Weekly Tech Tip: Making and Using Infographics

I am sorry it has been so long since my last Weekly Tech Tip but we have been doing state testing this month. This eats up district bandwidth so most use is prohibited for both students and teachers. Use of the Internet interferes with the ability for Pearson Education to deliver online assessments for both Math and Science and since we can only test a handful of kids at time (due to how much bandwidth it uses) it takes nearly the whole month to get all these students tested. As a result, most of this week's tech tip had to be done without the use of the Internet. I have also been assigned to proctor these tests so I couldn't talk while making this week's tech tip. I apologize for the lack of narration. Anyway, this week's tech tip is on infographics and how they can be used to help students make sense of numbers while analyzing complex problems using data and statistics. Since I have been knee deep in state testing I thought data regarding testing would make for an appropriate data set for this tech tip. Enjoy.

Weekly Tech Tip:


related links:

• Infographic Generators:

StatPlanet

Gapminder World

ManyEyes

Wordle

Visual.ly (Still in Beta)

• More botched tests by company that scored FCATs turn up: The testing company that has come under fire in Florida is also having problems in Minnesota. (Miami Herald)
• KEEPING PUBLIC SCHOOLS PUBLIC: Testing Companies Mine for Gold (Rethinking Schools)
• Inside the multimillion-dollar essay-scoring business: Behind the scenes of standardized testing (City Pages)
• Standardized Testing: A Decade in Review (Huffington Post)
• Computerized State Tests – Is Paper Better? by Jen Hegna on Grin and Bear I.T.
• South Korean Official Advises Caution in Following His Country's Model (Education Week)
• Poor Teaching for Poor Children …in the Name of Reform by Alfie Kohn
• Bubble sheet season by Joe Bower on For the Love of Learning
• Standardized Students, Silenced Teachers: The Un-American Education Agenda
• Victims of standardized testing Poem by Ruslana Westerlund
• SCHOOL LIFE IN JAPAN
• How Social Media is Changing the Education Industry [INFOGRAPHIC]
• Bloggers Challenge President on Standardized Testing (NYTimes)
  

Video Festival:

• Visit msnbc.com for breaking news, world news, and news about the economy

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Link Stew:

• Editorial: School integration is still a worthy goal (Star Tribune)
• Bill introduced in Colorado to repeal NCLB
• Teaching A People's History - Zinn Education Project
• Detroit schools send layoff papers to all teachers (Associated Press)
• The Test Generation (The American Prospect)
• Teach for America alum: TFA’s impact on my school (The Washington Post)
  

Blog Carnival:

• The “New” Normal by Will Richardson on Weblogg-ed
• Things May Not Get Better! by Gary Stager on Stager-to-Go
• The Contraband of Some Schools is The Disruptive Innovation of Others with BYOT (Bring Your Own Tech) by Tim Clark on The Innovative Educator
• I’m no better than a high school drop out by Lisa Nielson on The Innovative Educator
• Student Driven Learning by Josh Stumpenhorst on Stump the Teacher
• Conventional Education Will Go the Way of Farming by Doug French on Ludwig von Mises Institute
• Passion-based learning in the 21st century: An interview with Sheryl Nussbaum-Beach by John Norton on Powerful Learning Practice
• Dear parents, yes, we do filter websites at our school! by Scott McLeod on Mind Dump
• Generation Z could be the key to driving change in an outdated educational system by Lisa Nielson on The Innovative Educator
• Is Plato's Cave a Classroom? by Greg Kulowiec on The History 2.0 Classroom
• Testing cannot be anything but political - and abusive by Ira Socol on SpeEdChange
  

Retweetable Tweets:

Where there's smoke, there's fire. Where there are standards, there's standardized testing.less than a minute ago via Twitter for Mac Favorite Retweet ReplyJoe Bower
joe_bower

@DianeRavitch Principal of my child's NYC charter school has asked the Board to change her title to Chief Education Officer - yes, CEO.less than a minute ago via Twitter for iPhone Favorite Retweet ReplyClub des Cordeliers
cordeliers

Here are some amazing videos related to mathematics. http://bit.ly/gc9muG #edchat #mathchatless than a minute ago via TweetDeck Favorite Retweet Replydavidwees
davidwees

@markgarrison "'tchr wanted to know if they learn schoology today, are they going to have to learn something new in five years.' I hope so"less than a minute ago via Power Twitter Favorite Retweet Replysmbeaverson
smbeaverson

Dewey: what the best and wisest parent wants for his child is what we should want for all children...anything less..destroys our democracyless than a minute ago via web Favorite Retweet ReplyDiane Ravitch
DianeRavitch

