Looking at Data Workshop Levels 2 and 3 Preview

Here's What We are Planning for the January 9th Workshop at Harvard Forest

HF Ecologist, Betsy Colburn will lead a presentation and work session to help teachers look more deeply
at their Schoolyard Ecology data.

NEW This Year!  Representing Schoolyard Data with Tableau

Choate-Rosemary Hall Teacher Joe Scanio will lead a new breakout session where teachers can practice creating visualizations of their Schoolyard Eco. data using Tableau.

Woolly Bully Teachers Will Work with Project Ecologist
David Orwig to find ways of representing HWA data.

Graphing Activity above developed by Lowell Regional Technical High School Teacher,
Tara Alcorn 

Buds, Leaves and Global Warming Project Ecologist, John O'Keefe, will be available to consult on Phenology-related questions. 

Our Changing Forests Project Coach, Fiona Jevon, will be supporting OCF teachers as needed.

 Teachers will share what they were able to produce during the data 

workshop with peers as part of this learning community.  

See examples of their work in the link below.

Links to Learn More about Level 2 and 3 Data Workshop

• Teacher Created Graphs from Last year's Workshop.pdf

• Using Tableau to Explore Schoolyard Data.Scanio.2019

• Student Buds, Leaves Graphs-Middle School-Mossman 2018.pptx

• Hand Graphing Growing Season Lesson-Mossman.2019.

What Level 2 and 3 Teachers Said about Last Year's Workshop:

• Dr. Colburn explains things so crystal clear. Every time I hear her presentation, I learn how important it is to represent the data visually.
• Good conversation and information. It would be helpful to also have the graphs she (Dr. Colburn) presented with and without the labels so we could discuss this kind of graphical analysis with our own students as well.
• It was helpful to see different types of graphs, how to interpret those graphs and data as it's been a while for me. 
• I enjoy working side by side the Harvard staff and being fully supported.

•  I came up with a series of lesson ideas that I will hopefully have time to use this year.
• I have a much better understanding of how to present data and the importance of first thinking about what it is you want to show what is the story what is the question
• More confident because I took time to prepare something I will use. Also seeing and hearing similar as well as different ideas from the other teachers and scientists!
• All staff and mentors were positive and extremely responsive

• The workshop was a great motivator and boost!
• Learned so much, became more confident in using graphs, the day flew by!
• Even with the technology issues the workshop was hugely valuable. I came with several questions and all were answered. I had a chance to speak with many teachers and staff members, networking is so important.
• Thank you for offering many opportunities for supporting teachers. The multiple workshops offered at various levels gives many opportunities for everyone to learn more, reflect on teaching activities and make contacts with colleagues
• Today seemed perfect (except for internet connection)- I really appreciated the "one-minute" teacher presentations as well as the overview by Betsy. Good availability of mentors! large block of time to work on our next graphing steps in the company of inspiring fellow teachers!

To Register:  Email Pamela Snow at psnow@fas.harvard.edu  with:

• Your name
• Name of school
• Project that you will focus on during this session
• Level you are registering for 

 Reminder that Level 2 is for completing Graphing Exercises; Level 3 is for representing data based on your individual educational goals. Level 1 is for learning overall data management process for Schoolyard Ecology data, including time to enter your project data.

Teachers in levels 2 and 3 must submit data onto the online database by December 15th.

Data Workshop in Review

18 Educators from Mass., Vermont and New Hampshire, gathered at Harvard Forest  on December 15, 2016 to  learn how to work with Schoolyard Ecology Data

Dr. Betsy Colburn Introduced Looking at Data 

• It was great to hear where other people are with citizen science and to see that I have done some good work and that I have great areas for expansion of all of this too. I liked looking at examples of graphs with Dr. Colburn and talking about how we all interpret them. .

• It created a great mindset for the importance of data and the stories they can tell.

• It is always wonderful to learn something new that you can use immediately. And I liked how some of the participants talked about data being a story. I will use that in my practice.

• Just seeing other ways of presenting the data helps me bust out of my fixed point or line-scatter plots

 Dr. Emery Boose introduced beginning Schoolyard Teachers to Data Management and Input

•  Dr. Boose did a wonderful job starting from the beginning and being very patient and clear.

• I especially enjoyed the importance placed on making copies and keeping track of metadata. This is an important step to stress with students as well.

• I wish could have started entering data sooner in the day.

• Needed more time working with my data.

Harvard Forest Staff  Mentored Teachers in Working with Project Data 

•  I was supported fully.
• It was very nice to have such experts on hand.
• Thank you for having so many ready to help out!!!!
• We had a great time together.
• Matthew was terrific helping us interpret our own pond data and instructed us on using pivot tables to create graphs. Excellent!
• All were incredible patient in giving us the tools to communicate science effectively to our students.
• Everyone is sweet, kind , responsive and professional.

• I learn best by hearing, seeing, doing, messing up, fixing and shouting "yeah!"

• It helps me to see the exercise being done and to walk through it with a mentor helps be understand the process.

• It was very valuable to have time to "do the work".

• I was happy to have time to work on google docs and google sheets. I identified that I definitely need more practice manipulating data in this way.

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• Today was very helpful since I practiced making graphs on excel and really did not know how to do that before today. I also worked with my own data and that was very helpful to work on making graphs that can help my students interpret the data from our school.

• boy, did I ever graph!

• I was able to get wonderful guidance entering my data and beginning to use the graphing tools on the websites. I simply ran out of time and would have loved to ask more question about graphing.

• I enjoyed hearing about the different graphing techniques and seeing the presentations from Betsy and Emery. I also enjoyed talking and sharing with other teachers over lunch.

• I tackled Google sheets for the first time - and had it crying "Uncle!"

• I never did this before so the practice was so helpful

• It was great to have time to do this work not isolated at school but in a community of like minded teachers and expert ecologists. In addition, I am very grateful for the ecologists taking the time to patiently explain.

• I have realized how much I need to learn about working on google sheets. This is a good thing, especially because this is the spreadsheet system available to students at my school and I am glad to know I need more practice before I introduce it to them.

• we already are, we will continue. They will presenting the story of their tree to their classmates next week!

• I think I will certainly show them graphs and other representations of the data. I'm not sure I will have them analyze data this year.

Related Links

Emery Boose Data Workshop Level I Presentation .pdf  2016 Data Management, Data Entry Intro.

Harvard Forest Schoolyard Ecology Database  to download or graph project data. 

Fall Phenology Summary and Graphs 2016.pdf . Dr. John O'Keefe's updated Phenology graphs.

Coming Soon

Later this winter, look for updates to our:

Dr. Betsy Colburn's Updated Looking at Data  Presentations

Schoolyard Ecology Field Site Map

Branch To Tree Level Data Conversion Sheet

Compilation of Teacher-Created Graphs from 2016 Data Workshop

Schoolyard Ecology Data Synthesis for the Buds, Leaves and Global Warming Project

Announcement of Spring Workshop for Teachers