-03T21:05:56.782-08:00Creating ConnectionsI usually write about the data stories I build when they are complete. But this one is a little different and so I am starting its documentation at the beginning.<br />
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<span style="font-size: small;"><span style="color: #660000;"><span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">Inception</span></span></span><br />
A few months ago, I was unhappy at work. The change in leadership has not been a positive one. I still love my job (and those people I have worked with over the years), which creates an interesting challenge. Some friends suggested that I just wait out the bad seed, as those never grow for very long. But I am 50 years old now. I have spent nearly all of my working life waiting for some dude to move on. I'm tired of that...and it doesn't do anything to create a better system for younger women, people of colour, or others from underrepresented groups. <br />
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So I pondered my options:<br />
<ol>
<li>Wait it out, as suggested. Hope new leadership is competent and supportive</li>
<li>Look for a similar job to what I have now, since I like the work</li>
<li>Do something different</li>
</ol>
But, why choose when you can have them all? Just going with Option 1 is untenable; however, I can't just up and quit, either. So, I'll just keep my head down and work and have as little interaction as possible with the leadership at hand. I'm not particularly interested in Option 2, as it would mean uprooting my entire life. There is a similar job to my current one that is posted in a district north of Seattle...and pays $50K more a year than I make now. On one hand, it seems silly not to apply for it. And, on the other, chasing money for its own sake is also silly. Option 3 is even riskier. Not that I haven't taken leaps before or that I feel too old to do so now. But I had to spend time really thinking about what that would be. If I could have any job I wanted, what would make me happiest? I realized that what I like the very best about my current job is working with people to use data to answer their own questions and tell their own stories.<br />
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Are there jobs like this...at least in how I envision them? Kinda. There are things like <a href="https://weallcount.com/">We All Count</a>, and <a href="https://www.datakind.org/">DataKind</a>, and <a href="https://www.thedatalodge.com/">The Data Lodge</a>. They all have some pieces I like. I've described a bit of what I want in a <a href="http://excelforeducators.blogspot.com/2020/01/coming-soon-data-lab.html">previous post</a>. As I thought more about putting something like this together, I realized that I would need to build up some demand for it. I would probably need to keep my day job (sigh) and do consulting work on the side until I reached a tipping point of time and money to make the jump to "dream job" full time. And as much as I want it now, I also recognize that I just need 5 years to maximize my retirement options with the state. If I build capacity in the next few years, I can leave education knowing that when I reach retirement age, I will have all the benefits waiting for me.<br />
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How would I create the demand, I wondered? And then I thought about an idea that's been in the back of my mind for a year or two. People who have my role in other school districts often tell me that they wish they could build these stories, too...or at least that we could do one together. Why not start now? Better yet, what if we connected the work with a community-based organization (CBO) that was working on a strategic plan or needed some large-scale input? I remembered that I knew someone who was leading just such an organization. We had coffee one morning and the idea was off and running. I chatted with people in my role in neighbour districts...and the idea grew longer legs.<br />
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The final piece was to find a space for a display of the data story. Our town has an Arts Walk at the end of April, which seemed like a good opportunity. But what about the right place to host? I made a short list of spots in the middle of the event that I thought would have enough floor space for the design we had in mind. I reached out to the first one—our city's performing arts center—not expecting them to say "Yes." But they did, teaching me a very valuable lesson about being careful what you wish for...'cause you just might get it. They expect foot traffic of about 2000 people. 👀<br />
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Last week, I measured the space...met with one of the school districts involved (as well as the branch of the CBO we're working with in that area)...and tried not to be terrified of the enormity of what I've started. I am beyond excited about all of this, but it has been so long since anything positive has happened in my working life that I'm not sure how to mentally process this turn of events.<br />
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<span style="font-size: small;"><span style="color: #660000;"><span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">The Story</span></span></span><br />
In my conversation with the leader of the CBO, he identified three major areas the advisory group of his organization had identified as issues students across the county are facing:<br />
<ol>
<li>Needs for support with mental health</li>
<li>Lack of connection to others and community</li>
<li>Lack of a sense of purpose or direction</li>
</ol>
It's important to note that the advisory group consists of people from the county courts, school districts, and business community—all of whom work with K - 12 students, but from different angles. They all see these issues as critical to address. My connection at the CBO said that he thought the second one was most important because working on that could lead to some gains in the other two areas.<br />
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Connection is a very powerful concept. Not only was there a ready-made analogy with all of the players for this data story, but it's something that everyone (regardless of background or age) can comment on. <br />
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<span style="font-size: small;"><span style="color: #660000;"><span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">The Plan</span></span></span><br />
Yeah, yeah, I know. For my first time out, you think I could have picked a smaller bite to take. But that isn't how I roll. It's a good thing that I am a planner and I have a lot of support.<br />
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhvEO8hRoNkdjCKlTDS7xOy9TZdO067zI0tu0pPyhkxZIR9k9IftjL4-fjXV9tYNQVXRU4o-TNwKtCnqQ9atd6GV1uuovOF8I8E0g58VedmKxzSYEyYXRYZDtsqVIBNCmqcii45Jh3oyic/s1600/Ring+with+Beads.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1141" data-original-width="1204" height="189" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhvEO8hRoNkdjCKlTDS7xOy9TZdO067zI0tu0pPyhkxZIR9k9IftjL4-fjXV9tYNQVXRU4o-TNwKtCnqQ9atd6GV1uuovOF8I8E0g58VedmKxzSYEyYXRYZDtsqVIBNCmqcii45Jh3oyic/s200/Ring+with+Beads.jpg" width="200" /></a>We'll spend the next month doing some focus groups and identifying 3 - 5 questions for an individual student survey. In March, we'll have 2,000 - 3,000 students respond to the survey by building a ring with pony beads, like the one shown at the right.<br />
The colours of the beads will represent a scale, as yet to be identified. The rings are zinc wire keyrings. Each one is about 1" in size. We think we can make these items for about $200.<br />
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We're supplying frames with wire in them—much like a window screen, but much larger gauge. When a kid completes their survey, they will be able to attach it to the frame. There are six clubs/districts, so we'll have six sets of these. We'll connect these with some additional information supplied by districts to form a much larger structure.<br />
<br />
And then, in April, we'll work on building the community response piece. Our plan is to do something like this:<br />
<br />
<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg2EFhPEKohEUkJdtbuw7ydO9pnzU1OiWiPGRSz-23HeaZgfuUGk74LV4_FGQqaD7DcPIX6g5GjbTZ2I35uecq7SlabHuERws5XUM14EgNVYLpHh6FcjO8dBeI0k-XIiuT2-BjL5sQhhA0/s1600/Data+Strings.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1060" data-original-width="1600" height="265" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg2EFhPEKohEUkJdtbuw7ydO9pnzU1OiWiPGRSz-23HeaZgfuUGk74LV4_FGQqaD7DcPIX6g5GjbTZ2I35uecq7SlabHuERws5XUM14EgNVYLpHh6FcjO8dBeI0k-XIiuT2-BjL5sQhhA0/s400/Data+Strings.jpg" width="400" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://datastori.es/data-stories-58-domestic-data-streamers/2-data-strings-pcp/">https://datastori.es/data-stories-58-domestic-data-streamers/2-data-strings-pcp/</a></td></tr>
</tbody></table>
<br />
The actual questions and categories will also be driven out from the focus groups. But the Arts Walk participants will add the strings as they pass through the space.<br />
<br />
After the event, we plan to repurpose the student pieces into smaller, tabletop versions that are specific to a school district and can be displayed in other places for other conversations.<br />
<br />
And then we'll see. I'll keep you updated as this project continues to move forward. I have done this enough now to know that I need to stay flexible and that things never go 100% according to plan. There will be all sorts of things I haven't anticipated. Either this will be the starting point to a different world for me, or I
will fail spectacularly. I am very much committed, regardless of the
outcome. I will be footing the bill for this project out of my own
pocket. I have skin in the game. Keep those good thoughts headed this
direction.The Science Goddesshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02846516022505481326noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9092970177046142644.post-66787696099239996312020-02-02T07:08:00.002-08:002020-02-02T07:08:43.492-08:00Data Stories: The Next ChapterWhen I started my data stories project in 2016, my goal was to build 10 stories in 10 months. Silly me. I had no idea of how ambitious a goal that was...or the twists and turns my journey would take along the way. Here I am in my fourth year of building these, and I have finally completed <a href="http://excelforeducators.blogspot.com/2020/01/ten-turning-point.html">number 10</a>. But I think about possible ideas for more all the time, so maybe I should update my goals and vision for this work.<br />
<br />
Will I stop building these for my school district? Probably not. I do see 10 as a milestone, mainly because it was the original intent of the project. But I love doing them and their impact on others has surpassed anything I'd imagined. I will tell you that women and people of colour engage with them far more than the white males in my organization. That is not an indictment of that group or how they best engage with data. I've just come to realize that I'm not making these stories for them...and that's okay. They have plenty of other data representations that they like. But for everyone else, there is a sense of wonder and recognition in their eyes...an awakening of sorts. I am making it sound more dramatic than it really is. It's just hard to describe how people who aren't pale males look at these stories and talk about them...as if until that moment, they hadn't realized that this was the thing they were missing and someone finally showed it to them. Anyhoo, now that I've wallowed around in trying to learn how to build these things, I want to make sure I empower and equip others to do this, too.<br />
<br />
Here are some ideas I'm thinking about pursuing in future stories...<br />
<ul>
<li>I want to find a student or two in each school to give me a tour. I don't want the compliant, good-grade, class president type kid to do this. I want the one who is always asking for a hall pass. I want to see a school through the eyes of a first grader—what is the purpose of various rooms? what's the best part of the playground? I think these maps would be very interesting.</li>
<li>In a similar vein, I'd like to shadow students at different grade levels and track all of the things they touch during a school day. I wonder if I could build a physical tree map of these data—a shadow box with paper, wood, metal, and other materials in the proportion that students use them.</li>
<li>Thanks to <a href="http://datawalking.com/">data walking</a> and <a href="https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/637319734/elastic-city-prompts-for-participatory-walks">participatory walks</a> from Elastic City, I am thinking about what this could look like for our district. What sort of community data walk could I put together?</li>
<li>I continue to be intrigued by the concept of a "good school." I think there might be ways to capture data in the wild about this—the conversations that happen in the grocery store or at soccer games...the ones where parents and the community talk about us and come to their own conclusions. </li>
</ul>
There are bigger things on the horizon, although they are still shrouded in fog. I would love a job where I work with groups to help them develop meaningful goals and ways to use related data (and have started on creating <a href="http://excelforeducators.blogspot.com/2020/01/coming-soon-data-lab.html">The Data Lab</a>). I am interested in building more personal data stories to share (or sell). What would a novel look like? The life of a historical figure? My notebook is overflowing while my time allowance is not. Transitioning away from a steady paycheck and benefits toward the unknown is also not realistic at this time, but I continue to look for opportunities. I'm open to figuring it out. Dreams need time and space to breathe themselves into existence. In putting them out there, I am committed to seeing them develop.<br />
<br />
For now, I am grateful for all I've learned over the last few shares...and the opportunity to share it with others. I am looking forward to the next chapter of the story and whatever is found on that page. I am already enmeshed in another data story project involving six school districts, our county-wide Boys and Girls Club, and city Arts Walk. I'll document some things along the way as we move data stories out further in the great wide world.The Science Goddesshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02846516022505481326noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9092970177046142644.post-48098996053142179162020-01-30T19:44:00.000-08:002020-01-30T19:44:05.941-08:00Ten: The Turning PointIn the fall of 2016, I set out to tell 10 data stories in 10 months. It was an ambitious, but naȉve goal. Oh, I suppose I could have done it as long as I told tiny tales (short stories?). That's not what happened. With each story I built, things got both larger and more detailed. The materials I used were a better quality. I learned to dance with The Muse, understanding that it could be weeks or months in between the visits that would generate ideas and propel me forward. I shared with others and it has all become so much larger than some little side project. It's become a way of thinking and discipline and a path forward into what I want to do next with my life.<br />
<br />
So, here we are in the winter of January 2020. And 3.5 years after I started this whole thing, we have finally reached the 10th story...but certainly not the end.<br />
<br />
This is a story about how well our district serves students who have only attended our schools.<br />
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<span style="color: #660000;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">The Data</span></span></span><br />
There was a lot of data with this one...the most I have ever tried to represent. And while 18,500 data points might not be overly large if you're working with them in a digital format...trying to show them physically is a time-sucking nightmare. In the end, I think I found an efficient way.<br />
<br />
I pulled longitudinal (grades K - 12) data for current seniors who have only ever attended a school in our district. There were 175 of them (out of ~600). I wrestled with which data sources to use for quite awhile. Part of the challenge is that 13 years is a lot of opportunity for data systems and data collection to change. In the end, I was able to gather attendance, discipline, health room visits, enrollment in special education or the free/reduced lunch program, and performance on state assessments.<br />
<br />
Now, out of the 18,500 possible data points, "only" 10,000 or so had something that might require representation. For example, not every student received special services (and those who did were not necessarily served every year), we didn't start using our information system to collect health room visits until these students were in third grade, and state testing doesn't happen at every grade level.<br />
<br />
But 10,000 is still a lot. And while two of these areas (special education, free/reduced lunch) were binary, the other four had quite a range. I had to decide what sorts of ranges might be important. For a couple of these (attendance, performance), there were some already established parameters (e.g., "chronically absent" = missing 10% of the days in a year). For discipline and health, I developed some reasonable, but arbitrary, ranges. Although this might be a little indefensible, it also has the benefit of protecting student privacy. <br />
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhu7RiFuxzFW3Gfm1AdRSUInGajsdhBYNJFoxLHFktB_mabOf1-ZJZmIxdqEmmalbxw_qW_POFkFY7s5uDGW1kbFoQVgPXd-9TVSa5KEc8xj4CcfyDCPaidB32ams88lIuBVdUcYCGxjoA/s1600/Pencils.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1496" data-original-width="1600" height="299" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhu7RiFuxzFW3Gfm1AdRSUInGajsdhBYNJFoxLHFktB_mabOf1-ZJZmIxdqEmmalbxw_qW_POFkFY7s5uDGW1kbFoQVgPXd-9TVSa5KEc8xj4CcfyDCPaidB32ams88lIuBVdUcYCGxjoA/s320/Pencils.jpg" width="320" /></a></div>
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<span style="color: #660000;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">The Build</span></span></span><br />
I went round and round with this one for a long time. I really wanted to build something like a game board and with the various stops (grade levels) to the end (graduation) I wanted to share some additional information about that year and the changes to both school system and the world at large. I still think this is a great idea for a future story, but I just couldn't make it fit this one.<br />
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Somewhere along the way, someone shared a link to work by <a href="http://www.carengarfen.com/artistgallery">Caren Garfen</a>. Some of her data representations use buttons or dollhouse plates or other tiny objects. I think these are so very interesting. And while I didn't end up moving in that particular direction, it did inspire me to do some sort of series of objects. This is where I finally (!) had my big a-ha. What was a small object that had six sides for my six data sets? Sure, you're probably thinking of dice now...but I thought of a pencil. What a perfect object to use. Pencils are long enough to hold longitudinal data, but small enough that 175 of them will still fit in a reasonable space.<br />
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh5-ZnCXiT_wZtrTRriq4SyJzMAntGNW-w8GaFVtXlJVEhgrqow5B6rc2oqDNDV69Uu1_jFeH0XDX8Xo6zyiy-2DNTyI43-Q7giC-pYtJBE-S_M62aWf8U3cEeVW4NwzlpMD5LLxDkGjmk/s1600/PencilBoardPrep2.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1200" data-original-width="1600" height="240" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh5-ZnCXiT_wZtrTRriq4SyJzMAntGNW-w8GaFVtXlJVEhgrqow5B6rc2oqDNDV69Uu1_jFeH0XDX8Xo6zyiy-2DNTyI43-Q7giC-pYtJBE-S_M62aWf8U3cEeVW4NwzlpMD5LLxDkGjmk/s320/PencilBoardPrep2.jpg" width="320" /></a>I marked the pencils in 1 cm increments, starting at the eraser, to represent each grade level. I put one to six dots on each side of the pencil (toward the end that could be sharpened) to designate which data set was represented on that side. Then, I used leftover paint from the On the Bubble story to encode the data. This was incredibly tedious and not as precise as I would have liked, but I made it work. I sharpened the pencils that represented students who were on track to graduate at the end of the year.<br />
<br />
After the pencils were ready, I covered six 24" x 36" cork boards with material. Five of these were designated to hold the pencils and the other for annotations. I used painters tape at measured intervals <br />
to mark the places where cup hooks would be to hold the pencils. I used a drill to create 350 tiny holes in the boards and screwed in the hooks. All that was left was placing the pencils, adding the annotations, and hanging the boards.<br />
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhfeToXCVFq2QDHbjhuuZFyuJtWbUCvHRgVxrmdRLYxkRrMnn_p4mHLJP0zBFy3nDYTTknFgby99Kdu43AEgUeO2WMIp0U-guI5mWfPW6GRCApz_IpjrUzSJC6mqQf6hhTRCfgylh5PbeY/s1600/PencilLabels.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1600" data-original-width="1200" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhfeToXCVFq2QDHbjhuuZFyuJtWbUCvHRgVxrmdRLYxkRrMnn_p4mHLJP0zBFy3nDYTTknFgby99Kdu43AEgUeO2WMIp0U-guI5mWfPW6GRCApz_IpjrUzSJC6mqQf6hhTRCfgylh5PbeY/s320/PencilLabels.jpg" width="240" /></a>This is the most interactive visualization I have ever built. Each pencil can be independently turned so that viewers can investigate and see whatever story they want. I tried to be strategic about the sides of the pencils and which data sets were there. Attendance and performance are next to one another. Health room visits and participation in the free/reduced lunch program and neighbours. A viewer can look at the same side of every pencil at once, or pick a section (e.g., at-risk students) and look for commonalities. There's also a certain gestalt associated with seeing each elementary and how many students started there and are still with us. Even taking mobility out of the equation, there are very definitely some catchment areas where the overall instability is having some sort of impact on the ones who stay.<br />
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I thought a lot about labels for this story. For obvious (i.e., legal) reasons, I did not want to add anything to the pencils that would indicate gender, race, etc. I considered some summary data—for example, numbers or percent of females/males. But in the end, I decided to let the students label themselves. I emailed all of them and asked them for their five-word stories. Not all of them wanted to contribute, which was fine, but I liked the idea of pairing how they define themselves vs. how the system sees them. It's been awesome to read what they have to share.<br />
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEignOfU08PjKwla6dVH06EeuY2ThM-yBZTTI2wLxlblLBi-N3vSFFaOs14xpzKrN45HMF61P3dZjxDUH3c-0lDPR15l6L79oFEW4AvNTcqel3ymiA1QCo_4JipPo9LD7tuXTE7aI7diHfA/s1600/PencilBoardA.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1200" data-original-width="1600" height="240" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEignOfU08PjKwla6dVH06EeuY2ThM-yBZTTI2wLxlblLBi-N3vSFFaOs14xpzKrN45HMF61P3dZjxDUH3c-0lDPR15l6L79oFEW4AvNTcqel3ymiA1QCo_4JipPo9LD7tuXTE7aI7diHfA/s320/PencilBoardA.jpg" width="320" /></a></div>
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<span style="color: #660000;"><span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: small;">Lessons Learned</span></span></span><br />
This story took months. I first pulled data in early October...and it was just over three months before the final product was complete. My biggest lesson along the way had to do with figuring out what happens when you have too much data. Just use a sample? Find a different story? Aggregate things? I won't claim I found the best solution, but it has been a very valuable thought experiment.<br />
<br />
I also just had to trust the process with this one. There were several times when I wasn't 100% convinced I was on the right track. But I ended up with something incredibly personal, detailed, and very cool. The addition of student input has also been valuable. Kids have said how honored they feel to be represented, but I hope that in the long run, they will think about the imprints they leave behind and how those do or do not represent them accurately. Doing these data stories has certainly left an impression on me over these last few years...and in the next post, I'll share more about how I plan to use them to leave an even bigger impression in our community.<br />
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If you'd like to see more pictures or learn more about our data stories project in our school district, please <a href="https://www.tumwater.k12.wa.us/Page/9051">visit the companion page</a> on our district web site.
