I’m teaching a couple of them and I wanted to share one now with my readers. I actually presented this module to a small group of teachers a few weeks ago, and depending on the focus, I think the strategy can be used for many different purposes.

The main objective of the workshop is to make data analysis exciting. I know, you’re probably asking yourself: Is that even possible, Heather? Hey, whatever floats your boat. The fact is, however, that tracking data analysis doesn’t have to be a static representation of figures. It can be more dynamic, animated even.

In education, we use data tracking for any number of reasons as we all know. Now, for some districts, this means tracking their test data. For some classes, this means guiding students in presenting their researched data in a way that is closer to storytelling. For that is what animated data over time is: a narrative.

The best way to show you what I’m talking about is to introduce you to the perfect example of sexy data analysis. The guru of animated data is Hans Rosling. Founder of Gapminder.org, Hans Rosling takes data from public access sources: the World Health Organization, International Labor Organization, The World Bank, etc…and uses his program to track data over time and animate it so that we can better visualize the changes from year to year.

Here is a snip-it from his 2007 TED speech where he describes, using animated graphing, the correlation to life expectancy and number of children per family from 1962 – 2003.

So as an English Department Chair I was wondering if I could track my department’s increase in test scores over the course of the school year, from assessment to assessment, and realized that while I may not have the cash to ask ole’ Hans to crunch my numbers, Google Docs can do it for me.

To create your own motion chart, here’s what you have to do:

Step One: Make sure you have a Google Account.
Step Two: Open up a spreadsheet.
Step Three: Type in your data. To create a motion chart, don’t think of it as the X-axis and Y-axis, just type columns. See my screen shot below, and type in my made-up data so we can do this together. I tracked some mythical data of comic book sales over time between the ever popular “Invisa-girl” and “Macro-man.”

Step Four: Highlight the data you want to see animated over time.
Step Five: Go to Insert.
Step Six: Scroll to Gadget
Step Seven: Click Motion Chart

From here, make sure that you have clicked “Unique Colors” so you can see each variable move more easily. Also, make sure that the X-Axis drop down says “Time” so that that span of time is at the bottom of the graph, if it applies.

You can fool around with the bar graph feature, the line graph, etc…If you watch the dots move or the bar graphs, you can even devise comprehension questions without looking at the data itself.

For instance, “In what year was a cross-over comic produced that starred the two superheroes?” You can see that when the two dots overlap is most likely the answer.

Lo and behold! Animated comic book data over time. Wouldn’t Hans Rosling be proud?

I’d be really interested to hear about how you use this technology this year. Check back in and share!

© heather for tweenteacher.com, 2011. | Permalink | 2 comments | Add to del.icio.us
Post tags: animated graphs, data analysis, gapminder.org, google docs, hans rosling, motion charts, test scores, tracking data over time, VAM

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And, sure, there are test scores of sorts used in any number of other professions. My father used to come home talking about game show Nielson Ratings, my brother in-law looks to see the totals for his opening weekends. (Can you tell I come from a family of entertainment?) But somehow our test scores are different.

Our test scores reflect far more than our efforts and performance. They reflect how much sleep a kid got the night before. They reflect the recent divorce, the boyfriend’s breakup during passing period, the number of days the kid wasn’t at school, apathy, yesterday’s enrollment into the school, and yes, content knowledge.

But test scores are the American way, a game to those who succeed in them, aren’t they? And like any competitive sport, there is the “thrill of victory and the agony of defeat.” And, after all, we can’t all be winners, right?

But that’s just why teachers and schools have begun to circle their wagons and arm themselves with their voices loud against this threat of test scores running the show. Students should not begin their lives in the agony of defeat. We should be equipping them with what it takes to be victorious.

I think the reason why politicians tend to favor the need for competition in school is because it’s a language that’s worked for them, so they are confused about schools’ lack of buy-in. And while I’m all fine with a good healthy dose of financial incentive, we cannot compete unless we are all given the same resources. I mean, in the Olympics, does any swimmer in an antiquated swimsuit really stand a chance against someone decked out in the newfangled sharkskin suit? So is it for the inequity in school funding.

So clearly I’ve been thinking a lot about the fact that soon our jobs may be identified and retained in large part to my students’ ability to take standardized tests, a variable which, in my opinion, is only one step up from hire date as a means to retain a position (see my article for Teacher Magazine, “Does Last Hired, First Fired Really Make Sense”). And having just ended our own standardized testing, that good ‘ole CST, I am reminded yet again that one of those factors that affect achievement is the lack of quality of the tests themselves.

So as my students bubbled away earlier this May , I looked at the test booklet to get an idea of what the testing gods felt were important enough to assess this year. The quality of what I saw was truly tragic, and I thought I’d share a little of the asinine quality of these tests as a means to answer the question:

How can my job quality be based on THESE tests?

My recollection of the questions (we aren’t allowed to write them down from the book) is also compounded by the feedback from the students. But just to protect the sanctity of the actual questions which are top secret and must not be discussed at all costs, I’ve replaced all the actual terms with similar ones that hopefully get my point across.) Here are the kinds of questions we observed:

1. They were randomly asked to define the word “yachting” (remember, the actual word is disguised to protect its true identity for fear of offending the original word.) Now my Title I minority students (the majority of my school) had never encountered that word. And I was proctoring the advanced math group. You know, those kids who started Algebra as zygotes? Now, I’m not knocking the students. I’m knocking the test makers who clearly can’t seem to avoid culturally elitist questions.

