Walls that invite others in: Transform your conversations about data

Last 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?

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.

Basically, I said I would facilitate some learning around how to build the sort of data (story) walls we've been doing recently. 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."

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 data academy 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.

https://twitter.com/science_goddess/status/930421496538841088

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.

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 companion site on GitHub for all of the other links, references, handouts, and structure.

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.