The Science Goddesshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02846516022505481326noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9092970177046142644.post-60078932798071512092020-01-13T18:40:00.003-08:002020-01-13T18:40:50.157-08:00Coming Soon: The Data Lab<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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I know it's been quiet here...but I'm still around, thinking and working on various things. My latest data story will be complete this week. It's taken a few months to represent nearly 10,000 data points, but it is looking good. More on that soon.<br />
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But today, I want to commit publicly to what's next.<br />
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It's been a challenging year at work. I still enjoy my job a lot, but not necessarily the conditions I have to currently work under. Enough said. So, as I've been talking with others about this and pondering what I want to do, I have found myself thinking about what I want. What would my job look like? And in the midst of all that, I developed what I started calling "Crazy Idea #1" and "Crazy Idea #2."<br />
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<span style="color: #660000;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">Crazy Idea #1: Community-based Data Story</span></span></span><br />
I've pushed out our district data stories into the community for the last couple of years, but what if I helped the community push out one of its own? What if I worked with an organization that needed community input on their strategic plan or other goals? What if we linked with other districts to leverage our data and resources?<br />
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And, crazy or not, this idea is in motion. I've identified an organization that is working to help students in our area build their capacity to connect with their neighbourhoods and community. I've talked with my counterparts in other districts about some data that we have in common to share. And soon, I'll be working with a few thousand students to create a data story that we will share at our city's spring arts walk. It's terrifying and inspiring...the perfect intersection of emotions to get me excited about going to work (regardless of whoever and whatever else is there).<br />
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But most importantly, I plan to use Crazy Idea #1 to launch something even crazier.<br />
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<span style="color: #660000;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">Crazy Idea #2: The Data Lab</span></span></span><br />
You see, what I really want to do is support people in using data to answer their own questions and tell their own stories. And while not all of those stories need to take a physical shape, I can honestly say that getting your hands involved builds understanding. So, to that end, I want to develop a physical space for people to come and work with data.<br />
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I see this as a storefront in our downtown area. The front would have some retail options—journals, art supplies, all manner of sticky notes, and anything else you might need for capturing and representing ideas with data. But the biggest part of the store would be a conference space...something with flexible furniture, idea paint on the walls, carts with materials, a large screen, and anything else needed for learning. I see this as a place to host workshops on all sorts of topics, data walks, group work/planning, and more. It will be a lab for building stories. I want it to have a 3D printer and laser engraver and band saw.<br />
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And my audience? Being in the state capital, there are plenty of options—from lobbyists to state agencies to schools to community-based organizations. Most importantly, I want it to be a place where all are welcome and that underrepresented groups can have their voices lifted. I want to support and grow others.<br />
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But to get there, I have to build my reputation outside of school districts and demand among other organizations. I need some time to build capital (social and monetary) through consulting so I can have enough momentum to launch the physical space. Crazy Idea #1 is going to be one of those steps.<br />
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In the meantime, I have commissioned the logo you see above. (It's not finalized yet...we're still making a few edits.) I am teaching a class on data use at a local university this spring, and that will give me an opportunity to test out some hands-on workshop ideas. I've purchased a couple of domains. And I'm off to meet with the local center for women in business to try and get smart about that side of things.<br />
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When I talk about this idea with people who know me and know my work, they all see the potential. And while I know that they're biased (as am I), I've also never been so clear on what I want in my life...not even when I picked teaching for a career. I realize that there will be lots of twists and turns on the path ahead...plenty of setbacks and disappointments...and that the final product will be different from the vision I have now. But I accept that as part of the bargain.<br />
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<br />What do you think? Any feedback on the logo or ideas? Are there people I should talk to who do similar work? What else would you advise?The Science Goddesshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02846516022505481326noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9092970177046142644.post-1722120193215394402019-08-07T20:22:00.001-07:002019-08-09T20:21:59.178-07:00Nine: Chart a CourseI'm so excited to share this project with you. It's been a long time since I felt like there was some magic in the air...and when The Muse came back, she did so with a vengeance.<br />
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This is a story about whether students who have similar paths (in the form of schools, teachers, and courses) experience similar outcomes (in the form of performance).<br />
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<span style="color: #660000;"><span style="font-size: medium;"><span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">The Data</span></span></span><br />
There are a lot of data packed into the representation of each student: gender, race, with/without disability, eligible/not eligible for free/reduced lunch, performance level for grades 3 - 7 on the state math assessment, teacher for grades 3 - 7. I built a template to pull these pieces from our student information system, but beyond that, I did not need to transform any of the data—no formulas, pivot tables, etc.<br />
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I did generate an alias for every student and teacher, because I fed their connections (which student had which teacher/course) into the <a href="https://databasic.io/en/connectthedots/">Connect the Dots</a> tool on databasic.io. I will explain the reason for this later on in this post.<br />
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<span style="color: #660000;"><span style="font-size: medium;"><span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">The Build</span></span></span><br />
The entire display is paper and glue, with map pins to attach each "student" to a board. That's it. The representations were built by <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Quilling">quilling paper</a>. I love that these data look fragile, but I have to tell you that the pieces are strong and resilient...much like our students. Also like our students, nearly all of them are unique. <br />
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Here's what you're looking at for a student. The star is made of 5 rays, representing the five grade levels (3 - 7). Grade 3 is in the 12 o'clock position, and the rest follow as you move clockwise around the star. If a student didn't attend one of our schools for a given grade level, there is no ray at that position.<br />
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjEuCGg8_FRZ7ewFoNjV3-DoFEAOHeIuzlmBDSK538zZSn6P-eEfjWu2ko78FzxFqjcMBMirMLQ4j8bqgARJv4yG0lmzjLAPhcd-5q_qb09bAErGyeKXwMzzkKqDlmP_Ad8QaEE11Dc3JI/s1600/Star+Legend.png" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="584" data-original-width="1015" height="184" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjEuCGg8_FRZ7ewFoNjV3-DoFEAOHeIuzlmBDSK538zZSn6P-eEfjWu2ko78FzxFqjcMBMirMLQ4j8bqgARJv4yG0lmzjLAPhcd-5q_qb09bAErGyeKXwMzzkKqDlmP_Ad8QaEE11Dc3JI/s320/Star+Legend.png" width="320" /></a></div>
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The paper colour for each ray shows what the performance level was on the state math assessment for that grade. Orange is level one (well below standard), yellow is level two (below standard), light blue is level three (at standard), and dark blue is level four (above standard). Each ray is wrapped in a piece of coloured paper to indicate a particular teacher/school. We have six elementary schools serving grades 3 - 5, so there are six sets of colours: orange, purple, green, blue, red, and yellow. There are two middle schools serving grades 6 - 7, represented by blue and red. If a student attended one of our schools at a given grade level, but didn't take the test, the ray has the outer wrapper and is empty for the performance level. <br />
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On the inside of each star are four round disks of paper in white (w) and grey (g).<br />
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiI1F2LzbMzp6pobPpIS4SWQujVzeePK01tv7BwuBljT3JnxKWf_9WKMMOqTt_PHw2nq0eRNspZQf8NoVpcfok49I6CS1eLbFoNL2Zn_FwPzes3k5cWr4kV2uATv2hApeobV2WJQNZ-5oU/s1600/Star+Interior.png" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="293" data-original-width="1211" height="96" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiI1F2LzbMzp6pobPpIS4SWQujVzeePK01tv7BwuBljT3JnxKWf_9WKMMOqTt_PHw2nq0eRNspZQf8NoVpcfok49I6CS1eLbFoNL2Zn_FwPzes3k5cWr4kV2uATv2hApeobV2WJQNZ-5oU/s400/Star+Interior.png" width="400" /></a></div>
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Note that we did not have any non-binary students at this grade level last year, so male and female were the only categories. I also collapsed our students of colour into one category, and while I strongly believe that this is not best practice, I am also legally obligated to protect personally identifiable information about students. At this grade level, we have some racial populations with only two or three students. When faced with a choice of leaving race out of the conversation completely or summarizing it into two categories...I chose Option B. Certainly, there are other data points I could have selected here, such as attendance or discipline. But I like that the center of the star includes some "internal" attributes that students bring with them, while the outer rays represent the "external" pieces in the form of teachers and system outcomes.<br />
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Here is a small group of students that shows the variations by missing grade levels, missing scores, gender, etc:<br />
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh3iVNL3nC5nCq60Ty_0RcTH_s_VRmc2aarN5F-X1p_fWJ0Fz_Y81OpDM3WbedjjVcH85WoXVlNov4rfXdQA8cGYUCqPcoWdIxM0klOjGwE0Is6BfKuRv6t0_Q5U2yaqGL6D1kvmCXPVIE/s1600/Star+Group.png" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="702" data-original-width="694" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh3iVNL3nC5nCq60Ty_0RcTH_s_VRmc2aarN5F-X1p_fWJ0Fz_Y81OpDM3WbedjjVcH85WoXVlNov4rfXdQA8cGYUCqPcoWdIxM0klOjGwE0Is6BfKuRv6t0_Q5U2yaqGL6D1kvmCXPVIE/s320/Star+Group.png" width="316" /></a></div>
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Now that I had 452(!) of these objects, I needed to figure out the connections between them. This is where the Connect the Dots tool helped. For each school, I uploaded a coded list of students and teachers. The online tool produced a network diagram like the one below, but more importantly, it provided me with a table showing me who was in each group, as well as the connections.<br />
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj68oGDEmuxZSlLyBBd5XMoJh4EqVSngyOYLeFk7Jnb2ExAfPvLeXfeBfY_upYdFvsLssnvZ7wDD1vrQDkUyiPJJTWQVUb5c_tjcZMIgf1fVhcUSQVMmi1Pa5nPPkWPFt5FxjRvSXYBxUg/s1600/the-csv.png" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="932" data-original-width="1304" height="142" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj68oGDEmuxZSlLyBBd5XMoJh4EqVSngyOYLeFk7Jnb2ExAfPvLeXfeBfY_upYdFvsLssnvZ7wDD1vrQDkUyiPJJTWQVUb5c_tjcZMIgf1fVhcUSQVMmi1Pa5nPPkWPFt5FxjRvSXYBxUg/s200/the-csv.png" width="200" /></a><br />
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjccjxMDz8gbmxfks-2ZbrzjGxLig3wLxINHVH1FjqWIa2Qy1WetdEyrpDwwjeK_I4WEpWtIKunOtAzlnDlKh5RZHlPgvB_JDeJpDAldLv7uSDsC-wrwrpGfUxE0XJfMcce3gn1P_Wetfo/s1600/Star+School.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1457" data-original-width="972" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjccjxMDz8gbmxfks-2ZbrzjGxLig3wLxINHVH1FjqWIa2Qy1WetdEyrpDwwjeK_I4WEpWtIKunOtAzlnDlKh5RZHlPgvB_JDeJpDAldLv7uSDsC-wrwrpGfUxE0XJfMcce3gn1P_Wetfo/s320/Star+School.jpg" width="213" /></a>I selected the stars in each group and laid them out as a constellation. I placed stars that had teachers/courses in common closer together. Most of our elementary schools had 6 or 7 constellations. Here is one of them (before labels).<br />
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Each elementary school was organized on its own 24" x 36" cork board that had been covered in fabric. Stars were attached with map pins and then annotations were added to share what the group had in common. The six schools were organized into two sets of three, because we have two feeder patterns into middle school. This allows a look across the district.<br />
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<span style="color: #660000;"><span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: medium;">Lessons Learned</span></span></span><br />
When people use the phrase "labour of love," I will now know what they mean. I personally wove every piece of paper used in this display. I spent about 300 hours total building this story out of 3200 pieces of paper and a bottle of glue. Most of the work was done during my summer vacation: early mornings, late nights, weekends, at home and while visiting others. I drank a ton of coffee (mostly decaf, I promise). I got glue all over everything—my computer, my dining table, me. I have never devoted so much time and energy to creating one of these stories. But it was all worth it. This is the most beautiful display I've ever built. But beyond that, it is fascinating to look at. There is so much meaning packed into this. It captures and holds one's attention.<br />
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One of the things I have to remind myself is that when I uploaded the information about students and teachers, that was it—no information about gender, race, etc. And yet, it is obvious with some of groups that they have some of these attributes in common. In other words, the system either does or does not support certain types of kids. Now, this is not new learning, especially at a large scale level. But we are talking about small groups here. Let me give you one example. For students who take the advanced math track on one side of our district, one school only placed males there...the second nearly all males...but the third placed about even numbers by gender. What was most interesting about this third school is that nearly every girl who was in this track and successful in math had the same third grade teacher. That one teacher was the common denominator...and that group was different from every other in the district. And until I built this display, I would never have seen this. I was also surprised at how different every student appeared. Yes, I know that every child is an individual, but this display really drives it home. While there are a few (but not many!) students who had the same five teachers, they did not have the same internal attributes or the same outcomes.<br />
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If you'd like to see more pictures or learn more about our data stories project in our school district, please <a href="https://www.tumwater.k12.wa.us/Page/8881">visit the companion page</a> on our district web site. The Science Goddesshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02846516022505481326noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9092970177046142644.post-63604115765264137652019-08-06T21:25:00.001-07:002019-08-06T21:25:33.214-07:00Eight: Unmasking LAPI have had this post in my queue for a few months. Last school year was a hard year, for a variety of reasons...and I didn't feel like publishing to create any reminders of it. But I have something super-special (finally!) to share tomorrow, so I'm pushing this one out the door today.<br />
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I finally built and shared my first data story for the 2018 - 2019 school year. While I originally had some big plans for data stories this year — including community involvement — this has not turned out to be anything like a normal school year. I'll spare you the gory details, but just say that the impact of all the turmoil has been that I mostly don't feel interested in creating anything...even though my passion for this project remains. So, over the last three months, I have been chipping away at doing something and hoping that this will rekindle some joy. <br />
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<span style="color: #660000;"><span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: medium;">Background</span></span></span><br />
I have been wanting to look at our intervention data. In our state, supplemental funding is provided via the Learning Assistance Program (LAP). The goal is to work with students who are at least one grade level behind in reading or math and accelerate their learning so they can meet grade level expectations. Our district uses nearly all this funding in our elementary schools to buy teacher and paraeducator time. These interventionist use a "pull out" model where students come to a separate space each day for up to 30 minutes of extra instruction, tutoring, and support. Each school determines which grade levels to serve, which area (reading or math), how to group students, and what materials to use. There are a lot of variables, but the bottom line is really about outcomes.<br />
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What I've noticed over the last several years is that once a student is identified for LAP services, they rarely make enough progress to exit the program. The primary reason why they leave the program is that it's the end of the school year and there's no more time. However, the news isn't all bad, but it's still challenging to identify what it means for the program to be effective.<br />
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<span style="color: #660000;"><span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: medium;">The Data</span></span></span><br />
