Teacher of the Week – Elisa Baughman

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Elisa Baughman
Grade 7/8 Computer Technology Teacher
Freedom Middle School
Franklin, TN

“I am in my 23rd year of teaching, but my first year teaching 7th and 8th grade computer technology classes. As a former ELA teacher, I found Tuva to be fascinating. Although I felt a little rusty on my “data analysis” and “math” lingo, I was immediately intrigued by how quickly and easily my students learned to discover for themselves all that Tuva has to offer. I gave them a few trial lessons and then let them choose data sets that interested them to create their own activities for others.  To quote an 8th grade boy in my class- ‘It’s a good source of data, but the multiple ways to look at the information makes it fun!’”

Teacher of the Week – Stephen McKenzie

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Stephen McKenzie
Math/Science Teacher
CEEAS Unjammed Teacher Fellow
Woodsbend YDC Alternative High School
West Liberty, Kentucky​

“Tuva allows for higher-order thinking by eliminating the mechanical processes of physically creating and organizing graphs, which is difficult for students who are behind or have difficulty with mathematics.  Students can easily manipulate data, variables, and graphs in a drag-and-drop environment that is both familiar and easy to understand. They discover patterns and trends in data that are meaningful to them. It is incredibly cross-curricular and works very well in mixed-ability and mixed-grade-level classrooms, like mine. Tuva is the next evolution of the graphical expression of data in education.”

Announcing Our Collaboration with the Friday Institute at NC State for Educator Professional Development

At Tuva, we have been working closely with the team at the Friday Institute at NC State, led by Dr. Hollylynne Lee, to bring our dynamic, easy-to-use, yet powerful data analysis and visualization tools to be used in a Massive Open Online Course for Educators (MOOC-ED) that is focused on “Teaching Statistics Through Data Investigations”.

The course is designed to develop the pedagogy and content understanding for teachers (and teacher educators) in middle school, high school, and AP/ intro college levels. There will be many choices and options in the course for teachers to focus their learning around content area that they teach.

The course will launch March 9th and will run for 8 weeks. Registration is FREE, and there is an opportunity for teachers to earn Continuing Education Units (CEUs) if they complete all activities in the course and do a project. It may be a great opportunity for teachers to work in teams or PLCs to complete the course together.

In the course, participants will see many video-based examples of students and teachers engaging in data and statistics tasks, hear from a panel of experts on teaching statistics (Chris Franklin, Susan Friel, Webster West), learn about statistical habits of mind, be introduced to a framework for developing students’ statistical sophistication (adapted from GAISE), examine tasks, and engage with real data sets using tools such as Tuva.  

Now doesn’t that all sound fun? Especially if you also have the option of engaging in discussions with teachers from all around the world?

You can see more details and register here

Please help us spread the word about this course by sharing it with your school contacts and teacher networks.

We are excited to be a part of this wonderful professional development opportunity for teachers on a wide scale and hope that it can serve thousands of educators in their efforts to bring data literacy to their students!

How to Starve to Death in One Act: Or, Why we Can’t Function Under the Mantra “I am not a Scientist”

Act 1 Scene 1

If one needs to be an expert in everything to be able to make a decision, a conversation about dinner might go something like this:

Husband: “What do you want to make for dinner?”

Wife: “I don’t know. I’m not a chef. How could I possibly know what to do with this food! What do you want to make?”

Husband: “I’m not a chef either. Since we aren’t chefs, what should we do with all our groceries?

Wife: “I don’t know, I’m not a grocer.”

Hours pass in stumped silence. Groceries begin to spoil as the conversation wears on.

Husband: “I’m really getting hungry; should we go out to eat?”

Wife: “That might work. But I’m not a professional race car driver, so I can’t drive.”

Husband: “Right, me neither.”

Days pass. Groceries rot. Starvation ensues.

The End 

At last night’s State of the Union President Obama mercifully addressed the climate change deniers’ beloved cop-out line:  “I am not a scientist.”  He points to the obvious fact that one does not need to be a scientist to make informed decisions. To make a decision, the President, or anyone, can talk with scientists, examine their data, compare the peer reviewed papers and create educated solutions. In other words, people can and should make decisions based on evidence provided by experts in the field.

This is where the importance of data literacy becomes obvious. An educated person should be able to examine and evaluate scientific data and form an accurate understanding of at  least the basic trends.

On a larger level, people must feel comfortable evaluating statements made by their elected representatives and disagreeing when they see flaws in their logic.

All students need to be learning how to have those conversations rather than shrugging off the responsibility of citizenship with the statement “I’m not a scientist”.

Special Lessons for Odd Times

The weeks between Thanksgiving and Winter Break are a challenging time to keep-up student interest and maintain an orderly classroom. I like to take the time to do longer-term in-class projects. It makes these trying weeks special and gives kids an incentive to stay emotionally present in school.

It’s a great time of year to use Tuva regularly. These few weeks are ideal for  mini-research projects or statistics based units. You have three weeks for students to dive deeply into various topics, write papers and create presentations. When students are driving their own learning the struggle to keep them engaged dissipates.

Tuva’s new tools allow you to do this with minimal work on your part.  We’ve found the data for you. Now you just have to write the questions and get computers into the hands of your kiddies.

If you don’t see a topic you want your students to explore please fill out a dataset request and we will put it together for you as soon as possible.