On CNN just now, @m_rhee just said that the impact of a great teacher is "immeasurable." She said it herself.less than a minute ago via TweetDeck Favorite Retweet ReplyJonathan Becker
jonbecker

. @techlearning The "pro-teacher" language of individualism & personlization is code for drill & a steady diet of standardized testing.less than a minute ago via web Favorite Retweet ReplyGary Stager, Ph.D.
garystager

@garystager it's staggering to think abt the cost of testing in US- supposed to be cheap, efficient- NOT.less than a minute ago via TweetDeck Favorite Retweet Replypammoran
pammoran

@DianeRavitch Maybe it's time to inform #parents that they can opt their kids out of #standardizedtests -- especially unreasonable onesless than a minute ago via web Favorite Retweet ReplyBob P
2011teacher

Open Letter to Diane Ravitch @DianeRav #edchat #lrnchat

Dear Diane Ravitch:

This week I watched your interview with Book.TV where you explain why you think we need to focus on good strong curriculum. This focus concerns me.

When I first began teaching I was committed to the idea that k-12 schools should, above all else, provide students with a rigorous curriculum. As an art teacher I saw what many teachers did in their classrooms as simply putting paints and crayons in front of kids and saying, "have at it, now don't make too big a mess." I spent countless hours writing curriculum and developing lesson plans that would expose students to the splendors of art history, the thought provoking ideas in art philosophy, and a strong foundation in aesthetic theory. I loaded those lessons full of such rich content that I thought there would be no way my students would be bored in my class or that they would walk away from eighteen weeks in my classroom not knowing more than I did when I took high school art. Why then was I always surprised when most of my students did not find the content as riveting and inspirational as I did? Sure, occasionally I would expose them to an idea or introduce them to an artist that would capture their attentions and their imaginations but not always, not by a long shot.

Six years of working with "at risk" or "non-traditional" students later in environments both traditional and online and three years spent with the majority of my time in the back of the classroom observing, I have a far different perspective. I think I understand why my original beliefs about teaching and learning were false. The more time I spend in the back of the classroom the more strongly I feel that there is nothing, no matter how hard they try or how good they are, that a teacher can do to impart knowledge or information to a learner. Learning comes from the learner, not the teacher, and the only thing a teacher can do is set conditions for the learner to discover the understanding for themselves.

What I failed to realize when I was a new teacher was that in so carefully crafting a rigorous curriculum for my students I was robbing them of the element that made the curriculum exciting for me. I was robbing them of the opportunity to discover many of these things for themselves. Discovery is fun, discovery is the ingredient in the learning equation that provides the fuel to keep going. It is why we like adventures and exploring. It is this thrill of discovery that can motivate lab researchers to spend years on painstakingly boring and repetitive tasks in the pursuit of knowledge. And, it is what was largely lacking in my classroom my first four years as a teacher.

What makes this story even more perplexing is every time an administrator or mentor observed my teaching in those years, while they all recognized that something was missing, no one identified this problem. I have a theory for why that was. The model of teaching and learning that has become so synonymous with school that it is etched into the vision nearly every teacher, student, and community member has is based largely on two resounding principle beliefs: 1. students learn through instruction; and 2. The depth & breadth of the curriculum define the level of learning in a course. These are false assumptions and there is very little data that I have seen that prove otherwise.

Last week I posted a clip where as part of it Alan Kay very eloquently describes the Montessori model of school and how the Macintosh OS was based on Montessori principles. Users of the computer discover how to use it by encountering cues in the digital environment. This discovery propels the user to dig deeper and explore more until soon they understand how to navigate and use the computer. Our classrooms need to be more like the Macintosh OS. I started to come to this realization about teaching and learning about four years ago, just before I started this blog and titled it Techno Constructivist.

In that same clip Seymour Papert goes on to explain, with precision, exactly why it is so hard to change the education establishment. There is a lot of money invested and people's jobs that depend on the proliferation of the curriculum and instruction myth. However, just as with my early experience teaching a rigorous art curriculum, the pressure schools have had to be more rigorous under NCLB have diminished a vitally important variable in the learning equation. I fear Race To The Top (RTTT) will only work to further extinguish the flame.

A rigorous curriculum poses another problem. Even if it doesn't extinguish the thrill of discovery in students it still represents a fundamental and troubling truth about the purpose of school. Curriculum always discriminates by what it includes and especially what it excludes. Howard Zinn knew this and made it his life's work to explore this equity issue within the context of US History curriculum. At it's best, curriculum reinforces mainstream values. At its worst, it oppressess and excludes people and ideas. But, maybe that is what the goal of NCLB and RTTT is. If you deprive someone of the thrill of discovery they loose the love of learning and diminish their ability to engage in critical thought. If you focus on rigor in the curriculum you reinforce the values and biases in that curriculum.