For this story, I pulled student performance data from fall and winter for every K - 5 student who has been served in LAP this year. I wanted to look at both growth and proficiency across schools. I also wanted to show some of the difference in the populations we serve — for example, a student with low-performance might receive support at one school, but not another, just because of program capacity and the volume of students to serve.<br />
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After I pulled assessment data for each of these students, I found the raw difference between the number of points earned between fall and winter. I compared that with the amount of growth necessary to maintain an "at grade level" performance between those two time points and identified each of the LAP students as having less than or at least that amount of growth.<br />
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<span style="color: #660000;"><span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: medium;">The Build</span></span></span><br />
I used Sculpey clay and a mold to create a face for each student. We have six elementary schools, so six colours (orange, blue, purple, red, green, brown) were used. The clay was tinted to create a gradation of each colour to represent the number of years the student had spent in the intervention program. More years equaled a darker hue. Faces representing students who had made more than the required amount of grade level growth were attached to a pin so they would stick out from the board, creating a 3D effect.<br />
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I used six boards, one for each grade level. Students were placed on the board based on how much overall growth they had made between fall and winter. This was not an exact placement—I used a bit of artistic license to group students. My goal was to create a mask shape with the faces, with the idea that we were trying to reveal something about the program.<br />
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<span style="color: #660000;"><span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: medium;">Lessons Learned</span></span></span><br />I have to admit that this was not my favourite project to do. It was important from the standpoint that I needed to get back into producing stories again and this forced me to at least think about communicating with data. However, it did reveal some things about our intervention program, including that it's not particularly effective. Considering the state gives us nearly 2 million dollars to run it, I'm not convinced it's a good investment of taxpayer dollars. This is not to say that students don't grow or that for some individuals it provides good support. It doesn't mean that there aren't some adults in our buildings busting their rears to make a difference for students. But if the goal is to get every child to be able to perform at grade level for reading...well, there's not a lot of good news in this story. When I think about the students who have spent multiple years in the program, I wonder why we keep exposing them to the same intervention and expecting a different outcome. What should we be doing instead? We still haven't had that conversation in our district and honestly, I don't know if anyone is interested in doing that.The Science Goddesshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02846516022505481326noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9092970177046142644.post-52802342554264818862019-02-25T20:21:00.000-08:002019-02-25T20:22:14.622-08:00You Can Count on Me<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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I don’t remember where I first read about these programmable buttons from Amazon. Sure, many of us have seen the “Dash” versions you can get which allow you to place an order at the click of a button, but there is potential for more. And while I’ll let your own minds wander to all of the possibilities, I just want to talk about one: using these as <i>data collection</i> devices. <br />
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You can configure each button to communicate over wifi. It can receive and transmit data related to a single, double, or long click. Slip one in your pocket. What are the kinds of things you might like to track? How many minutes in a class period the teacher is talking…or how many boys, girls, or non-binary students s/he calls on? What if you gave one to a student and asked him/her to push a button every time an adult in the building greeted him or her by name? We could even go bigger. What if you put a set in the office with a different question each week and asked visitors to respond? <br />
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I had these and other questions in mind. So, last summer, we ordered one of these <a href="https://www.amazon.com/1st-Generation-AWS-IoT-Button/dp/B01C7WE5WM">Amazon Internet of Things (IoT) Buttons</a> for our office…and since then, it’s been sitting in its little box, staring at me, waiting for its opportunity to be useful. When I found myself with a gift of time this week, I decided it was finally the moment to program the little beast. Now it’s time to share my learning with you, in case you want to jump in on this, too. <br />
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My only disclaimer here is that what I know about coding would fit in a thimble. There will be, no doubt, more elegant solutions to what I implemented—and if you know them, I hope that you’ll share. Here are the resources on which I relied most heavily: <br />
<ul>
<li>Caroline Dunn has a great <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bgnA8g48LK0">video on YouTube</a> to help you set up your button and get you started. The code and IFTTT recipes have some useful background, but they did not work for me “as is.” </li>
<li>This <a href="https://medium.com/@josephjguerra/aws-iot-button-setup-with-the-new-mobile-app-and-ifttt-1d5342f045ce">code</a> from Joseph Guerra, however, works like a dream. The only limitation is that it shows you how to capture information from a single click—not the double or long-click (if you want to use all three options with one button). </li>
<li>To overcome this last issue, I was able to use some <a href="https://forums.aws.amazon.com/thread.jspa?threadID=237089">code from here</a>. I still had to figure out where to place it…but I did. And you can, too. </li>
</ul>
You will need <br />
<ul>
<li>An <a href="https://www.amazon.com/1st-Generation-AWS-IoT-Button/dp/B01C7WE5WM">Amazon IoT button</a> ($14.95) </li>
<li>An <a href="https://aws.amazon.com/">Amazon AWS account</a> (Free!) </li>
<li>AWS BTN Dev and AWS BTN Wifi apps (Free!) </li>
<li>An <a href="https://ifttt.com/">IFTTT account</a> (Free!) </li>
<li>A Google account (Free!) </li>
</ul>
I won’t get into the nitty-gritty here with the button set up—watch Caroline’s video or hit teh Googles for some additional support. Basically, you’ll install the apps on your mobile device and use those to configure the button to a designated wifi source and select its first task. <br />
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Next, set up your IFTTT (If This, Then That) recipes. You'll need three: one for a single click, one for a double click, and one for a long click. Use the Webhooks app as the trigger (If then...) and the "add a row" option from Google Sheets (...then that) to capture the type of click. Even though you set this stuff up first, it's really the second part of what happens when the button gets pushed. But you need some information from this to add to the first part of process.<br />
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So let's take care of that. Log into your Amazon AWS account and find the Lambda app. This is where your code for the button lives. There's some placeholder stuff there from when you first configured the button using the app on your smartphone. Delete that and replace it with the stuff from Joseph Guerra. You'll be all set for one type of click (single, double, or long). If you want to have the button collect two or all three types of clicks, modify the code so it looks like the sample below. Note that you're just copying the stuff for your first click type (e.g., Single) and pasting it in two more times for Double and Long. Replace the words "Single" with the other clicks.<br />
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That's it. You can do it. I did---and I didn't even have this to get started. Keep in mind that you can modify your code here to associate different names with your IFTTT recipes (applets). If you don't want <i>single, double, long</i> showing in your spreadsheet, you can have <i>yes, no, maybe</i> or <i>thumbs up</i> and <i>thumbs down</i>. Or <i>start</i> and <i>stop</i>. The possibilities might not be endless, but the variations are completely up to you.<br />
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What I like about the button is not just its options for simplified, automated, and "mobile" data collection, but also the anonymous nature of it. The Google Sheet only captures a timestamp and click type (or whatever word you tell it). When I handed the button off to a principal to use in his building, I told him that whatever shows up in the spreadsheet is all his---I don't need to know who he gave the button to or what the clicks represent or what questions he had in mind. As long as he can extract what meaning he needs, then that's all that matters. And even if the spreadsheet was public, the data won't mean anything to anyone who doesn't know what the various clicks represent.<br />
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Now that I survived my first foray into this world, I'm ready to go further. We ordered 19 more of the buttons and I will get started this week getting those programmed and ready to check out to principals. I'm excited to see all the different ways that they use these to gather information in their buildings.<br />
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What will you do with yours?The Science Goddesshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02846516022505481326noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9092970177046142644.post-71783157924179807032018-07-07T13:56:00.000-07:002018-07-07T13:56:27.635-07:00Road MapI consider myself an organized person, but not much of a planner. At least, I don't do a lot of long term planning. I have never had a career path that I've mapped out. I didn't decide I wanted to be a teacher until the month I graduated from college...and since then, I've more or less fallen into different jobs when recognized Opportunity knocking at the door. I am also a fan of her sister, <i>Serendipity</i>. In fact, this is one of the reasons why my current home is my favourite place I've ever lived. There are little bits of magic and wonder to be found every day. I don't offer or condone any of this as the best approach to life. I am always in awe of those who have clear goals and seem to be driven toward them. It just hasn't been my experience...and I am okay with this.<br />
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So, imagine my surprise when, by chance, I found myself writing a theory of action, developing a logic model, and outlining a plan for some long-term goals with a data initiative. Who the hell am I becoming in my old age? But if you've been following my journey here over the last year or so, maybe some of what I share below will not be a surprise. In fact, I'm hoping that some of you might like to play along, too.<br />
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<span style="font-size: large;"><span style="color: #660000;"><span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">Theory of action</span></span></span><br />
Here is my current, messy thinking: <i></i><br />
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
<i>If we increase data literacy in ourselves and others, then participation in conversations at school and with the community will become more equitable, and then structural and institutional barriers to education will be reduced.</i></blockquote>
I've spent a lot of time in the last couple of years trying to ground myself in what I believe about data and the purpose it serves in education. I might summarize this as that I don't think that we can solve problems by representing our data in the same ways and having the same conversations as we have before<i>. </i>Whether your call it an achievement gap, opportunity gap, or educational debt, the bottom line is that we've been well aware of disproportionate outcomes for a long time...and yet another bar chart showing this isn't going to be the thing that creates change. I won't claim that I have THE answer or any sort of magic bullet, but I do have something different. I think that's the best place to start.<br />
<br /><i></i>
<span style="font-size: large;"><span style="color: #660000;"><span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">The plan</span></span></span><br />
I've been working on some ideas related to community engagement with data, building data literacy in parent groups, and empowering underrepresented voices to tell their stories. And the more I read and think and develop these ideas, the more I recognize that there are some goals and outcomes that are bigger than I'd ever imagined. <i>Serendipity</i> has been an incredible guide and inspiration to this point, but I can't make the next leap (or two) with her alone. I'm going to have to have some real help.<br />
<br /><i></i>
<b><span style="color: #660000;">Stage one: Build capacity in self</span></b><br />
Not to be intentionally selfish, but this part of the process really is all about me. Perhaps you have projects where you are in the same mode. This has been a long-gestating stage. I went to my first Tapestry and Eyeo conferences more than two years ago. I've been building and sharing data stories in our district office for nearly that long. On the way, I've had to pick up new tools and skills and increase my personal network to call on experts and mentors. I don't believe that this stage will ever end—I will always be a learner. But I also think it's important to call it out separately as a base for everything else I want to support.<br />
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<span style="color: #660000;"><b>Stage two: Build capacity in organization</b></span><br />
This past year, I've worked on not just sharing what I've learned at presentations and blog posts, but also leading workshops and building GitHub sites with resources. I've now seen others build their own data stories to share and grounded school leaders in our district in basic data literacy.<br />
<br />
<span style="color: #660000;"><b>Stage three: Build partnerships outside of the organization</b></span><br />
I am working on finding spaces outside of our district to host our data stories. Currently, <a href="http://excelforeducators.blogspot.com/2018/01/six-ready-or-not.html">Ready or Not</a> is at our regional educational office and our <a href="http://excelforeducators.blogspot.com/2017/08/four-class-of-2018.html">story on graduation</a> is at the state department of education. And last week, in a frisson of why-the-hell-not, I cold-called the data analytics business downtown and asked if they would host a window display during our city's fall Arts Walk. You see, I've recently been building "short stories"—smaller versions of the big displays—to take on the road. And while I won't claim that they are art, they are beautiful and good conversation starters. Why shouldn't I share them at a community event?<br />
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Another piece of <i>stage three</i> is a pilot project for next year where we will use some of the <a href="https://datatherapy.org/activities/">data therapy activities</a> and other resources to increase data literacy in a parent or community group. But most importantly, this is not a project solely about pushing out some learning that we think is critical. It is about an opportunity to listen to the questions others have about our schools, as well as help them tell their own stories about what matters most to them about education. I am super-excited about this, even if I have no clue right now how to make this all happen.<br />
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<span style="color: #660000;"><b>Stage four: Empower the community</b></span><br />
On one hand, this is really just an extension of stage three. If we do a pilot this year, then we will scale up afterward. But this is also where things get so big that it can't be "my" project anymore. This is a good thing. It means that I've been able to build enough capacity and partnerships that I can take a supporting role. What will all this look like? It might be a lot like the work showcased over at <a href="http://making-sense.eu/">Making Sense</a>. They have a whole toolkit ready and waiting. I also 💕 love 💕 this article on <a href="http://citeseerx.ist.psu.edu/viewdoc/download?doi=10.1.1.726.3131&rep=rep1&type=pdf">Data in Place: Thinking through Relations between Data and Community</a>. I don't know what the outputs of this project will look like for us because we haven't implemented all of stage three yet. We will have to wait and see what our stakeholders think is the most critical issue to address.<br />
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So, there you have it. My plans for world data domination. Okay, maybe not as grand as all that, but I am hoping for a ripple that one day can become a wave. And this is where you come in, too, because everyone is welcome to join in. Are there activities you want to try, too, so we can learn from each other? Do you have connections or resources to share? What feedback or ideas do you have for us?<br />
The Science Goddesshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02846516022505481326noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9092970177046142644.post-73922672828398760572018-04-20T20:23:00.000-07:002018-04-22T08:15:10.542-07:00Seven: Care to Comment?<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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What do we say about our students? Do our values align with the words we use? Do they reflect what parents think is important about what happens in the classroom?<br />
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In this data story, we take a closer look at 3,694 comments written about 2,862 K - 5 students on their winter report cards.<br />
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<span style="color: #660000;"><span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: large;">The Data</span></span></span><br />
Similar to last time, there wasn't anything especially fancy in terms of getting the data. We have reports in our student information system that will gather the information and spit it out into a spreadsheet. After that, I added student demographics and program information from another student file using trusty old INDEX/MATCH.<br />
