ManyEyes - Education Data

Not sure how I am going to use these yet but here are a few interesting infographics I found on the ManyEyes site today related to education:

Public education spending, total vs. per student:



School District Technology Use:



Impact of Testing Culture on Student Contact Days:



So, if only 61.8% of our school days can be spent on anything but testing and test prep (low-level cognitive skills) and technology resources are monopolized for most of the year for these two purposes, how much of our education spending is spent on authentic, high-quality education? Lets go back to that chart with the six countries and see how our adjusted spending compares:

Now this is starting to make more sense. Still, even with that adjustment it seems Japan still spends less than we do. But, perhaps that can be explained by the amount of time they spend each year in school not doing test prep or dumbing down their curriculum to teach only the rote skills assessed.

On Monday I will do a breakdown of how much standardized testing likely costs Minnesotan's (beyond the $23 Million/year we give Pearson Education to create and manage our tests). I will also create some infographics that will show what we might be able to do with that money instead.

StatPlanet - Education Data Comparison

In preparation for my forthcoming Weekly Tech Tip on Data Visualization & Infographic tools I have spent a bit of time this morning exploring StatPlanet. StatPlanet is a website that pulls tons of data from groups and organizations like UNESCO and PISA about the health and welfare of different countries around the world. One area they happen to have a lot of data about is Education. I am not quite sure how many of these infographics will make it into my final Tech Tip video but the tool does seem like it might be worth a at least some exploration.

This form of data ranking countries on topics such as student test scores in math, reading , and science tends to reinforce the idea that we are in competition with these other nations, a notion explicitly expressed in films like Waiting for Superman and repeatedly reinforced whenever a politician says something along the lines of "Winning the Future." But, since that is such a broadly held viewpoint, especially in the U.S. perhaps these infographics are still worth considering.

Percentage of GDP spent on Education:



According to this data, the US spends 5.3% of GDP on education which is clearly a lower percentage investment than other many other nations. Contrasted with Finland, which is currently regarded as having perhaps the best education system in the world who spends 6.3%. Per capita, the US GDP is $45,550.3 and Finland's is $34,582.4. So when you calculate per capita spending on education this actually means that the US invests $2,414.17 and Finland invests $2,178.69. Clearly the US spend more. How does this break down for some of the other countries we are supposedly competing against:


Clearly the US outspends all these nations in per capita education spending. You would think we would rank hire in test scores:

Math Scores:


How do we rank among the six countries included in the table above?

2 Hong Kong
3 Finland
6 Japan
7 Canada
10 New Zealand
28 United States

How about for reading?


And the rankings:

1 Finland
2 Hong Kong
4 Canada
5 New Zealand
6 Japan
15 United States

And for Science:

Rankings:

1 Finland
2 Hong Kong
4 Japan
5 New Zealand
6 Canada
20 United States

Looking at these infographics would lead one to believe that money is not the determining factor in a good education. Except, among these other five countries Finland clearly spends more money on education than the others and the test scores seem to show a payoff. Somehow the U.S. is an outlier in these statistics. Could it be how these education dollars are spent that really matters? Could it be that somehow the U.S. has been wasting much of their investment in practices that don't produce learning results? I suspect yes. So, what is the U.S. wasting their time and resources on?

More to come.

Wordle Fun

I am getting ready to make one of my Weekly Tech Tip videos that I hope will be ready within about a week. State testing obligations have kind of put a wrench in my normal routine and therefore I've not been able to keep up with my regular video production schedule. I also really want this one to to drive some important points home. Since I have to submit all of these to the Minnesota Department of Education for possible inclusion in their iTunesU channel the content of this one I really want to make sure is well done. The topic of the forthcoming video will be on the use of data visualization tools and infographics to improve math comprehension. For my examples I am going to draw data from the standardized testing business we are caught in the grips of. So, while the stated purpose of the video will be to show how to use infographic tools to help people understand numbers the numbers I will be using will hopefully draw some light on the realities of what the decision to let standardized tests be the be all and end all measure of school, teacher, and student success really does.

So, since our state tests limit my bandwidth and my ability to create video I thought I would share some of the infographics I am developing for this future instructional video. Some of these may make it in the video and some may not. But, lets have some fun anyway.

I think I will start by demonstrating a tool that for many of us has become a cliche...Wordle. Now, I am not a huge fan of this tool and at this point I feel like I have seen enough of them. That said, I still think it is a useful tool for analyzing the frequency of terms used in a larger text or speech. So, I today I will apply Wordle to some of the most important documents associated with standardized testing. Perhaps it can show us something, perhaps not, I don't know.

