Why should I care when I am teaching my class tucked away in sunny Hawke's Bay in little old New Zealand that a report by the US national Intelligence Council on Global trends in 2012 state that Information Technology is entering the big data era?
Big data refers to the vast amount of information generated and collected by society with advancements with information technology. A great clip by KPMG identifying the Future State 2030 Global Megatrends points out that 90% of the digital data available today was only created in the last 2 years.
In terms of Education, there is no argument that we can generate and have access to vast amounts of information on our learners. With the predicted continual development of information technologies and in particular data solutions, it is important to ask whether education is keeping pace and making best use of these resources for our learners?
Using assessment information to know about, and plan for student learning has been identified as one of three key issues facing NZ learners by ERO. The report pinpoints that schools need to develop their capacity to utilise achievement data for monitoring students' achievement and for school self reviews. "If we want to make a difference to priority learners we need to engage in a more fine-grained analysis of what is happening for individual learners" (ERO 2012, pg 18).
So what sort of data do we have on our students? Let's take a look at an individual student here at school. From the student management system Kamar I have access to:
- Common assessment task results (PAT etc)
- NCEA performance
- Results for all school assessments
- Pathways (vocational) information
- Groups (co-curricular involvement)
- Awards gained
- Attendance statistics
- Pastoral records
- Medical notes
- Interviews around course selections
- Learning support programme if on Diverse needs register
- Special assessment conditions
- Principal's interview notes
From our online learning community Schoology I can also gather information around:
- When her assessments are due in all her courses
- How involved she has been in online class discussions
- What co-curricular activities she is interested in
- How long she has been logged into a course page and what were the main areas of interest for her
- When she last logged in
What a vast amount of information! Do I use it all? Not always. Does every staff member know how to access all the data? I don't think so. It is vitally important that we provide training and support to all our staff around how to access, and most importantly, how to use this data for the benefit of all students. (You may have noted I used the term "staff member" as opposed to "teacher", this is because we have a number of non-teaching staff as homeroom mentors to our students).
So the amount of data is predicted to get even bigger. Just having access to the information will not be enough - we need to develop systems to help educators make best use of the data to support our learners. As the ERO report states: (focusing on data) "is an absolute necessity for knowing about learners as individuals who possess interests, strengths and capabilities" (ERO 2012, p.20).
And this is before we actual sit down and talk with our students ....
Cool. Interesting vid. Personally I think we are awash with too much data! We have Kamar and Canvas (rather than Schoolologybook) and I have yet to tap into either to any great degree. Am I bovvered? Look at my face! Bovvered? Face!
ReplyDeleteI reckon you should be bovvered Wozza!Being an accounting teacher I don't believe you can ever have too much data. I challenge you to scratch a little deeper into the data - it might inform our practice more. I do think we need to give staff more time (and training) on this though.
ReplyDeleteI agree with giving staff more time! Using this data gives teachers a better understanding of our students, building student/teacher relationships and increasing student engagement.
ReplyDeleteI agree with you Toni, you can never have too much data. In terms of when this data can be useful, I feel in our role as mentors we can use this data for our homeroom students to gain a deeper understanding of their learning journey specially at senior level. There is however limited time available to do this, but that should not be a reason to not use the data whenever possible.
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