Professionals

This slide deck was presented at East Bay Educational Collaborative Professional Development Center in Warren, Rhode Island on April 12, 2016 where Ruth Krumhansl was a guest speaker. In addition to this presentation, Ruth also led several workshops on EDC Earth Science. The audience was about 45 teachers from all across New England.

Learn more about the workshop.

What does it mean to be data literate in the world of “big data”? What should we be teaching students to better prepare them to participate in today’s workforce and society? What steps need to be taken to develop critical data literacy skills in schools? To seek answers to these questions, EDC’s Oceans of Data Institute (ODI) convened an expert panel of both data analysts and educators for a workshop on data literacy.

Ruth Krumhansl, Founder of the Oceans of Data Institute (ODI), describes all the ways big data is changing lives today, the challenges that big data brings, and why ODI is working to transform education to include more data-relevant instruction.

"Data will be part of [student's] future and it should be part of their instruction too".

ODI gathered a panel of experts from the scientific, education, business, and law enforcement fields to develop an occupational profile that describes the specific skills and knowledge needed to compete in a big-data-centered economy. This work is the first of its kind in the field. It is our hope that the results will help inform conversations about college and career readiness at the K–16 education level.

This program is developing and classroom testing a Web interface and data analysis tools that engage students in scientific investigations using data from the Tagging of Pacific Predators (TOPP) Program, NOAA’s Drifter Program, and the National Center for Ecological Analysis and Synthesis.

Large, high-quality online scientific datasets give today’s students the opportunity to work with authentic data and participate in real scientific work. Yet the educational promise of these datasets will not be met without concerted effort. ODI has created two reports to support interface and tool designers in their efforts to create data visualization tools for the classroom.

In collaboration with Concord Consortium and the University of Minnesota, EDC's Oceans of Data Institute is developing and classroom-testing an online, open-source data analysis platform that can be used in conjunction with a variety of data types and curricula. CODAP is geared toward middle and high school students. It can help students visualize and interpret data, and make evidence-based claims from the data.

Go to CODAP.