No Child Left Behind Act:

A Nation at Risk:
The Imperative for Educational Reform:

The Principles of Scientific Management (by Fredrick Taylor):


The Core Knowledge Blog:

Well, I'm not entirely sure how these infographics are helpful or what they tell us. One thing that jumps out at me clearly is the absence of the word"Learning" from any of these Wordles.

What do you notice?

What other documents should we apply this to?

Tomorrow I will post something with numbers.

New Additions to the Digital Backpack

New additions to the Digital Backpack:

- Explore museums from around the world, discover and view hundreds of artworks at incredible zoom levels, and even create and share your own collection of masterpieces.
- Online Sketchpad/Paint Program
- QR Code Creator
- QR Code Creator
- QR Code Creator
- QR Code Creator
- Create QR Code Business Cards
(for education)- text-to-speech talking avatar generator
- Free online tool that converts text from image files or PDFs to movable text in a DOC, PDF, RTF, or TXT file.
- Free online tool that converts text from a picture file to text that can be copied and pasted.
- Wiki-like page creation tool with user-created elements that users can move around like magnets on a refrigerator door.
- Upload and share audio recordings. Includes a search engine that will search for terms within publically shared recordings.

- Share your phone, not your number.
- Microblogging platform that gives you a 280 character limit.
- Collects YouTube videos shared by the people you follow on Twitter and creates a channel you can watch based on those links.
- Enter Twitter Search Terms, and visualize tweets by a users location on a map - Create email alerts for every time your username, search term, or hashtag gets mentioned in Twitter
- automagically collects the links you share online ... and makes them searchable.
- Tweetstream synchs daily, making sure your tweets, contacts, lists, followers, followees and everything else are preserved forever.
- Collaborative multimedia diagramming tool.
- Twitter-like microblogging platform.
- mobile site that lets you manage your Twitter account but also has a great tool that lets you merge twitter lists created by other people
- - Allows teachers to set up class blog accounts and manage the settings and permissions for students in their class.
- create your own crisis maps that people can submit reports to via web, SMS, email, or Twitter.
- A world street map that anyone can edit and modify
- schedule emails to be sent in the future
- publish web pages via email
- automatically send photos uploaded to twitpic to your flickr account.
- drag and drop file sharing
- share and explore photos of things and places that no longer exist and map them
- very simple tool that lets you create slide shows from images found in Google Image searches.
- simple online video conferencing
- monitors your webcam and broadcasts online only something happens. Site alerts you via email but can also be set to broadcast alerts on Twitter.
- Generates code that lets you type text on a curved surface
record audio stories and share them on a map.
- disaster and crisis alert map
- compare two countries demographics
- record and share your GPS path records then later relive your trip in Google Earth
- create a map of your Linkedin connections.
- forwards your email to your cell phone via text message
- make your own book online.
- make your own ebook
- make your own childrens books
- upload your photo, record your voice, add text.
- free podcast hosting
- record and publish your own podcasts
- not really social bookmarking, with notefish you save content from web pages and collect them into notebook pages that can be sorted and shared.
- When you receive an urgent email message, AwayFind will notify you via your mobile device, a voice call, IM, or even delegate the message to someone you specify. - free online proofreader. Checks spelling, grammar, and plagiarism
- Make your own free online discussion forum.


- World's Largest Social Networking Platform

• - Create and design your own Facebook page.
• - Create fictional Facebook profiles

The Deadlist: (we will miss you)

• Online database application.
• Online database application.
  
• - publish email as a web page
• - Online slide presentation tool that lets you publish your presentations either as web pages or embed them in web pages.
• - Online vector drawing program similar to AutoDesk.
• - Free online audio recorder and audio publishing.
  
• - Online music remixing.
• - Online file converter that supports most filetypes. Upload and download without an email address or creating accounts.
• - Online meeting tool. Share your webcam, voice, chat, desktop, or PowerPoint presentations with others online

• whspr! - Need to receive a message by email, but can't (or don't want to) give out your email address? whspr! gives you a URL to share instead.

• - Build a video blog, the next YouTube or just a private place to share videos.
• - Upload presentation materials to drop.io then they give you a free conference call line and chat box.

There may still be more links that have gone dead. I only got through about half of them this afternoon.