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The big challenge part was getting the data clean...or, at least, cleanish. You see, I didn't want student names. Why not? In part because I wanted to make some of the data available to others. This means I needed to strip out identifying information from the text. Also, the names interfered with some of the frequency counting and comparisons I wanted to make. (Aside: Do you realize how many kids are go by the name "Maddie"? I didn't.)<br />
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I did a first pass using the SUBSTITUTE function in Excel. I had Excel replace any occurrences of a student's first name with "" to blank it out. However, this only worked when a teacher used the actual name of the student. Many kids go by nicknames, shortened versions of their names, first and middle names, etc. I'm sure there must be better ways than looking through things row by row, but that's what I ended up doing.<br />
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<span style="color: #660000;"><span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: large;">The Analysis</span></span></span><br />
After the spreadsheets were all cleaned up and ready for church, I looked at some different options for doing the text analysis. I don't have any real experience with this, and while I looked as some fancy options like <a href="https://www.overviewdocs.com/">Overview</a>, <a href="http://khc.sourceforge.net/en/">KH Coder</a>, and <a href="http://emosaic.de/">Emosaic</a>, I just didn't have the time to devote to digging into them right now. Instead, I used the WordCounter and SameDiff options over at <a href="http://databasic.io/">DataBasic.io</a>.<br />
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The WordCounter provided the basis for the word cloud you see in the picture at the top of this page. I used SameDiff to compare lists of comments for male and female students, for example.<br />
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There are also comparisons for students who receive special services (vs. those who don't), students eligible for free/reduced lunch (vs. those who aren't), and students of colour (vs. white).<br />
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I also used a couple of pivot tables in Excel to summarize and sort through the data—for example, the total number of comments per grade level or per student population.<br />
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<span style="color: #660000;"><span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: large;">The Build</span></span></span><br />
Compared to the last few data stories we've built out in the hallway, this one is less complicated. There's a lot of paper and stickers, with some foam to help provide dimension to the word cloud.<br />
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I knew I wanted the background to be yellow...something bright for spring, but neutral enough that the black lettering could pop. We put the word cloud in the center of the board. It has the 50 most commonly used words. On the outside, we have the four pairs of lists with words that are only found in comments for students in a particular group. The list for our students who receive special services is particularly depressing.<br />
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But wait, there's more...<br />
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This is our first data story which uses two boards. On the second board, we have information for our students in secondary grades (6 - 12). There are two middle schools and two high schools. Teachers have a list of "canned" comments at each school that they can assign—two per class per grading period—as opposed to the freeform comments elementary teachers create. For these students, we did some simple counts of how many comments per student and then underneath those charts are lists of the most common and least common comments selected. On the right of the board, we have an area for people to leave comments for us.<br />
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This second board isn't as sexy as the one for elementary, but I'm still excited that we have represented something for every school and every K - 12 student (even if they received no comments).<br />
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<span style="color: #660000;"><span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: large;">Lessons Learned</span></span></span><br />
This is one project where I would have loved to have rejected the <i>null hypothesis</i>: the idea that there isn't any difference between student groups. But even with this very basic analysis, I couldn't. Even though most of the text is pretty much the same across student groups at the elementary level, the bottom line is there are some differences in how we talk about boys and girls...and for students of colour...and students from low-income backgrounds...and those who receive special services.<br />
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We may never eliminate bias, but if we don't bring it to light, we can't start to address it. While it's great that our district is taking on several initiatives around inclusion and cultural competency, but these are useless if we only use them to pat ourselves on the back for starting them. If we can't change the system in meaningful ways for students, we are just as complicit as those who built the structures in the first place. This display is one way to raise some awareness of what we're up against.<br />
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To see more pictures of this project, or view frequency tables of the comments, please visit the <a href="https://www.tumwater.k12.wa.us/Page/8497">page for this data story</a>. As always, comments welcome!The Science Goddesshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02846516022505481326noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9092970177046142644.post-46553212701928026602018-01-11T22:25:00.002-08:002018-01-13T16:41:12.516-08:00Six: Ready or Not<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgUkRFTFHcQqc029A0RXDi4gW3g1PuBlxFBpckfShGsppTBfA0FUU2dWvIeyR2nGc5xFNXWHGA3Cw1T4NWfLPmuK-QwMZ-yWsNAIo94cInouxEE7xo8um6BS31sn4LN2fWl0fKH_N2QV_Y/s1600/PGSHeader.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="397" data-original-width="1576" height="160" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgUkRFTFHcQqc029A0RXDi4gW3g1PuBlxFBpckfShGsppTBfA0FUU2dWvIeyR2nGc5xFNXWHGA3Cw1T4NWfLPmuK-QwMZ-yWsNAIo94cInouxEE7xo8um6BS31sn4LN2fWl0fKH_N2QV_Y/s640/PGSHeader.jpg" width="640" /></a></div>
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This (school) year, I have built a story about our <a href="http://excelforeducators.blogspot.com/2017/08/four-class-of-2018.html">high school seniors</a>...and one for our <a href="http://excelforeducators.blogspot.com/2017/11/five-on-bubble.html">sixth graders</a>...and now I'm moving down to kindergarten. For our sixth data story, we are looking at early learning data. What does it mean to be <i>kindergarten ready</i>?<br />
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhnFD3TmUPIOnbmA8ZOhbcmBaaE4wI7sZx36R8dSSqEXrfz3beXnGPQFTudj2kZF5wsx1GUMabYQdB_4AXpKV5xfyg7Lft9bTTMu5ciZol87goZWO-2CjvuqkALaidNXIVRVegW5b_u_U8/s1600/MuseTweet.PNG" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1084" data-original-width="1540" height="225" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhnFD3TmUPIOnbmA8ZOhbcmBaaE4wI7sZx36R8dSSqEXrfz3beXnGPQFTudj2kZF5wsx1GUMabYQdB_4AXpKV5xfyg7Lft9bTTMu5ciZol87goZWO-2CjvuqkALaidNXIVRVegW5b_u_U8/s320/MuseTweet.PNG" width="320" /></a></div>
As usual, I didn't set out to tell this particular tale. I was totally going down a different path, thinking about student absences and creating some sort of strip plot...and as I doodled over dinner on the longest night of the year, The Muse came calling. And in about 10 minutes, I had the whole thing in mind about how to present our early learning data.<br />
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Our district has been participating in the state-mandated <a href="http://www.k12.wa.us/WaKIDS/Assessment/default.aspx">WaKIDS assessment</a> for three years. Teachers collect observational data about each student's development in six categories: social-emotional, physical, cognitive, language, literacy, and math. There is a 9-level scale for each item, with birth to age 1 being the lowest and third grade being the highest. Only eight of these are shown below, as no child in our district was rated the lowest level in any category.<br />
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhUDfO-tlHSgoksA28pAWRI8JbXQNGgkVnzKIloljDnDdfmubGq4l3t6XFgbE3ensiYY1BLmEm0ToIlYJhBH5lXNvII8sgvv50QNhJSF9D4g6qipW_tTuM6me8RxKAgohCxdRk706RhmlE/s1600/WaKIDS+Scale.png" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="178" data-original-width="1445" height="48" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhUDfO-tlHSgoksA28pAWRI8JbXQNGgkVnzKIloljDnDdfmubGq4l3t6XFgbE3ensiYY1BLmEm0ToIlYJhBH5lXNvII8sgvv50QNhJSF9D4g6qipW_tTuM6me8RxKAgohCxdRk706RhmlE/s400/WaKIDS+Scale.png" width="400" /></a></div>
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<span style="color: #660000;"><span style="font-size: large;"><span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">The Data</span></span></span><br />
This story was one of the easiest in terms of managing the data files. The state provides us with a file of everything submitted by teachers, and then I merged in a few other demographic and program pieces. This time around, there were no statistical shenanigans, just total counts for each category and level.<br />
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<span style="color: #660000;"><span style="font-size: large;"><span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">The Build</span></span></span><br />
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiVYB-QcqpnK7eCWV4qt4zB6D0EoWRanGJdSZaysLtKAt8LGtbAk6EenTt8uR8n0vfYxJ9TG-4LFYqYrANn9AktrsDvnmieFoEAdPQt9-4_Tz6E5us_nAplK3ZnjYPJphoUW1V0rUmMOVo/s1600/WaKIDSPins.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1600" data-original-width="1200" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiVYB-QcqpnK7eCWV4qt4zB6D0EoWRanGJdSZaysLtKAt8LGtbAk6EenTt8uR8n0vfYxJ9TG-4LFYqYrANn9AktrsDvnmieFoEAdPQt9-4_Tz6E5us_nAplK3ZnjYPJphoUW1V0rUmMOVo/s320/WaKIDSPins.jpg" width="240" /></a>Do you remember these? Usually built with pony beads, they have made various appearances throughout the years to signify friendship, solidarity, remembrance, or another purpose. Perhaps you wore them on your shoelaces or the lapel of a jacket.<br />
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If you haven't seen these sorts of things, they are constructed from safety pins and beads. I remembered them when I was still pondering the strip plot idea and veered off into how I might be able to string or hang beads from a line. Once I thought of the safety pins, I made an immediate connection to early learning (even if we don't use safety pins for diapers anymore).<br />
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After I had the concept, I knew I could build a safety pin with beads for each of our 486 kindergartners. Some back of the envelope calculations showed that I could fit 6 beads (at .5 - .6 mm each) on a 2" safety pin. This would allow me to show all six data points of the assessment, using beads with colours matching the developmental levels indicated by the teacher.<br />
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjTkRhlwcLOoJQGEupmod-jhD0UJ-9IIHL7Hk8UNOc3ax3xxRmakEeMzTaNkS5LhFOaCNdCNq7FmwEa0BKyCWBxrEQzEsropfPeRPhK9uXO9eq9GTDY-6tgz5V1ibwXKnYWhJAVqVKRvJg/s1600/Pin+Legend.png" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="420" data-original-width="875" height="153" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjTkRhlwcLOoJQGEupmod-jhD0UJ-9IIHL7Hk8UNOc3ax3xxRmakEeMzTaNkS5LhFOaCNdCNq7FmwEa0BKyCWBxrEQzEsropfPeRPhK9uXO9eq9GTDY-6tgz5V1ibwXKnYWhJAVqVKRvJg/s320/Pin+Legend.png" width="320" /></a></div>
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But what else could I encode, I wondered? <br />
<br />
In divining the entrails of the data, I noticed that there were a few student attributes that might be worthy of further attention. First was gender. It is not uncommon to hear parents talking about "red shirting" young boys to give them an additional year to mature...but do the data bear this out? I ordered two types of safety pins to help us look at this: gold for girls and silver for boys. The second piece was a student's birthdate. We have a cutoff of September 1. If a student is not 5 years old by then, they can't enroll. But does that really matter---are older students more "ready"? I decided to encode this using different colours of map pins to attach the safety pins to the display. I picked red (because it was not one of the 8 colours of beads) for students who had a birthdate less than six months prior to the first day of school and white pins for older students. Finally, what about low income status? I didn't want to mark this by individual student, due to privacy issues; but, as I organized the pins by school, I decided to order the schools by their overall percentage of students who have low income status. That would give a general comparison. I did look at and consider race; however, I did not represent it with this display because (a) it was actually not as influential a factor as the others for this particular data set and (b) I couldn't represent it as accurately as it deserves. By this, I mean that with student privacy laws, by the time I made a pin showing race and gender, it could become very easy to associate the data with a particular child...especially as most of our schools might only have only one kindergarten student of a particular race. (Yes, we are very white.)<br />
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So here, is the final display:<br />
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi4xymvQozuEyjF-edzRfDmf9GD3VOXJve6PPd1ZimwDRXCfIJ-bvb006Hp_gGSAZngxlOkYP4UcVpOKYVb9ZPMASJl_T_S2Ahe_ACzdMzrcdraJrz9zYhriX3j47FbnmNikOiUK1T-WXw/s1600/ReadyOrNotBoard.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1200" data-original-width="1600" height="480" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi4xymvQozuEyjF-edzRfDmf9GD3VOXJve6PPd1ZimwDRXCfIJ-bvb006Hp_gGSAZngxlOkYP4UcVpOKYVb9ZPMASJl_T_S2Ahe_ACzdMzrcdraJrz9zYhriX3j47FbnmNikOiUK1T-WXw/s640/ReadyOrNotBoard.jpg" width="640" /></a></div>
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The pins are organized in the space for each school by those kindergartners who were reported as most ready (all purple---or better---in the six categories) to least ready. As you can see in this broad shot, the school with the greatest percentage of low income students (PGS) has a lot lower proportion of all purple pins as compared to BLE, our school with the lowest percentage of low income students.<br />
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhn49e4nG1IdtyMmRenxXXC2Khgq2cxu2vd2lYGXhOKIEwEMSTHyWty_xlZhoeEEYR7k18sI_ZWsWNLEtKuxcsFCVAT5mzz83t6HlC_EB_8DgZ8IbkBfbaozxPG1z5sBLWk9MOKJuQbbFk/s1600/THE_WaKIDS.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1600" data-original-width="1200" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhn49e4nG1IdtyMmRenxXXC2Khgq2cxu2vd2lYGXhOKIEwEMSTHyWty_xlZhoeEEYR7k18sI_ZWsWNLEtKuxcsFCVAT5mzz83t6HlC_EB_8DgZ8IbkBfbaozxPG1z5sBLWk9MOKJuQbbFk/s320/THE_WaKIDS.jpg" width="240" /></a></div>
Here you can see the red vs. white map pins. Do you notice how many white are at the top and how many red are toward the bottom? This seems to tell us that age does matter a bit. Older kids are more <i>ready</i>. And I like seeing this, because while we might be able to talk about potential bias when it comes to gender, teachers don't have birthdays memorized or have an obvious way to connect them while working with students.<br />
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It's harder to see in the picture at the left (but you can click to embiggen), but gender also seems to play a role in how students are viewed in terms of readiness. Remember, gold pins represent girls...and by the time we get down to the bottom two rows, there is a lot of silver showing. I do wonder whether bias factors in here. I also noticed when I put the pins together that many of the girls were not rated as highly in math as they were in other areas. Hmmm.<br />
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Finally, you might notice the labels beneath each board. These are actually little booklets for each school with charts that show aggregate data. Viewers can look at the distributions for each category or for the demographics of the school. If you would like to see these charts, additional photos, or explore the web-based data workbook, please <a href="https://www.tumwater.k12.wa.us/Page/8377">visit our district web site for this display</a>.<br />
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<span style="color: #660000;"><span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: large;">Lessons Learned</span></span></span><br />
One of my colleagues has said that this is his favourite story that I've built. I am very happy with it---we encoded a lot of information into a small space and were able to include every child. The pins jingle and move. The paper sparkles and feels sandy. Light refracts through the beads to make them glitter in the light. I think folding in elements of touch and sound is a critical piece of this work. I know that those aspects don't represent anything in particular about the data, but they invite people to ponder...and that's what I'm after: Engagement.<br />
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I also think it's interesting to compare schools and see how they used the scale for this assessment. One school (LRE) only used three levels---all of their pins only have purple, blue, or green beads. Another school (PGS) used eight levels and really differentiated. One school (MTS) is very large (106 kinders), but only 2 were rated as being kindergarten ready in all six areas, while all the other schools had a much larger proportion.<br />
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As we get ready to work with our community about registering kindergartners for next year, it will be interesting to think about how this display impacts our conversations. I already had one co-worker spend some time looking at it as she thinks about whether or not to enroll her son with a July birthday in school next year.<br />
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I am more than halfway through this project of building large-scale, analog, interactive data displays. My goal is to build ten...and I have four more to dream up and construct. The Muse will be back. I don't know when or what she'll bring, but I will be ready.The Science Goddesshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02846516022505481326noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9092970177046142644.post-61379415946096723842017-11-26T15:33:00.003-08:002017-11-26T15:34:24.546-08:00Walls that invite others in: Transform your conversations about dataLast spring, I was invited to put together a 3.5 hour workshop for our state assessment conference that happens every December. I was told that the topic could be anything I wished. And, of course I agreed to do just that and hastily wrote a description in early June...and by the time my summer holiday started in July, I was already panicking. What the hell had I written? How was I going to deliver on this description?<br />
