Challenge 5–“The Data Say…”

Since I am a visual learner, seeing my lesson design in the form of a pie chart really helped me to see areas in which I’d like to work on in my lessons. Much of learning being data driven, it becomes more and more important to actually understand how to use the data in a way that spurs on innovative education. The article, “Data Visualization in–and for–Education” highlights this relationship as it states, “You understand data better because you are familiar with visuals and you understand visuals better because you get familiarized with data, what you can do with them and how you can work with that.” Through this relationship, educators can sharpen their skills by creating intentional lesson plans, tweaking what already works in ways to heighten the educational experience for their students.

The lesson plan I chose hinged on the reading and understanding of the text we are reading in class. Therefore, the amount of time spent on reading makes sense. I would like to work a bit more on the collaboration piece of the lesson. This has been a major sticking point this semester due to the Covid restrictions in place at our school. We are in-class, but have shortened class periods. Because of this, I might instead incorporate a flipped classroom design, having students view the irony power point before coming to class, so that we could spend more time working with the irony chart in class as a whole, and then in smaller groups. Likewise, I could use flipgrid to encourage students to respond to each other regarding the journal entry. This way free discussion could take place without needing to be rushed during class time.

The text analysis was encouraging, as many students touched on the important points of irony. Due to the nature of the assignment, most students touched on the elements of irony, using different portions of the text to do so. Much of this was revealed in the word cloud generated from the text analysis.

I think what interested me most about these tools was the pie chart generated from learning designer. I’m interested in using this for some of my other lessons, in order to see where I might be spending too much time, and areas I’d like to expand upon a bit more. Since I have a desire to launch my students into independent inquiry and learning, I  might use this to chart my lessons from the beginning of the year, comparing it to some of the lessons created in the middle of the year, and finally to those at the end of the year. I’ll watch for ways in which I expand student inquiry and collaboration, reducing the amount of times spent reading/watching. This might help me to see how I am encouraging my students to take up the mantle of learning and incorporate it into their everyday lives.

3 thoughts on “Challenge 5–“The Data Say…”

  1. I am in the middle of completing challenge 5, and maybe I am struggling with this one because I was trying to think of some larger lesson, element, or concept that would need to be shown on the pie chart. As I was trying to think about how much time I would spend teaching, conferring, time for students to independently work or reflect, It was like my lesson became more and more complicated. The idea that I was going to plug my lesson into something for it to be interpreted, scared me. I felt like maybe I was going to miss some important element and not actually learn anything about me lesson by just looking at some visual display. So I revamped a lesson, made it way bigger than I could handle, especially while juggling two masters classes, at home students, in class students, and a revolving door of students on isolation needing lessons. So after collecting my first round of data, I had to adjust my groups and guidance a tad. I am still in the process of the lesson, and I am excited about where it is headed, although still overwhelmed by the idea of the pie chart. While I was playing with some of my first days of data collection from student work, I went ahead and placed the students words they used for setting their “goals”, and the words they used for what they “independently learned from their own research” into two separate word clouds. I am falling in love with the patterns between the goals and self proclaimed learning outcomes. The visual inspired me. I can’t wait for the rest of the lesson to circle around, for the rest of my data to be collected, so I can see more visual interpretations. Will I be equally motivated, inspired, and reflective? I am now wondering, how can we use these visuals for students to interpret their own learning? Other than a word cloud, I wonder what other visual interpretations and reflective tools there are? And in the end, is there anything available that would not take too much time to implement in class for the students to use to analyze their own learning beyond an activity for them to look at and say… “oh, that’s cool.”?

    1. Thanks so much for the encouragement! I think now, more than ever, I question my own efficacy as a teacher.

      You also pose some very good questions. I wondered some of the same things, particularly regarding the Wordcloud. It is a very neat tool, but I also wonder whether my high school students really care about it. The Learning designer I felt was pretty beneficial in regards to the goals I set for myself and for my students. Since I am a more visual person, the chart helped me immensely.

  2. Additionally- I wanted to let you know that I see in your screen print that you have a million tabs open on your screen. I feel like this is a true representation of a teacher in the middle of remote and/or hybrid teaching. It is what my screen always seems to look like, and is a true reflection of how much each of us must juggle and multi-task at any given time. You are doing great!

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