2. The informational reading selections were, how do I say it? Dated. One was on reading the instructions on how to use an old crank Phonograph.

3. How ’bout the fact that there is a percentage of questions on the test which will be dumped if over a certain percent of students get it right? The fact is that the test makers assume that if a high majority of the students get the question right, (reflecting of course that a high majority of teachers actually taught that standard well) the question is trashed as being too easy.

4. How ’bout the fact that there are questions meant to just be “piloted” during the actual test, with the intention of being too hard for most kids? How does that make a kid feel while testing? Why are they using high-stakes tests to assess the quality of the questions on the tests? How nice that the test makers get to use the tests formatively, but the schools don’t.

5. I also couldn’t help but notice that there was at least one question which asked students to pick a synonym for a word, let’s say it was “brick,” and the choices to choose from weren’t even nouns like giving them “run”, “jump”, “laugh”, “cry.”

Assessments are meant to reflect what has been taught, not how to out-think a tricky question. That is not critical thinking. But in this day and age, tests are actually driving the curriculum itself. That being the case, why can’t our standardized assessments at least reflect the lessons we know are the ones that truly need be taught? (See my recent post here on College and Career Readiness in Assessments.)

If the tail must wag the dog, why can’t the tail at least be well informed about what might be knocked off the table with each swing? If tests have become instructional guides in their own right, should they not at least be good ones?

And most importantly for the topic of this post: if tests are to judge my performance as a teacher, or the quality of my students and their community, should they not at least ask questions that are applicable? There are many reasons why tests are not great ways to evaluate performance. Yes, there are students not putting in the effort or families not doing what they need to help students achieve. But it is also the quality of the very tests that is also setting up our teachers and students for failure.

Bottom line is this: good test scores does not a good teacher make, just as bad test scores does not a bad teacher make.

Care to share any of the bizarre or poorly constructed questions that you saw on the tests this year? Please share below.

____________________________________________________________________________________

And here’s a little Test Score blogroll so you can follow this topic from other edubloggers who comprise our Fellowship of the Ning (Otherwise known as Those-who-spoke-with-Arne-Duncan). Throughout June we will all be involved in discussions and webinars focused on the issues we raise in our series of posts on this topic. Remember, policy affects our practice. And all our voices need to be at the table. Check these out for further reading. Feel free to comment and participate on any of our sites:

Marsha Ratzel – “Reflections of a Techie”

Renee Moore – “TeachMoore”

Mary Tedrow – “Leaving No Multiple Choice Footprint Behind”

Anthony Cody – “Summer of Discontent”

Teacher Letters to Obama -

http://www.facebook.com/group.php?gid=166176941518&v=app_2373072738&ref=ts

© heather for tweenteacher.com, 2010. | Permalink | 7 comments | Add to del.icio.us
Post tags: assessments, education, merit pay, standardized tests, Teachers Letters to Obama, test scores, TLO

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Shrug. Cue eye roll.(...)
Read the rest of Studies Find There’s No Such Thing as Learning Styles – As Teachers, Should We Care? (956 words)

© heather for tweenteacher.com, 2009. | Permalink | 24 comments | Add to del.icio.us
Post tags: differentiation, learning styles, multi, multiple-intelligences, standardization, syn-naps, test scores

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Here’s yet another reason why test scores can’t be the only way to gage teaching quality.

A colleague of mine, a fifth grade teacher, at the UCI Writing Project got a call last night from her automated phone tree saying that the school was being closed for 7-14 days due to a swine flu outbreak in the classes.

Two confirmed cases, 8 kids out last Friday in her class alone, a teacher or two out…OK, I guess if we’re closing schools for flu outbreaks, they seem to have one.  But the stressful thing here is not the flu itself.  No, the vomiting is outweighed by the reality that the school is scheduled to have testing next week.

The AP is calling Sacramento to see what can be done.  What do you mean, “What can be done?”  Do you mean postpone the tests, or simply put them in the frame of reference to which they belong; that is, they are one way, a frankly inaccurate photograph, of an entire year’s accomplishments?

I agree that we need some standardized assessment of students to see if they are hitting the basic foundation of our standards.  Standards, of course, are for another post entirely.  They do not, for example, represent the level a student thinks, but rather, how many facts a student can regurgitate.  Hmmm…Perhaps the swine flu is good preparation for tests after all.

Anyway, putting aside the quality of the standardized tests in their current form, this example just adds to the main reason why test scores can’t be our only gage: there are too many factors outside of the classroom that impact test scores.

We cannot continue assessing teachers using a method where so many variables can be corrupted.  Abuse at home, homelessness, health care, hunger, nomadic lifestyles, divorces…these all affect tests scores. Gossip, breakups, upcoming thoughts of birthdays, pizza for lunch…these all affect test scores.  Bubbling incorrectly, anxiety, sleepiness…these affect test scores.  So do school closures.  So do teachers that students have had years prior.  And yes, a small slice of the assessment pie would be the quality of the current teacher.

But how do we explain those students who always do well, no matter which teacher they have?  How do we explain those students who never do well, no matter which teacher they have?

Tests are too imperfect, and evaluating teachers is too important to leave in the hands of imperfection…much less swine flue.

© heather for tweenteacher.com, 2009. | Permalink | One comment | Add to del.icio.us
Post tags: assessments, standardized testing, swine flu, teacher evaluation, test scores

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