<br />
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
Public narratives about schools often focus on measures of student
performance. However, students are more than the sum of their test
scores, demographics, and program participation. Join our conversation
about how to repurpose and leverage data walls to create, inspire, and
communicate with audiences about what matters most. As part of this
interactive session, we will share examples of innovative data stories
from both school and district levels, as well as tools and strategies
for constructing new narratives about student and school outcomes.</blockquote>
<br />
Basically, I said I would facilitate some learning around how to build the sort of <a href="http://excelforeducators.blogspot.com/search/label/stories">data (story) walls we've been doing recently</a>. This sounds great on the surface. I truly believe that we have change the types of conversations we are having with and about data in education. In practicality, however, it turns out to be really challenging to develop guidance on how to listen critically for opportunities to transform these interactions...much less how to tap into and be confident about being creative with displays. As Isaac Asimov said, "The world in general disapproves of creativity...and to be creative in public is particularly bad."<br />
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I made a lot of notes this summer based around my own questions about using data, and this fall, I've been chipping away at organizing all my notes from the last 18 months into some sort of outline. Combined with the <a href="http://blog.whatitslikeontheinside.com/2017/09/introducing-data-academy.html">data academy</a> work I'm guiding this fall, I have felt overwhelmed by the amount of adult learning I need to generate...all while trying to do my "regular" work.<br />
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<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjuZbzVcCwGVJlTK2ZT28kCFhDc_m9jGaESXI4rfAelpNX9n0Fkq2O8c5qJZwi4zMNPSGDRBewYPizrosI7Rmj-jQ_01h134hEj_56h2zRRyR6xaa998ihZL2wW72s2nsMdXNCeZdxZ8iQ/s1600/Present+Tweet.PNG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="604" data-original-width="1440" height="167" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjuZbzVcCwGVJlTK2ZT28kCFhDc_m9jGaESXI4rfAelpNX9n0Fkq2O8c5qJZwi4zMNPSGDRBewYPizrosI7Rmj-jQ_01h134hEj_56h2zRRyR6xaa998ihZL2wW72s2nsMdXNCeZdxZ8iQ/s400/Present+Tweet.PNG" width="400" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://twitter.com/science_goddess/status/930421496538841088"><span style="font-size: xx-small;">https://twitter.com/science_goddess/status/930421496538841088</span></a></td></tr>
</tbody></table>
But, at long last, I think I'm ready for this workshop...which is a good thing, because it will happen on Wednesday. I don't have a lot of time left to fuss with it. It's time to fish or get off the pot, so to speak.<br />
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The slide deck is 150 slides (and 90 MB). I have around 10,000 words in my speaker notes. I've incorporated references to King Kong, Frankenstein, Pink Floyd, ETA Hoffman, and The Inferno. And, I've built a <a href="https://github.com/tlricherson/Data-Conversations">companion site on GitHub</a> for all of the other links, references, handouts, and structure.<br />
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We'll see how this goes. Three and a half hours is a long time to spend with 40'ish people on one topic. The whole premise---building these oversized, experiential data installations---requires a different sort of investment and risk-taking on their part. I am not foolish enough to believe that they will all go back to their schools and districts and put up these displays. But let's say three of them do. What a wonderful start...and how I would love to know of others who are doing this work. It all has to start somewhere. I will plant seeds now and see what sprouts. The Science Goddesshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02846516022505481326noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9092970177046142644.post-56746949740815466642017-11-06T16:19:00.003-08:002017-11-06T16:49:39.980-08:00Five: On the Bubble<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj0Ga1SRPcUD7Avt-f0Z9jEwqkyw2ZueWhcXq5aBoCzbkzQ_C5e3nsl5nFxpX0YUAx_q-JBY1bLXb5q0_vhFbf_zoGrcqBF8wt6uSR81yHQPNLPM1IBBzUN_OMuuGkHGW_AM3TVOAp3IS0/s1600/Bubbles.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1600" data-original-width="1200" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj0Ga1SRPcUD7Avt-f0Z9jEwqkyw2ZueWhcXq5aBoCzbkzQ_C5e3nsl5nFxpX0YUAx_q-JBY1bLXb5q0_vhFbf_zoGrcqBF8wt6uSR81yHQPNLPM1IBBzUN_OMuuGkHGW_AM3TVOAp3IS0/s320/Bubbles.jpg" width="240" /></a></div>
Student achievement data is among the most public data sets that exist for education. Scores from annual summative tests wind up in all sorts of places, from the front page of the newspaper to Zillow. Because of that, I've been shying away from using these data as the source of a data story. They already get enough attention, right?<br />
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But then I started hearing some conversations in my district that piqued my interest. (You can <a href="http://blog.whatitslikeontheinside.com/2017/11/those-darn-kids.html">read about that on my other blog</a>.) So I pulled scores for our current sixth grade students. I looked at their scale scores and performance levels from third, fourth, and fifth grade in the area of English language arts. I was interested in a few different things:<br />
<ul>
<li>What is the average growth students made between grades 3 and 5?</li>
<li>What are the common characteristics of students who are persistently low-performing (or high-performing)? What about the ones in the middle (a/k/a "the bubble")?</li>
<li>What do we mean when we refer to groups of students as <i>red kids</i> or <i>bubble kids</i>?</li>
</ul>
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<span style="font-size: small;"><span style="color: #660000;"><span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">The Data</span></span></span><br />
Calculating the growth was easy: just subtract the 2015 score from the 2017 score. But understanding the significance of that change was a bit more challenging. Is it better to gain 75 points vs the 70 necessary to show two grade levels of growth? Probably, but how much better? I wasn't ready to just declare an arbitrary cut. I was going to need some stats to guide me.<br />
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Now, all you stats lovers out there can probably think of several ways to represent this (and maybe a few will leave comments to tell me how I can do it mo betta)...but in the end, I decided to do something very simple. I transformed the values representing the amount of change in scores to <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Standard_score">z-scores</a>. I <i>normalized</i> them. Why? Because this gave me a quick idea of how many students had performance that was relatively typical to their peers (within one standard deviation) and which ones had even larger amounts of change (two or three deviations from the mean).<br />
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<span style="color: #660000;"><span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">The Build</span></span><br />
Once I had the various groups (-3, -2, -1, 1, 2, 3 SD), I thought more about how to represent this. But to back up a little bit, I have to say that my favourite starting idea was to cut different diameters of dowel rods into lengths that represented the amount of change for each students performance. Since we often talk about <i>bubble kids</i>, I wanted the data to look like bubbles. However, I don't have a saw that would make this simple work...and thinking about all the
measurement involved and sorting things out made me a little queasy. I
wanted a round shape, though. Lucky for me, Amazon sells <a href="https://www.amazon.com/s/ref=nb_sb_noss_2?url=search-alias%3Daps&field-keywords=wood+disks">bags of wooden disks</a> in 1", 2", and 3" sizes. A-ha! Now I had something that corresponded to the calculated SDs and could easily paint them to match the level of student performance.<br />
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjpyLk-uW8ULg25jcUjgbim-MSxOjIR09MjNCeGXICy4WDFeZDOEFmvaSd4OJ-UgJn_LijHjLNPcXlFiOOWLA66ihyphenhyphenCmEGl_vHU_q0nNunYaUDyam_HB7kpgz-4rcpKy41OE1tgAMzZmWQ/s1600/Disks.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1200" data-original-width="1600" height="150" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjpyLk-uW8ULg25jcUjgbim-MSxOjIR09MjNCeGXICy4WDFeZDOEFmvaSd4OJ-UgJn_LijHjLNPcXlFiOOWLA66ihyphenhyphenCmEGl_vHU_q0nNunYaUDyam_HB7kpgz-4rcpKy41OE1tgAMzZmWQ/s200/Disks.jpg" width="200" /></a></div>
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I still wanted to work in the concept of <i>change</i>. In other words, do students tend to stay at one particular level of academic performance? To represent this, I decided to stack the disks. If a student had spent only one out of the last three years at the most recent performance level, they got one disk. Two years at a level was shown by two, and three years with three disks.<br />
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Another challenge was to represent negative change. The raw difference between 2015 scores and 2017 scores ranged between -101 and +226. Although I could still place the disk on the display according to the 2017 score, I decided to paint the disks black to represent the "hole" in performance over time. Then, a roofing nail was attached to the back and the raw score written on the edge for placement reference.<br />
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjh64k2dxY5VPOkGjMf4ZkYKJOCgh-vs9nZbzFueIgJ07kcOo1nUw8DC18mh3eGeIYVNtjo7ClQZxX_i_x1hOLXqk90-hYNLrbkbiF771_Xuk0DOPtr5B9lHLO0OSI8RmeWNCTdFD74CFM/s1600/Bubble+Prep.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1600" data-original-width="1200" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjh64k2dxY5VPOkGjMf4ZkYKJOCgh-vs9nZbzFueIgJ07kcOo1nUw8DC18mh3eGeIYVNtjo7ClQZxX_i_x1hOLXqk90-hYNLrbkbiF771_Xuk0DOPtr5B9lHLO0OSI8RmeWNCTdFD74CFM/s320/Bubble+Prep.jpg" width="240" /></a></div>
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The other materials for the build included five shades (orange, yellow, green, blue...and black) of shiny enamel paint in sample sized cans, wood glue and super glue, .75" roofing nails (leftover from <a href="http://excelforeducators.blogspot.com/2017/08/four-class-of-2018.html">the last story</a>), fabric with small circles to reflect the bubble theme, and glittery grey paper for the lettering. My assistant and I punched 1" discs in the paper and used an enlarged dot matrix font to guide the creation of the letters. We slid the template for the words behind the fabric on the bulletin board, which was enough for us to see where to peel and stick each dot before sliding the template back out.<br />
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The "bubbles" were pushed into the board like oversized push pins, using the <i>y</i>-axis of the board as a guide for placing each disk in position (axis ranged from 2200 - 2800, with 2502 = met standard). There was no particular value assigned to the <i>x</i>-axis. We placed disks in that direction purely based on aesthetics of the overall display.<br />
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<span style="color: #660000;"><span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">Lessons Learned</span></span><br />
When I get an idea for one of these, it comes together very quickly. This one took a week from inception of idea to final product. And yes, that includes a lot of weekend time to pull, clean, organize, and transform the data. But I am always grateful to The Muse, when she deigns to visit, and willing to give in to the compulsion to create these works. I am also grateful to have an enthusiastic and supportive working environment for these. I try to keep them cost effective (the last two have included ~$100 in materials) and am always sure to keep up with my regular work while cranking out this other stuff.<br />
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These builds include a lot of trial and error. I am embarrassed to share how long it took us to figure out that we could just slide a patterned piece of paper behind the fabric on the board to use a template for the letters. We had googled for ideas for paper-to-fabric transfer. We plotted different ideas using a measuring stick and T-square. We drew things in PowerPoint. And then, duh, we figured it out. We did try different types of glue to see which was best for getting the non-pointy end of a nail to stick to wood. And so on. The lesson here is that even when you have to <a href="http://www.slate.com/blogs/browbeat/2013/10/18/_kill_your_darlings_writing_advice_what_writer_really_said_to_murder_your.html">kill your darlings</a> during the ideation phase, you can't give up during the build. Keep going.<br />
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To learn more about this data story, please visit the <a href="https://www.tumwater.k12.wa.us/Page/8329">companion page for the analog build</a>.The Science Goddesshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02846516022505481326noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9092970177046142644.post-25279234743946849512017-08-02T20:05:00.000-07:002017-08-03T05:22:16.701-07:00Four: The Class of 2018This time around, we are not looking at one story, but 605 of them. This untidy display shows the pathway all of our incoming seniors are taking to graduation. Will we put a nice little bow on their K - 12 career...or will we leave them hanging this year?<br />
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The display is a Sankey diagram made of nails, mason line, foam board, ribbon, paper, and an untold number of swear words. Starting on the left side of the photo you see above, there are four blocks of colour, each one representing one of the high schools in our district. Each block is labeled with the name of the high school and the number of students/strands leading off to the right. The strands then weave through three different graduation requirements. First is passing the state math test, then the state English test, and finally being on track for earning at least 22 credits by the end of this year. Students who have met a particular requirement are grouped at the top...and those who have missed one or more requirements run along the bottom of the display.<br />
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I just put the story up on Tuesday, and already I've had a lot of questions and interest in it...more than any other story (so far). It is a bit of a mess, I realize, but so is the process of learning and making one's way through high school. And if you've tried to make 600+ individual strands behave, you'd probably agree that I've managed to do a pretty good job.<br />
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<span style="font-size: large;"><span style="color: #990000;"><span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">Inspiration</span></span></span><br />
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Honestly, I hadn't planned on this particular story. I've been thinking about one related to transportation for months...but my Muse wasn't having it. And then I got pissed off. You see, our state legislature and superintendent of public instruction worked out a deal to weaken graduation requirements...starting with those pesky tests that some students struggle to pass (along with the alternatives). But kids in our district don't finish high school mainly because of credit issues. Among last year's senior class, only 3 were in danger of not graduating because they hadn't met the state standards. I can't change the law, but I can call some attention to the facts.<br />
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I pulled the data for our incoming seniors and the numbers reflected what I'd noticed last year. More kids have met the math requirement than any other. We hear all the time how students struggle in math, but these kids are all right. <br />
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I wish I understood more about how my Muse works. I seem to go weeks (or even months) at a time where I can't quite capture magic in a bottle...and then I get the right idea and feel compelled to complete it. I did most of the work for this particular story while I was on vacation in late July. As I was putting this display up, I had more than one person ask where I get my ideas. I really don't know. I have a general area or purpose I want to explore...and I tag different displays that intrigue me on Twitter or elsewhere...but when it comes to how the analog/physical stories shake out, it's all just figuring it out as I go along. After the Muse makes a deposit, that is.<br />
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<span style="font-size: large;"><span style="color: #990000;"><span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">The Build</span></span></span><br />
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My dining table is five feet long, so I used it as a template for </div>
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiwvb38AUNuGxoVES4nWRLilIdGyOWYePaKNNoGXDg1hfDtGq_mUhHpuzI-Sw5QSz83lJwUm2DcdoK0_MioUFk6QePJeHofHrUr6p6wk_jqPXF663ubkxubxW1sh51M5lwBZMZwbOk_h8A/s1600/20170729_151201.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="900" data-original-width="1600" height="112" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiwvb38AUNuGxoVES4nWRLilIdGyOWYePaKNNoGXDg1hfDtGq_mUhHpuzI-Sw5QSz83lJwUm2DcdoK0_MioUFk6QePJeHofHrUr6p6wk_jqPXF663ubkxubxW1sh51M5lwBZMZwbOk_h8A/s200/20170729_151201.jpg" width="200" /></a></div>
the strands of mason line. I wound them around and then cut each end. From there, I tied two strands to 1.75" roofing nails. I chose these nails because they had a sizeable head to keep the line in place and because they were shiny. I wanted something that looked nice. <br />
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Next, I used a nail and some grid paper to punch the requisite number of holes for each school into foam board. After removing the paper, I used a hammer to place the nails in, ensuring that all the string was pulled in the same direction.<br />
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I used picture hangers on the back of each foam board that was at the top of a section and white ribbon to connect the various areas, such as the schools or the "yes/no" for meeting standards or credit requirements.<br />
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I grouped the strands for each school using the data...sorting the correct number of strands into each category. Then, I tied each group so that I could transport it easily to work.<br />
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg_Ysd4xs82QQXluqym17LaRj2kDQKGSGHC52g7NmCTDTrYTKIVeO4L5jY4CV66taZHbC4ngbHpKZfZeOZha4UJP5pGTkq32m6BQknlH1xyTTzRzKq19Uih9xLqaQ8ZpBQwAzfWFaExUqs/s1600/20170731_165444.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="900" data-original-width="1600" height="225" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg_Ysd4xs82QQXluqym17LaRj2kDQKGSGHC52g7NmCTDTrYTKIVeO4L5jY4CV66taZHbC4ngbHpKZfZeOZha4UJP5pGTkq32m6BQknlH1xyTTzRzKq19Uih9xLqaQ8ZpBQwAzfWFaExUqs/s400/20170731_165444.jpg" width="400" /></a></div>
