Teacher of the Week – Kayla Telford (Poland)

image
Kayla Telford (Poland)
High School Science Teacher
Wake County Public Schools
Apex, North Carolina

“Tuva is very easy to use and they have a very responsive staff to help you through any troubles you might have. Tuva is also very receptive to new ideas and feedback. They quickly gathered and uploaded a data set that was requested within the next two weeks. Tuva has developed the next generation graphing tool and they care about it is used in the classroom. They aim to make it as easy as possible for the teacher to use with their class.”

Teacher of the Week – Sarah Holmes

image
Sarah Holmes

7th grade Life Science, 8th grade Earth Science, and AP Environmental ScienceDirector of School Gardens at The Barstow School in Kansas City, MO

“Tuva has inspired me to incorporate more data into my science classroom. The powerful interface is easy for students to understand and allows them to pick out trends and generate questions based on the data. Tuva staff is helpful and quick to respond to my inquiries. I am excited to share this amazing resource with my colleagues and students!”

Teacher of the Week – Elisa Baughman

image
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

image
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!