How are Teachers Looking at Schoolyard Data?

Schoolyard Ecology Teachers from New York, Connecticut. and Massachusetts returned to Harvard Forest this January to deepen their understanding of project data.  Here is a snapshot of what they worked on...

Brooklyn Technical High School Teacher, Elisa Margarita, chose to adapt the new online graphing tool exercises for use by her students.  Above are some excerpts from what she was able to draft during the data workshop, using her school's Buds, Leaves, and Global Warming project data and the northern most site as found on the field site map and data base. Elisa will also incorporate some of the content from Dr. Betsy Colburn's workshop slides to help students better understand visualizations of project data. 

Greater Lowell Technical School Teacher, Tara Alcorn, worked with Project Ecologist, Dr. David Orwig to create this representation of data collected at Harvard Forest using the Schoolyard Ecology Woolly Bully and the Hemlock Tree protocol.  Using a trend line, Tara is able to show a relationship between the number of egg sacs and the amount of new growth of  Hemlock trees.  Not surprisingly, the more egg sacs, the lower the amount of new growth is found.

Groton-Dunstable High School Teacher, Melanie McCracken, was mentored by Choate-Rosemary Hall Teacher, Joseph Scanio in working with a data visualization software, called  Tableau.  The three figures above were among the data representations they created.  While Melanie was impressed with the potential using this tool, she was disappointed to learn that it is very challenging to access it on Chromebooks, which is the hardware her students use at school.  Another teacher had hoped to participate in the Tableau session but when he found out about the issue with Chromebooks, he moved in to another break out session to work on graphing with Google Sheets.  We are finding most teachers especially in the public schools, relying solely on Google hardware and software.  This, brings up issues of who controls what students have access to in the classroom, that are beyond our control in providing professional development to teachers.  Given that limitation, there is still the possibility that these teachers could: A. Find a workaround to using Tableau on Chromebooks and B.  Develop visualizations like this on their own PCs, etc. in order to use as teaching tools that ask the students to interpret the representations rather than create graphs themselves.

Massachusetts Audubon Educator, Sally Farrow, made progress in graphing her impressive vernal pool data sets from Drumlin Farm and Concord Middle School using Excel, with the help of Dr. Betsy Colburn.  These data representations will serve as teaching tools for the hundreds of students that come to Drumlin Farm each year to participate in data collection there.  Concord Middle School students will have a new tool to better understand patterns of water level changes over time even given years of missing data using the bar graph above.

Connecticut Audubon Educator, Marge Porter, with the help of  Schoolyard Ecology Project Coach, Fiona Jevon, was able to create pie charts showing species composition of both study plots and a a bar graph  of tree diameter by individual trees over 2 years.  Marge is learning how to add data representation to the ways she coaches teachers at nearby schools in Connecticut, in participating in the Our Changing Forests project.

Williston School Teacher, Jane Lucia, was mentored by HF Research Assistant, Joshua Plisinski, and Project Ecologist, John O'Keefe, in developing this series of graphs showing how the timing of leaf drop differs by species at her site over time, using Buds, Leaves and Global Warming data.

Harvard Forest staff and Mentor Teachers supported participants in reaching their data management and representation goals as needed.

 

Ecologist, Dr. Betsy Colburn provided an Introduction for all participating teachers and then teachers broke into self designated breakout groups by experience and focus.

 HF Information Manager, Emery Boose, introduced first year teachers to the process of data input and management, using the online database he designed for HF Schoolyard Ecology.

Links to Explore More:

New This Year:

Boose, E. 2020. HF Schoolyard Carbon Biomass Reference Graph.

Snow, P., Boose, E. 2020. Buds-Leaves Online Graphing Exercises.(Draft)

Snow, P., Boose, E. 2020. Hemlock Woolly Bully Online Graphing Exercises.(Draft)

Snow, P., Boose, E. 2020. Changing Forests Online Graphing Exercises. (Draft)

Snow, P. 2020. Teacher Created Graphs 2020.pdf

Updated this Year:

Boose, E. 2020. Intro to HF Schoolyard Data Management. Presentation

Colburn, B. 2020. Intro to Data Visualization Workshop. Presentation.

Colburn, B. 2020. Show Me a Picture, Tell Me a Story; Harvard Forest Schoolyard Ecology Program: Level II & III Data Analysis Workshop. Presentation.

Existing Resources Used at This Year's Workshop:

Colburn, B. 2019. Data Workshop Graphing Exercises.

Snow, P. et al. 2019. Teacher Developed Graphs and More; Harvard Forest Looking at Data Workshop.

MARK YOUR CALENDARS:

Harvard Forest Spring Symposium; March 17, 2020  including Education panels and discussion
Phenocam Workshop for Teachers:  Northern Arizona University, March 12-14, 2020
Spring Workshop For Teachers:  April 9, 2020
Summer Institute for Teachers :  Tentatively scheduled for Aug.18 and 19, 2020.