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<span style="font-size: large;"><span style="color: #990000;"><span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">Lessons Learned</span></span></span><br />
These projects are exercises in solving one problem at a time. Some problems are related to the data. Others are engineering issues, for example, "How I am going to attach this to a bulletin board without incurring the wrath of the facilities administrator?"<br />
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As I've noted with previous stories, I have to let go of my tendency to want everything perfect. At some point, it's more important to just get something out into the world. I have a million other things I need to do (at least it feels that way), but also manage this compulsion to put out this particular data tale. I am very excited about two more ideas I have in the pipeline. My original goal was to produce ten of these. I have a ways to go, but I'm learning more with each one.<br />
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I still have to build the companion web page for this display, but can work on that over the weekend. I want to share some data related to which students are not being successful and are in danger of not graduating in June. This, plus what's on the bulletin board outside my office will make for good conversation starters as we gear up for the school year ahead.The Science Goddesshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02846516022505481326noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9092970177046142644.post-45618755651231879832017-06-03T08:45:00.000-07:002017-06-03T19:45:48.125-07:00When Excel Is Your Hammer<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiwvuWxX0qc7SlggUP4GiVU-K0QRdgWBRrm7W-66EgNh8LFpa9M3M_SgqhHGA4aHrFL_MkaJYiR-jG-pjNO7D9WHUTsDVGWJpya6wbpgzEs5PKnAG4uVO0RpdXA-6-05B2FMxU1mfXG774/s1600/Chart.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1600" data-original-width="1493" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiwvuWxX0qc7SlggUP4GiVU-K0QRdgWBRrm7W-66EgNh8LFpa9M3M_SgqhHGA4aHrFL_MkaJYiR-jG-pjNO7D9WHUTsDVGWJpya6wbpgzEs5PKnAG4uVO0RpdXA-6-05B2FMxU1mfXG774/s320/Chart.jpg" width="298" /></a>Last week, a counterpart in a neighbouring school district sent me the picture you see at the right.<br />
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She'd been talking with a principal about their data and he'd been sketching what it was that he thought needed to have represented.The administrator wants to compare student performance on the reading strand of the state test with their performance on the writing strand of the same test. Although his drawing shows four levels of each, there are really only three reported: <i>below</i>, <i>at/near</i>, and <i>above</i>. Her question for me: Could this be done in Excel?<br />
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Um, sure...why not? We're just talking a scatterplot here. Replace the text of the labels with numbers (1, 2, 3) for reading and writing, then just get all up in that scatter chart's business. I sent my friend some basic ideas about how I would approach it, and said I would pull some sample data to model things.<br />
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I grabbed some information on 50 of my own students as a start. <a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjK-lb70DFptyqZE6RhmO2SY02ly0RvNxx3JD-J6u0LzIXfaBLH815Z1TeB9pLlAjd77R62p0s3nIuyu2Nb-ZulVMViwuH9icm-WF9zwzfbI9DYtEum8xKyUIJa-JLHZVcHVOt4yN1-Q8g/s1600/Levels+for+Chart.PNG" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="562" data-original-width="652" height="171" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjK-lb70DFptyqZE6RhmO2SY02ly0RvNxx3JD-J6u0LzIXfaBLH815Z1TeB9pLlAjd77R62p0s3nIuyu2Nb-ZulVMViwuH9icm-WF9zwzfbI9DYtEum8xKyUIJa-JLHZVcHVOt4yN1-Q8g/s200/Levels+for+Chart.PNG" width="200" /></a>I replaced the levels reported for each student with numbers (above = 3, at/near = 2, below = 1). Then, I selected the columns with the numerical data and inserted a scatter chart. Easy-peasy, right?<br />
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Except, I forgot something important. Many students have the same scores. For example, on the left, we can see that students 3, 6, and 9 all scored in the "at/near" (2) range in both reading and writing. When we plot their points on the chart, they overlap and appear as a single point instead of three students. This was no good. Part of what the principal wanted to be able to see were hot spots---areas of the chart where the school would need to focus for next year. He also wanted to get information about individual students. <br />
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjuOMPuNAzcQuDhutDidgodUzOuiKzF0MUAfNZCKpR576wVWXO8lCzaoMUcTFlZHY3sddfEXpk8idynxFhJQANeHKkNIITXrOyuVMd3zyDuaQh55VtnWngLoKZOlmk-8G_AcPJond9EgTM/s1600/Scatter+1.PNG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="732" data-original-width="1108" height="211" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjuOMPuNAzcQuDhutDidgodUzOuiKzF0MUAfNZCKpR576wVWXO8lCzaoMUcTFlZHY3sddfEXpk8idynxFhJQANeHKkNIITXrOyuVMd3zyDuaQh55VtnWngLoKZOlmk-8G_AcPJond9EgTM/s320/Scatter+1.PNG" width="320" /></a></div>
I should probably stop my story for a moment here and say that I do not think this---or any other---chart is necessary for the goals the principal stated. If you really just need a list of kids, put a filter on the columns and sort to find the students who are "below" in reading and writing. I suppose that if you really needed to get fancy, you could use a pivot table to summarize things. If you had to have a chart that gave you an idea of the size of the problem, a bubble chart might do. Or, possibly a heat map. I called my friend back and we talked about this. This issue is always the biggest challenge with translating someone's vision into practice. It also gets back to the question I am best known for in my district: <i>What is the problem you are trying to solve? </i>While my colleague agreed with me about the lack of general usefulness of the chart the principal had sketched, she still wanted to produce it. Maybe after looking at it, he'd have a better idea of what he was really after.<br />
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So, back to the drawing board for me. I know...I could have left her in the lurch ("Good luck!"), but I appreciate a challenge. Excel was not going to win this one, dammit.<br />
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It was then that I decided to jitter the data points. <i>Jittering</i> introduces a tiny bit of randomness to the values so that the points don't overlap so much.<br />
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjlBL2N1IzyNJiCwwScoSkClo7imSg2SOJgQhPATumBieSQVl0W7pHJXXUCKp2EWjw8KBT5DVTL4LnQe0l4rVLIfrw9VTDGCXk4nKsRu6__r3hp5R8zkPfMkPL8EzXMVkCjhtwlA0qODms/s1600/Jitter+Points.PNG" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="513" data-original-width="1152" height="142" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjlBL2N1IzyNJiCwwScoSkClo7imSg2SOJgQhPATumBieSQVl0W7pHJXXUCKp2EWjw8KBT5DVTL4LnQe0l4rVLIfrw9VTDGCXk4nKsRu6__r3hp5R8zkPfMkPL8EzXMVkCjhtwlA0qODms/s320/Jitter+Points.PNG" width="320" /></a></div>
I added two columns (C, E) for the jittered points. You can now see that students 3, 6, and 9 have values that are just a tiny bit different from one another.<br />
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The formula in C2 is =B2+(RAND()-0.5)/5. The purpose is to combine the original value with a randomly generated number. It uses the <a href="https://support.office.com/en-us/article/RAND-function-4cbfa695-8869-4788-8d90-021ea9f5be73">RAND function</a>
to create the random values. In this case, I didn't want a lot of
noise added to the data, just enough to separate things on the chart. Once in place, the formula is copied down through the rest of Column C, and then applied in Column E to the writing data. <br />
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj7bX5V855Lvgml0zoTTBwbe814WTnTNiH7ltkwUfj0M5WugmXBBYDXe6XHilhZUbKF3dFYpNoQCaPkJ5jy70_DkHilFYBsK-TW3yp8kLinGiJBz27r9DvgupI5fS5U19udwOHy6qn-8ow/s1600/Chart+Redux.png" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="288" data-original-width="480" height="240" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj7bX5V855Lvgml0zoTTBwbe814WTnTNiH7ltkwUfj0M5WugmXBBYDXe6XHilhZUbKF3dFYpNoQCaPkJ5jy70_DkHilFYBsK-TW3yp8kLinGiJBz27r9DvgupI5fS5U19udwOHy6qn-8ow/s400/Chart+Redux.png" width="400" /></a></div>
This is what the jittered plots look like, with a minor adjustment made to the axes. Now that I have a few values less than 1 and greater than 3, I needed to ensure those showed up on the chart. The new axis ranges are .5 - 3.5. After making that change, I deleted the labels and used text boxes to add back the original wording. For the data points, I assigned some transparency to the fill so we could better see the overlaps.<br />
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We now have a chart that reflects the principal's request. I sent off the file with the sample data and chart to my friend and hoped that it might spur some discussion with the administrator about whether or not this was the right tool for the job he had in mind. Just because we can use Excel doesn't mean we should.<br />
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgifP-YkRCk0t6AIYOhXxHM2hpDftyHbv_z-01l0nIEoPgkjriH07HzKHjdlpLHpCG22iCcuZ1FFQt2hM_XBioH9KiZx5r39XkM9JtahLg_G4Cv7CuFD1hMiD2-L1MHVg0sgo7PsHe6oEk/s1600/Excel+Child.PNG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="652" data-original-width="1520" height="171" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgifP-YkRCk0t6AIYOhXxHM2hpDftyHbv_z-01l0nIEoPgkjriH07HzKHjdlpLHpCG22iCcuZ1FFQt2hM_XBioH9KiZx5r39XkM9JtahLg_G4Cv7CuFD1hMiD2-L1MHVg0sgo7PsHe6oEk/s400/Excel+Child.PNG" width="400" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-size: xx-small;"><a href="https://twitter.com/fleurdevie/status/2810755338">https://twitter.com/fleurdevie/status/2810755338</a></span></td></tr>
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I don't mean to discount the principal's intentions. Yes, a simple list of students would get you to the same place (and a lot more quickly). But it doesn't necessarily have the same impact as a visual. It may well be that the type of scatter plot shown above engenders some productive conversation with his staff. He has a story in mind that he needs to tell. In that case, maybe Excel is the right hammer for this particular nail.The Science Goddesshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02846516022505481326noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9092970177046142644.post-62708698841214033542017-04-02T15:58:00.002-07:002017-04-07T10:32:52.910-07:00Backwards Bar ChartsRecently, someone shared a visualization from Periscopic about the <a href="http://emotions.periscopic.com/">Trump Emoto-coaster</a>. While the subject matter itself was not of particular interest to me, I did like the presentation of it.<br />
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<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj7wQBRzPCUT9Aseevl2RwhGPkNaCF2U4QfKpn02zWQ9LQiYIod-urX_9kY4QUrOPs73vPdH70Bl8St7GIH6bCpeSuSdjf5zmGppDx0Vgeh8ZB_G9NXIc0RC9MJYlsqA_YAnnzZSLskFtI/s1600/Emotocoaster.PNG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="313" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj7wQBRzPCUT9Aseevl2RwhGPkNaCF2U4QfKpn02zWQ9LQiYIod-urX_9kY4QUrOPs73vPdH70Bl8St7GIH6bCpeSuSdjf5zmGppDx0Vgeh8ZB_G9NXIc0RC9MJYlsqA_YAnnzZSLskFtI/s400/Emotocoaster.PNG" width="400" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-size: xx-small;">Strap yourselves in. Your hands must be this small to ride this ride.</span></td></tr>
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The line chart at the top made me think about the rises and falls within a school year. March seems like an especially cruel month, with teachers' tempers growing short. (Just ask me about how I ended up in a conversation with a five-year old about why we need to wear pants at school.) How do attendance and discipline intertwine? And, when I looked at the horizontal bar cum sparkline plots shown above, it also made me wonder what we would see if we plotted individual classrooms over time. Maybe something like this:<br />
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEggeYUuw8T5zyQLzXpXRMW8HrlIfHSKMnVx0urFyIsMyvowNlMlJyrYR8-SxM334CAhFwpiyPMDEcHKtIH5jVRprQrLqqP3tJi7WR654SiXJst6KywhLhAvtVbDn6TktGEpsBYByrzPQgg/s1600/Grade+X.PNG" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="184" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEggeYUuw8T5zyQLzXpXRMW8HrlIfHSKMnVx0urFyIsMyvowNlMlJyrYR8-SxM334CAhFwpiyPMDEcHKtIH5jVRprQrLqqP3tJi7WR654SiXJst6KywhLhAvtVbDn6TktGEpsBYByrzPQgg/s640/Grade+X.PNG" width="640" /></a></div>
Let's say there are four teachers at a particular grade level in a school. If we looked at the number of student absences and office referrals from the beginning of the year to the end of the year...what might we see?<br />
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgnR9rCjCS0wtyHgKvuGoUGu99HyoqT2ymBGly-ic-6CxxD8JCP6GJlZnzaucQBi1hjW47hMDS94miMJO_LHKh265GTmTKV4O9oLvR8Fc55y75-eXWorQSLOPDtEtggXTJdZF4aWx5ZeJo/s1600/Attn+and+Disc+Bars.png" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="219" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgnR9rCjCS0wtyHgKvuGoUGu99HyoqT2ymBGly-ic-6CxxD8JCP6GJlZnzaucQBi1hjW47hMDS94miMJO_LHKh265GTmTKV4O9oLvR8Fc55y75-eXWorQSLOPDtEtggXTJdZF4aWx5ZeJo/s320/Attn+and+Disc+Bars.png" width="320" /></a></div>
If I was a principal, I might use something like this to either look for "hot spots" in my school that I might not know about...or monitor how well my school improvement initiatives are being implemented at the classroom level...or even to show staff for input. If I was a teacher, this might give me a general way to compare outcomes in my classroom. It might also piss me off (This just shows you that I have ALL of the bad kids!).<br />
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My challenge was how to build this. At its most basic level, this is a floating bar chart. And Ann Emery has a <a href="http://annkemery.com/diverging-solution/">great tutorial</a> for doing just that in Excel. But I didn't take that particular route this time because of how I need these charts to lay out. You see, absences for any given classroom total no more than 70 in a month...but referrals are no more than 13. Excel isn't going to let me push the edge of the chart off the lefthand side of the worksheet if I keep the <i>x</i>-axis the same on both sides, meaning I ended up with a ton of blank space. I suppose I could put attendance on the left and discipline on the right, but hey, what's Excel without some challenges?<br />
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So, how do you build a backwards bar chart?<br />
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Create your horizontal bar chart the usual way, then fuss a little bit with the axis settings.<br />
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh-fMwS7ZqVtbgC5ZaMsOALZT78vaTOkTgZ3981FxF9qhkwQOykAjCfVsNKegmGBYk79RQBgQUAgeBMUgPicMf4PjfKrYdFJS9-147IGZqIIxlHyKK3tcd_NFjwWpG6a8lLSMPCRWs4vNw/s1600/Horizontal+and+Vertical+Settings.png" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="197" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh-fMwS7ZqVtbgC5ZaMsOALZT78vaTOkTgZ3981FxF9qhkwQOykAjCfVsNKegmGBYk79RQBgQUAgeBMUgPicMf4PjfKrYdFJS9-147IGZqIIxlHyKK3tcd_NFjwWpG6a8lLSMPCRWs4vNw/s400/Horizontal+and+Vertical+Settings.png" width="400" /></a></div>
Once you do this, then remove the gridlines and axes themselves, you'll be able to position this bar smackdab against the other one. You know it's worth it...you can work it. Just put that chart down, flip it, and reverse it.<br />
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjFL8va24Zk7Op-E_LulbUxlwjbXsFGJveXy65ceLsUXohzaarPzYYwcGDcdEgFdxa1SQu0oMojIc2pCmFcBmsQrYSh7VaY3OiXzT1F76v95YXTvWO4sIf4WZ260Cvd1W9btOEJhn71GTo/s1600/Missy.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="179" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjFL8va24Zk7Op-E_LulbUxlwjbXsFGJveXy65ceLsUXohzaarPzYYwcGDcdEgFdxa1SQu0oMojIc2pCmFcBmsQrYSh7VaY3OiXzT1F76v95YXTvWO4sIf4WZ260Cvd1W9btOEJhn71GTo/s320/Missy.jpg" width="320" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-size: xx-small;">Holla!</span></td></tr>
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Another to know about this chart is the addition of the line down the middle. Since I deleted the gridlines and axes, I need some sort of visual between the bars. So, a simple line shape in grey 1.5 pt is all that was added.<br />
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In terms of labels, I'm going to leave them off. If you understand how one is laid out, then you can understand a whole school's worth. The numbers themselves aren't the big idea with this visual. It's the patterns and comparisons we're after. When we've identified those, we're ready to ask some deeper questions and dig into the numbers in a different way. These charts are the starting point for conversations...not the end...even if that seems a little backwards.The Science Goddesshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02846516022505481326noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9092970177046142644.post-21140956876258967482017-03-28T04:31:00.000-07:002017-03-28T04:31:15.139-07:00Make the connection: Student growth to teacher actionI have had the privilege of presenting at the <a href="http://empower.ascd.org/Default.aspx">ASCD annual conference</a> over several years. I've been an ASCD member nearly my whole career. It's an organization that, as the rebranded conference name suggests, empowers educators in all roles to support students.<br />
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This year, I am presenting on the qualitative side of data. My session description is "If 'not everything that counts can be counted,' as Albert Einstein suggested, then how do we measure and represent student growth beyond test scores and grades? In this interactive session, you will learn strategies that capture student learning in multiple ways, as well as how to communicate feedback about the whole child using data visualization. Join the conversation about how to apply digital and analog tools to tell your students' stories and report the full spectrum of student learning."<br />
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The challenge of doing a presentation like this is that I have to submit the description more than six months before the conference. Whatever it is that I had in mind to talk about in August was long gone before I received notification that the proposal was accepted...let alone when I sat down to build the content. I am influenced, too, by all the things I have learned in the interim.<br />
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The basic story arc did finally emerge. I'll start first by talking a bit about why data visualization can be a powerful tool. This is my usual lead-in, and I think it helps to provide a few easy to grasp examples before launching into new territory. The next hook is to talk about achievement data. Now, this particular piece does not explicitly fit the session description, but my goal is to move from the larger scope of the purpose of data viz to what we typically see in education, and finally into non-traditional ways to represent education data...and perhaps even a little further than that.<br />
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I heard a presenter this morning say that "schools embrace business ideas as they are fading." In other words, what was hot in the private sector 5 or 10 years ago becomes the things that schools are talking about now. I have seen this happen a lot over the course of my career. And what worries me most now is that decisions about data privacy and access are being made now that will affect schools in ways they haven't even anticipated yet. I am not going to claim that I can change the world with my presentation and suddenly schools will make these conversations a priority...but it's a start.<br />
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My call to action for them is around being in control of creating their own narratives using data and to think about what they want to represent, not necessarily what they are told to represent. All too often, the public view of school data is just annual test scores. But children are so much more than the sum of their test scores. They deserve a more robust approach to sharing their stories (and to be involved in that process, as well).<br />
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I have an ancient (by web standards) wiki where I have placed <a href="http://infovisualization.pbworks.com/w/page/116542497/ASCD%202017%20Annual%20Conference">materials for this session</a>. Someday, I'll move everything over to GitHub...but for now, it's a reminder of the journey I've taken to this point and perhaps a place to shape the ideas ahead.The Science Goddesshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02846516022505481326noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9092970177046142644.post-77796843279287721422017-03-26T09:57:00.000-07:002017-03-26T09:57:12.119-07:00ASCD 2017: Data ToolsThis weekend, I am at <a href="http://www.ascd.org/Default.aspx">ASCD</a>'s annual conference, now referred to as <i>Empower</i>. This is not the fourth year that I've attended (and presented...but more on that in another post), but it is the fourth time I've wandered through the exhibit hall with an eye toward what various companies are promoting to schools. The versions from <a href="http://excelforeducators.blogspot.com/2013/03/ascd-2013-meet-new-data-tools.html">2013</a>, <a href="http://excelforeducators.blogspot.com/2014/03/lookin-for-data-love.html">2014</a>, and <a href="http://excelforeducators.blogspot.com/2015/03/ascd-2015-data-tools.html">2015</a> are available, if you'd like a trip down memory lane. In fact, that might not be a bad idea, because (Spoiler alert!) there was nothing particularly new or outstanding.<br />
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<span style="color: #660000;"><span style="font-size: large;">Data management and reports</span></span><br />
There are no stand-alone systems here this year. Lots of vendors who focus on assessment and grading, however, do have displays and reports for managing student information. I asked the same question that I have asked for the last five years: <i>Who builds your displays and reports?</i> And yes, of course the developers make the magic happen behind the scenes, but there is still the same disturbing number of companies out there where that is the only answer. Or, there may be something along the lines of "we got feedback from teachers." This is all well and good---I support user involvement. I also know that developers and teachers are not data designers. People are spending a lot of time on these products, but they don't care enough to make the effort to ensure that effective communication with the data actually happens.<br />
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In one particular exchange, the project creator told me that all her charts were a result of her research. I have no doubt that the project is spawned from many years of hard work with teachers...but I know that she does no research with data design or communication. In fact, she was a little upset that anyone would ask about how she came to make her choices. I won't link to it here, but it's a new partnership with ASCD that you can look for, if you're interested.<br />
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<span style="color: #660000;"><span style="font-size: large;">Student assessment</span></span><br />
There were some different displays this year for various flavours of student assessment. <a href="http://www.scantron.com/">Scantron</a> is making a big show this year. I chatted with them a bit and they have a few sessions this weekend. Perhaps I just hadn't noticed before that they are more than the "bubble sheet" company, but it looks like they're diversifying and growing into student assessment. I can't speak to the quality of this new content, but in an age of apps, google tools, and other options, it seems wise to be more than a company involved with scoring assessments.<br />
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<a href="http://www.pacificmetrics.com/">Pacific Metrics</a> is a content aggregators for various assessment banks, like the ACT or district-developed items. It produces no reports---it just integrates with existing school information systems. I think this is a desirable option for a lot of districts, especially smaller ones who may not have the resources to develop their own content. If someone else has valid and reliable items for you...and those can be automagically scored and then imported into your gradebook...it could be helpful. It's not a replacement for professional judgment---teachers would still need to ensure that the assessment matches the content.<br />
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The product I liked best came from <a href="http://www.exemplars.com/">Exemplars K - 12</a>. This company provides not only rich tasks for the classroom, but also scoring tools and anchor papers. This last piece is incredibly valuable. These exemplars are representative of actual student work and can show teachers how to implement the rubrics. While I will always advocate for teachers to come together to develop tasks, score student work, and engage in conversations about student learning as a result, I can't deny that these banks would also support good teaching. I think this is especially important for rural or small districts, or schools with a high rate of turnover so that new teachers have a consistent framework in place.<br />
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Have you seen something this year for student data or assessment that you like? The Science Goddesshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02846516022505481326noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9092970177046142644.post-15161828281492661002017-03-13T18:59:00.000-07:002017-03-14T19:51:33.814-07:00Three: Student InformationIn theory, I was going to publish one data story a month this year. In reality, it's March (the school year started in September) and I'm only on my third one. I am way behind on my goal. But I am learning to make my peace with that sad state of affairs. This project is going to run into the next school year...and I'm okay with that.<br />
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So let's talk about number three. It's a magic number, is it not?<br />
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjHzHhHC3C1fyxd8x2BEDbtwoZYhu5TRyfFOY0bhNGdKqVdJswrQaJxVRyLIWIqC3h5Ap2MYI7P5tk-kWOWrNpeLNuaXPoDv2N4ZLLHYAKkVZ7jPgXVDyfzcByj5qepq8u6-1-jT8uCBcM/s1600/Full.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="225" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjHzHhHC3C1fyxd8x2BEDbtwoZYhu5TRyfFOY0bhNGdKqVdJswrQaJxVRyLIWIqC3h5Ap2MYI7P5tk-kWOWrNpeLNuaXPoDv2N4ZLLHYAKkVZ7jPgXVDyfzcByj5qepq8u6-1-jT8uCBcM/s400/Full.jpg" width="400" /></a></div>
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This month(ish), we're looking at our various student information systems. Each collection of squares represents one system. On the left is <a href="https://www.skyward.com/">Skyward</a>, our district system...and data flows various directions from there to other systems, including TIDE on the right that we use for state assessments.<br />
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgFI-o4g6zGtRGG2NhmOAosX8niTwt4R3Y4I3Cv3oFF2HggQG7Tqq1t-xnSDcUDvV-tr1-LvLdpwbD4lm6wgU-KscwVmDX9tckmZafyhFtyRzwVrW2SllOqvdQpWOW9-1m0j-ZGCiusbV0/s1600/CEDARS.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="180" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgFI-o4g6zGtRGG2NhmOAosX8niTwt4R3Y4I3Cv3oFF2HggQG7Tqq1t-xnSDcUDvV-tr1-LvLdpwbD4lm6wgU-KscwVmDX9tckmZafyhFtyRzwVrW2SllOqvdQpWOW9-1m0j-ZGCiusbV0/s320/CEDARS.jpg" width="320" /></a></div>
Each group has layers that are colour-coded by the type of accounts/users it houses. Green is for students, yellow is for teachers, pink is for school administrators, and little red pins are for district administrators. Only one system has blue, representing parents. The sizes of the squares tell you something about the number of people represented by the data set. Each square inch is 50 people. The green squares are largest and district administrators the smallest. All of the systems, excepts for one, include students.<br />
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Two of the systems that I chose to represent (<a href="https://www.pbisapps.org/Applications/Pages/SWIS-Suite.aspx">SWIS</a> and Google Apps) are connected to our system with a broken line, because there is not a direct data connection. Instead, a system of imports and exports is used.<br />
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgnJ_SKNgWR3Bt4J6X96fevVTcXwP1J6fRoAb8ZuB9JjrTKd8e8RMaRIobnEQnR4yGeKimbsN-34JBT1r3HPxkI9CRYYwLxBPtnfRmJDFT0WTV4dvF8Hfq1xVnq6Yobi-lMNtC9FJ457SI/s1600/Skyward.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" height="225" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgnJ_SKNgWR3Bt4J6X96fevVTcXwP1J6fRoAb8ZuB9JjrTKd8e8RMaRIobnEQnR4yGeKimbsN-34JBT1r3HPxkI9CRYYwLxBPtnfRmJDFT0WTV4dvF8Hfq1xVnq6Yobi-lMNtC9FJ457SI/s400/Skyward.jpg" width="400" /></a>I also built some charts to show a bit about how families are accessing Skyward. Generally speaking, they log in about twice a month, during the work week, and in the morning.<br />
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I don't have any specific data on how many users are represented by our state data warehouse (<a href="http://www.k12.wa.us/cedars/">CEDARS</a>) or GoogleApps. I can only tell you how many data points we transfer in a given week (~250K to CEDARS) or documents we share online (over 600K in Google).<br />
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Bottom line: There's a lot of data flowing around.<br />
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<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="color: #660000;">Questions to Ponder</span></span></span><br />
I selected the topic of information systems because they really are invisible...yet their impact is very real. Me? I'm represented by those nearly invisible red pins in the center of almost every square. I can see all these data, but there are a lot of people who can't due to their permissions or system access. This data story project this year is about sharing data beyond the usual suspects like attendance or achievement. Information systems are a good place to shine some light.<br />
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In the end, this is really a story about power and privacy. You'd think that the biggest group in these systems (students) would have the greatest power to use these data, but the fact is simply that they have none at all. Some systems look large, like TIDE, and yet a student or teacher might log in only once or twice a year. Others, like <a href="https://www.schooldata.net/products/homeroom/">Homeroom</a>, look insignificant and yet they are our most powerful tools for reviewing student information. Looks are deceiving.<br />
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<span style="color: #660000;"><span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">Bonus Round</span></span><br />
While the offline bulletin board is intended to be a conversational piece, as well as a way to reach audiences that might not have an Internet connection, I always put together an <a href="http://www.tumwater.k12.wa.us/Page/8038">online component</a>, too. This time around, I share a video about the historical origins of personal privacy and provide a way for you to look at how the clicks you and others contribute to our web site add up.<br />
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Peekaboo...I see you.The Science Goddesshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02846516022505481326noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9092970177046142644.post-54586003933175499852016-11-04T18:18:00.000-07:002016-11-05T16:41:17.620-07:00Two: A Month in the Board Room<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhpLxZj-06UqL88NFy55LKZblcuCid1pqpVdzKEwgb3xPBuhbV3Tmuw5gAa5mfIm1whaoFog3-qbQDShmnP62RwrCFaHTJLv6r1Zs5r7fJI1YUbwlT1fS2n9GBHZ9E2RZ2jEwmv7YyGCC0/s1600/Month+Cards+2.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhpLxZj-06UqL88NFy55LKZblcuCid1pqpVdzKEwgb3xPBuhbV3Tmuw5gAa5mfIm1whaoFog3-qbQDShmnP62RwrCFaHTJLv6r1Zs5r7fJI1YUbwlT1fS2n9GBHZ9E2RZ2jEwmv7YyGCC0/s320/Month+Cards+2.jpg" width="180" /></a></div>
When I first shared this month's topic for a data story, I received a lot of quizzical looks in return. A month in the board room? Whaaaa? Why would anyone care about that? But I didn't know why anyone---including me---would care. I wasn't sure what I'd see. However, that is one of my larger goals with this project. I want to find out what happens when we pay attention to data that are typically ignored.<br />
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<a href="http://www.tumwater.k12.wa.us/Page/7913">A Month in the Board Room</a> is the second in my "10 for 10" challenge I have set for myself this year. It is my goal to tell ten new data stories in ten months. Truth be told, I'm running a bit behind. There is a huge learning curve with these. What I have in my head is never quite what appears on the board and on the web. I try to remind myself that perfect is the enemy of the good. It is more important to finish and post something rather than wait until everything is just right. If I go that route, I might manage to put up only one of these. I am learning more each month. Maybe by the time I get to number ten---whatever and whenever that will be---I'll be a well-oiled machine in terms of getting things posted.<br />
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<span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: large;"><span style="color: #660000;">Working with the Data</span></span><br />
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On the right, you'll see a mini-version of the display that I built from the data. After selecting a month (February), the data were exported from an Outlook calendar into Excel. Each meeting was coded into one of nine categories after reviewing the full list: teacher/principal evaluation, curriculum, assessment, operations, parent meetings, private groups, special services, district office, and administration.<br />
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A basic layout, with time of day across the top and days of the month down the left side, was set up with blocks of time for each meeting in the calendar.<br />
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I went through several iterations of color coding. There were several combinations of colors I tried that I actually liked better than the one shown at the right. However, while they looked lovely together in some other types of charts, they looked terrible as big bars. This version seemed not only pleasing on the eyes, but also allowed me to divide the information into things that are initiated from within our department (green) and things that are generated elsewhere (brown).<br />
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I knew that I had hit on the right display when I showed it to my boss. He appreciates and supports the work I do, but really isn't all that into data. But when he saw this, he actually started engaging and noticing things. After a minute or two, I pointed out to him that he was talking about data...at which point, he smiled and left. Gotcha. <br />
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<span style="font-size: large;"><span style="color: #660000;">Offline</span></span><br />
Just like last month, there is an offline component to the data display---a bulletin board outside my office. The graphic you see above was sent to Costco in two parts and printed as two 16 x 20" photos. A swatch of each color was also sent to be printed as 4 x 6" photos.<br />
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This photo is of the board in progress. We have some explanatory text on the left...the poster in the middle (there's more coming) and the "legend" on the right. Each of the swatches is on a card that viewers can lift to see more information about a category, including its name. We decided not to put the names of the categories on the front of the card to encourage viewers to spend some time first trying to interpret or make sense of what they see in the larger poster.<br />
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The additions to this display include a second large poster attached over the one you see. The top one has some of the bars turned into options that open and reveal details of the meetings represented. We also have data about occupancy and other meeting spaces attached to the board.<br />
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<span style="font-size: large;"><span style="color: #660000;">Online</span></span><br />
Our <a href="http://www.tumwater.k12.wa.us/Page/7913">companion web page</a> uses an embedded PowerPoint to enable users to see details of every meeting, including links to additional documents and sites. Users can also download a larger data set to explore on their own.<br />
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiX-71IAB3JVBScaHnNMFdWG03xlXMTecTry7qvBXQ9Xf-WqOMi7X0RM5B4QgYrx8dM1RwRyPi9kgxxP8aLxU6l7rgPY7S8LEzt2MeDFgTdgJghb0FujWqAOepWpUmRInanTTJXSH2eOKk/s1600/Month+Cards.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" height="180" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiX-71IAB3JVBScaHnNMFdWG03xlXMTecTry7qvBXQ9Xf-WqOMi7X0RM5B4QgYrx8dM1RwRyPi9kgxxP8aLxU6l7rgPY7S8LEzt2MeDFgTdgJghb0FujWqAOepWpUmRInanTTJXSH2eOKk/s320/Month+Cards.jpg" width="320" /></a>
It is my goal to prompt conversation and reflection about data. I am encouraged by the comments I have received about the project and some of the discussions I've had. For example, a couple of people suggested that I not represent weekends on this month's data display. Those days do contribute to a lot of blank space, but it is also an opportunity to think about the importance of what we choose to represent...and what it means when we don't represent something. Sure, our board room is rarely used on weekends, but it just makes me wonder about what activities we might see if we represented what people did when they weren't at work.<br />
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<span style="font-size: large;"><span style="color: #660000;">Bonus Round</span></span><br />
So, what did we learn by representing the data? Maybe no large insights, but it does make it easier to see how different groups access the space. Parent groups are only there in the evenings. Administrators meet either before or after the school day. Special Services only uses the room when no subs would be required. Work around curriculum (science, math, career and technical education, and so on) is the heaviest user. In terms of what we don't see, students are rarely in that space. This is not a surprise. Neither is the lack of meetings around construction and infrastructure---we have a ton of those due to ongoing bond work around the district, but those involved don't need such a large meeting space. If I'd plotted things over the course of the year, I'm sure there would be different patterns revealed, but someone else can take that on.<br />
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I am already planning the next one, even as the paint is barely dry on this. At some point in the future, I will have a high school stats class help design a story...and there are plenty of other ideas cooking in the background. I hope that we'll push our data discussions far beyond simple red, yellow, and green-filled cells representing assessment results and into more well-rounded conversations about what we value...and what we do when we don't see those values on display.The Science Goddesshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02846516022505481326noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9092970177046142644.post-79321422375764572092016-10-02T20:24:00.001-07:002016-10-02T20:24:44.812-07:00One: If the District Were 100 StudentsAfter attending Tapestry earlier this year, I decided that I wanted to showcase some different data stories. In my day job, I mostly work with student data---test scores, demographics, attendance, discipline, and so on. All good stuff in its own way. But there are lots of things that we collect and don't share, either because of student privacy concerns or just lack of trying.<br />
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It is my goal this year to tell ten new data stories in ten months. And while I'm a little later in getting the first one up and running, it's happening. Every story will have an online component with links to programs, data sets, or interactive views. Each one will also have an offline component. I've commandeered one of the bulletin boards in our district office. My goal with that piece is to make "touchable" data, and data displays that can be viewed and experienced regardless of Internet access. Out of all of this, I hope that we bring to light some new understanding to different audiences and create some interest in increasing the visibility of some our underrepresented students.<br />
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For (late) September, our focus is "If the district were 100 students." Maybe not the most original topic; however, it has given us a safe place to figure out how to put it all together.<br />
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<span style="font-size: small;"><b><span style="color: #660000;">Offline</span></b></span><br />
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For the main presentation, we selected six demographic attributes: homeless, low income, absences, dropouts, English language learners, and students of color. Each of the squares you see has 100 push pins, with the colored ones representing the percent of students in that group.<br />
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For three of the groups, we created callouts that provide more detail. For example, our English language learners might only be 2% of our students, but more than 25 languages are represented by that group.<br />
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It's been fun to see and hear about people who touch the pins. I'm glad that they feel like they can. I have grand plans in the coming months to employ various paper pop-ups and other things that will invite some exploration with more than the eyes. I had someone comment that seeing the purple pins (representing low income) made her sad. So much of the time, we look at data as numbers on a page. It didn't make the same impact for her as seeing the display.<br />
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The rest of the display is devoted to information on enrollment changes, along with some projections by the district and city about the future of our demographics. None of this is earth-shattering or super-fancy, but it feels good to put it out there. It's time to start some different conversations about data.<br />
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<span style="color: #660000;"><b>Online</b></span><br />
Each month, we're building a <a href="http://www.tumwater.k12.wa.us/Page/7853">companion web page</a>. This month, I created some simple waffle charts (to reflect the offline displays) and a line graph that users can interact with via Excel slicers. There is a QR code on the bulletin board which links directly to the online options.<br />
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A big focus for me this year is on being more transparent about the ethics involved in the choices made about these displays---from which data are (or are not) represented, to downloadable data sets, to the reasons behind the specific charts. It is a privilege for me to have access to the data that I have. It's also a lot of power...and somehow, I need to make sure that I publicly acknowledge that and invite comment.<br />
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<span style="color: #660000;"><b>Bonus Round</b></span><br />
Next month...which is really sometime this month...I'll be presenting data related to a month in our board room. I know, that doesn't sound very sexy, but I think the Outlook calendars for that room will reveal a lot about our priorities and partnerships. It's not something we've ever looked at, which is why I think it will be an ideal candidate for this project.<br />
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Are you trying something new this year? <br />
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The Science Goddesshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02846516022505481326noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9092970177046142644.post-74468438437866252032016-09-07T19:26:00.001-07:002016-09-11T14:02:41.412-07:00Cheater Bullet ChartsAnother school year has started. That means the last month has looked something like this for me:<br />
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjkqFbwT2s4G1b-TP5FDsZ49ErJ9sA5lPCbyMe4TxCyflZgIFXSjj2zisLMqiksgDUR8Z2tw-nxJ6o60upyxIk3mvQc8fFqvkWHquhqljavWMSztm46PMw1KOxicfvoFS3tJHei0Z_DYVU/s1600/All+the+Charts.png" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="205" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjkqFbwT2s4G1b-TP5FDsZ49ErJ9sA5lPCbyMe4TxCyflZgIFXSjj2zisLMqiksgDUR8Z2tw-nxJ6o60upyxIk3mvQc8fFqvkWHquhqljavWMSztm46PMw1KOxicfvoFS3tJHei0Z_DYVU/s320/All+the+Charts.png" width="320" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-size: xx-small;">Art by <a href="http://hyperboleandahalf.blogspot.com/">Allie Brosh</a></span></td></tr>
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One thing I wanted to try this year was building bullet charts in Excel. We have some change in test scores to represent and I thought this would be a meaningful and compact way to represent the data.<br />
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As you likely know, there is no bullet chart option in Excel. Bummer. There is no shortage of workarounds on the web. Many people, who are far smarter than I, have posted tutorials. The <a href="http://peltiertech.com/bullet-charts-in-excel/">one by Jon Peltier</a> is, of course, the most thorough, but Stephanie Evergreen has written about her <a href="http://stephanieevergreen.com/easiest-bullet-charts-in-excel/">easy version</a> and Jon Schwabish has offered <a href="http://www.slideshare.net/jschwabish/bullet-charttutorial">another idea</a>. They are all worthwhile to review and I thought about them a lot. I just had one problem. I was too lazy to work through all the steps.<br />
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Bill Gates has been attributed as saying that "<span class="st">I choose a lazy person to do a hard job. Because a lazy person will find an easy way to do it."</span> And if that's true, then when it comes to building bullet charts, I must be the go to person. Because I found an even easier way to get them done in Excel.<br />
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Are you ready? Here's my secret: Make two charts that are the same size. Lay one on top of the other, ensuring that the fill on the top one has been set to transparent and change the gap width to make one set of bars skinnier than another. That's it. That's all you need.<br />
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No fancy finagling. Just one data set represented on the bottom and one on the top, as <strike>god</strike> Few intended.<br />
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You can change the widths of the bars, of course (might be better if I made the bottom ones a little wider..."Fat-bottomed bars you make the rockin' world go round..."). Need a third data point to show a target? Why not? Just make another chart with transparent fill and plop it on top of these. I won't tell you no.<br />
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Any cheats you've discovered as of late? What have I missed while I've had my nose stuck in the back end of Excel for the last several weeks?The Science Goddesshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02846516022505481326noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9092970177046142644.post-54907754821673577662016-06-11T18:10:00.000-07:002016-09-11T16:52:41.182-07:00Eyeo 2016 RecapI attended the <a href="http://eyeofestival.com/">Eyeo Festival</a> this week. It brings together "creative coders, data designers,
artists, and attendees." I have been wanting to go for a couple of years as a way to pull myself in a different direction. It's easy to get into a rut, or at least into a routine that doesn't allow you to ponder other possibilities. This was a very different conference from others that I've attended. Here, I came away feeling creative and inspired. At others, I've walked away with learning to apply. It's not that one outcome is better than another---they each have a role.<br />
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I am looking forward to the videos from the festival being posted. In the meantime, here are some of the highlights.<br />
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<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;"><span style="color: #b45f06;"><b>Emergence </b></span></span><br />
<a href="http://ncase.me/">Nicky Case</a> kicked things off. His focus was on <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Emergence"><i>emergence</i></a>, a concept where the sum is different from the parts. I can't say that he shared anything new in terms of his ideas, but what I liked was seeing a young adult share his process of learning that there is a lot of grey area in the world. I worked with teenagers for nearly 20 years, and the black/white worldview was pretty normal. It takes time and experience to learn that there are lots of answers to any question. As a young 20-something, Case is showcasing the transition to a more experienced lens on the world.<br />
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The keynote by <a href="http://eyeofestival.com/speaker/paola-antonelli/">Paola Antonelli</a>, which was the next evening, shared an even more advanced take on this theme with her views on <i>quantum design</i>: "ambiguous states, in the spaces ‘in
between’—between digital and physical, high-tech and crafts, old and
new, nature and artifice, developed and emerging world." Beauty is not just in the eye of the beholder, meaning is derived from the eye of the observer.<br />
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<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;"><span style="color: #b45f06;"><b>Transformation</b></span></span><br />
A second theme was about the transformative nature of data. Paolo Ciuccarelli of <a href="http://www.densitydesign.org/">Density Design</a> spoke about the poetics of data visualization. He pointed to the need to design data experiences that "generate poesis within a space of wonder."<br />
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiUEBn83fbemg30zjoV-eabAZcVibSqETM2zbVAo1gk9zpCmKGz9cRvF-xvhcgBIlR_59fov57km78Ii-jRbzYqYHxLsI23hjHXyqLGMxys-hG0IDBokvoak6hvCFkPaT7jpibKYveBZP0/s1600/Panorama.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="126" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiUEBn83fbemg30zjoV-eabAZcVibSqETM2zbVAo1gk9zpCmKGz9cRvF-xvhcgBIlR_59fov57km78Ii-jRbzYqYHxLsI23hjHXyqLGMxys-hG0IDBokvoak6hvCFkPaT7jpibKYveBZP0/s400/Panorama.jpg" width="400" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">from <a href="http://www.densitydesign.org/research/brain-houses-three-interieurs-stories/">http://www.densitydesign.org/research/brain-houses-three-interieurs-stories/</a></td></tr>
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One of my favourite ideas that he shared was this concept of a panorama, like the one shown above. I love the idea of embedding the data within a larger context. I highly recommend having a look at the <a href="http://www.densitydesign.org/research/raw/">Raw</a> tool for generating visualizations.<br />
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<a href="http://truth-and-beauty.net/">Moritz Stefaner</a> gave a talk on his <a href="http://data-cuisine.net/">Data Cuisine</a> project. One of the things I liked most about this project was the idea that the dimensions of food (ingredients, presentation, cooking method, etc.) can be used to represent dimensions of data. This leads to a very different sort of interactive experience.<br />
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Transformation also appeared in how artists used materials in different ways. Whether it was <a href="http://anoukwipprecht.nl/">Anouk Wipprecht </a>combining her love of couture and robots or <a href="http://taniacandiani.com/">Tania Candiani</a> speaking about the intersection of combination, serendipity and translation, I was blown away by the creative thought processes that were shared.<br />
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<iframe allowfullscreen="" frameborder="0" height="326" mozallowfullscreen="" src="https://player.vimeo.com/video/114828162?portrait=0" webkitallowfullscreen="" width="580"></iframe>
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This is not the sort of end product I get at education conferences---where sharing one's thinking is not considered good enough. At those conferences, there is an expectation of audience involvement and tangible takeaways. With Eyeo, the feeling that is created through the presentation is the goal. I can't talk about this conference in terms what I learned, but rather, how it made me feel. This brings me to the last major theme.<br />
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<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;"><span style="color: #b45f06;"><b>Instruments of Power<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;"><span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;"></span></span></b></span></span><br />
There was a strong focus on equity at this conference, from the range of speakers, to topics, to the code of conduct. Part of that is an understanding of privilege as it applies to how we collect, use, and represent data.<br />
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Marek Tuszynski from the <a href="https://tacticaltech.org/">Tactical Technology Collective</a> shared their recent exhibition: The View from the <a href="https://tacticaltech.org/WhiteRoom">White Room</a>. (E.g. looking out from an Apple store.) The show looked at questions such as <i>What does it mean to live in a quantified society?</i> and <i>What is the value of data privacy when it becomes something you can buy? </i>Lots of powerful things to think about from this session---I had to get out and take a walk after it. Part of the exhibit included something called Big Mama, based on the quote from a government official justifying surveillance that he did it because "I love you all." and the perception that the contribution of data leads to a harmonious society. Take a deeper look at <a href="http://www.unfitbits.com/">Unfit-bits</a>, <a href="https://myshadow.org/">Me and My Shadow</a>, <a href="https://securityinabox.org/">Security in a Box</a>, and <a href="https://exposingtheinvisible.org/">Exposing the Invisible</a>. It is not that these concepts are new or unknown, but it's their application within our personal and professional contexts that make them worth revisiting.<br />
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As much as we talk about the power data visualization has to reveal, we rarely talk about how it can also be used to hide. In the best talk I saw, Josh Begley shaped conversation around what the work is that data visualization does. In one example, he talked about the <a href="http://prisonmap.com/">geography of incarceration</a>. As part of that, he made the comment that "most photos today are taken by machines for other machines to see." Satellites, drones, and other tools capture far more images than anything humans post to Instagram, Flickr, or other sites. Josh works on projects that bridge what machines are doing with what we notice. Do we want to be as connected to our foreign policy as we are to our phones? Check out his work on the <a href="http://dronestre.am/">Dronestream App</a> or <a href="https://theintercept.co/officer-involved/">Officer Involved Shootings</a> as ways to explore how the things we don't represent are still powerful enough to evoke emotion.<br />
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There were other presentations, keynotes, and sessions that I attended. There were also some I didn't get to attend due to having to get to the airport...including one I was looking forward to the most by Lynn Cherny. However, I enjoyed exploring a bit of Minneapolis, getting to meet several data viz heroes in person, and being able to think about some very different concepts for awhile. This spring has been a real drag in terms of work demands. I am looking forward to working on some new projects that are being spurred by this recent boost to my sense of creativity.<br />
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What have you seen recently that inspires you?The Science Goddesshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02846516022505481326noreply@blogger.com0