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.

Seeing the Forest Through The Data

How Do Teachers help their students to 

SEE Their TREES THROUGH THE DATA?  

Here's How One Teacher is Doing it...

Overlook Middle School Teacher, JoAnn Mossman continues to add layers of learning for her students eight years into Schoolyard Ecology study at Overlook Middle School.  

During the Looking at Data Workshop for Teachers at Harvard Forest on Dec. 8th,  JoAnn developed a series of resources to help students approach graphing their project data step by step. 

 Joanne's Data Goals :

I definitely want to have the kids do one graph by hand so I'm looking to see if there is an easier way to access the data using the online database for them to pull out the correct info. to graph. I also want them to learn to generate the graphs from the HF site like we can, maybe this would be appropriate for the more difficult graphs/data. They need both experiences. 

In this blog entry,  you will see how JoAnn breaks this down in a way students can understand and succeed in creating graphs of their own data.    She wants students students to learn to organize their data in such a way as to be able to represent the data visually in graphs that will help them to understand what story their data is telling. Each of the worksheets can be downloaded from our website for use in other classrooms.  Please see links at the bottom of this blog to access them. 

Step 1:

Students look at the growing season of all of our trees created with the HF graphing site. We have 2 years with particularly sharp drops in growing season. JoAnn left the graph up on the board the whole time. The class discusses what the Julian Day means and how it is easier to analyze data using that rather than a specific date.

The graph above, created using the online graphing tool, shows the Growing Season for all years based on the average 50% leaf fall date and average length of the growing season by year for Overlook MS.  

The graph  above, also created using the online graphing tool,  shows the selected variable as a function of date (one or more trees), day of the year (one tree), or year (one or more trees). The legend shows the ID number and species code for each tree.  Growing Season is the number of days between the 50% bud burst date and the 50% leaf fall date.

Step 2:

Teacher JoAnn Mossman,  passed out bud burst edited data and the graphing data worksheet as shown below.  She then  showed them how to find their tree and bud burst day. While they are working she walks around and tell them the Julian Day of their birthday so they get the idea. 

Note that this table would go on year by year to most recent data. In this case,  Overlook Middle School has data up through Fall 2017 to work with.  Full data for this site  is available on the database and as an Excel file in links below. 

Students  do the same with their leaf fall edited data packet.

Note that this table would also extend through most recent year's data. 

Step 3. Students  calculate the growing season each year for their tree. 

Students then use the growing season data sheet to check their math.

Step 4:  Students graph their tree's growing season. 

It should look like the one up on the board (from the HF website). If it doesn't look the same the class will talk about why and check their data and graphing.

 

Students  combined growing season for all trees on the graph above using Google Sheets

Note: Teachers can choose to have students generate a graph using Excel or Google Sheets, such as the one above;   hand graph;  or use other graphing programs as preferred.

Step 5. Students  will analyze their graphs and answer questions such as:

     Which year did your tree experience the longest (and shortest) growing season? What factors may have contributed to the length of that season?

     Do you see a trend in the number of days for your tree's growing season (going up or down)? What is the average number of days?

 Links to the worksheets used for this sequence of lesson plans:

Mossman.2017. Budburst Data Table.

Mossman.2017. Leaf Fall Data Table.

Mossman.2017. Growing Season Calculation Worksheet.

Mossman.2017. Excel Growing Season Graphing Template.

Mossman.2017. Growing Season Data Table.

Link to Student Graphs: 

Mossman. 2018.  Student Graphs

Links to Database:

Download Data_list.php

HF Online Graphing Tools.php

Links to more lesson plans and activities

 by Buds, Leaves and Global Warming Teacher, JoAnn Mossman: 

Mossman. 2011. Graphing Activities.

Mossman. 2014. Connections to MA Frameworks and Next Generation Science Standards for HF Schoolyard Ecology Buds, Leaves and Global Warming Study.

Mossman, J. 2017. Striving for Good Data. Oral Presentation

Mossman, J. 2017. Outdoor Field Visit Rubric. 

Facing the Challenge of "Looking at Data" Together; Notes and Views from Schoolyard Ecology Data Workshop 2015

Photos by Greta VanScoy

I left the Looking at Data Workshop filled with inspiration and renewed optimism for this work we do together engaging children in schoolyard research.

As you will see from the graphs and comments from our exit survey, teachers seemed share in my optimism.   At the same time, I witnessed some folks who had frustrating moments and found this work to be challenging.  

I want to deeply honor everyone who had the courage to tackle the job of Looking at Data at our teacher workshop on Dec. 3rd at Harvard Forest. 

Teacher Feedback: 

I am just going to share 2 figures from our exit survey that perhaps give the most important feedback on the workshop and then share a range of teacher comments to show both the successes and challenges teachers experienced.  

As you can see above, most teachers went away from the workshop "extremely satisfied".  In thfigurebelow, you can see that while most of our participants felt they made significant progress 

towards their main goals, notice that one participant achieved significantly less progress than the 
others.

The teacher who expressed the least progress towards their goal stated:

• My goal was ambitious and I had fun getting sidetracked

More teacher comments reflecting the challenges of Looking at Data:

• The raw data from the field was very disorganized.
• This was a "wake up" call concerning my data. I was juggling so many other factors (losing trees, student access, safety) that it turns out I did not have as much data to determine growing season as I thought.
• I need to try and fail and fix, in order to translate the process for my students
• I wish I had entered the data ahead of time.
• I entered all of my data, which was a main goal for the day. I had difficulty making charts using Google Sheets because I was unfamiliar with the app. Having someone on hand who is familiar with Sheets would have been handy.

Teacher comments reflecting the successes of Looking at Data:

• "It was very helpful and it made me more confident in my understanding and usage of the data set. It also made me feel more confident in having my students use the data that they collected."
• I exceeded my goal and accomplished much more: calculating growing season, data entry of vp and phenology data, introducing Erin to HF and integrating her into the system, opportunity to share and collaborate with teachers and HF staff
• I have a better idea of the type of data that is available through the LTER database. I can identify reliable sources/complete data sources versus ones that have questionable reliability or ones that are incomplete.
• I learn more and more each time I come out... I always bring something back to my classroom that I can directly use.
• Graphs are wonderful and an important way to look at data. Betsy's presentation helped me to understand how to better look at graphs and how important it is to select the right graph for the data. For me graph reading can be challenging so any additional information and support I receive is so important. I suspect I am not the only person out there with graph reading challenges!

Many more  comments are available on the full survey. See link at bottom of this blog entry.

 

Challenges we experienced throughout the day that did not show up in the Survey:

• A first year teacher who had a high volume of data collected from her students found that there was not sufficient time to organize and submit all of the data in one session.  This is relatively common for first year teachers in the Buds, Leaves and Global Warming project.  While this project is by far our most popular, with very high success rates for data submittal, it is the most time consuming due to the sheer volume of data.  
• A long time contributor to the Buds and Leaves study was disappointed to find that her data was unable to tell the story of the changing length of the growing season due to a variety of issues with her field site shifts resulting from maintenance dept. tree cutting and snow removal, etc.  Another major obstacle in proved to be  insufficient data at the end of each growing season.
• Unclear protocol instructions related to showing the end of the growing season for beech and oak trees which often do not drop leaves in the fall was brought out in discussions with project staff. 
• A Changing Forests teacher found that the student data sheets were lacking important data points/information.  He did not have enough data to create a complete data set for this survey season.    
• Woolly Bully  teachers found that their one year of  data with zero adelgid yet found was not sufficient to create a meaningful graph. Cross site analysis was attempted but even there, graphing was not particularly worthwhile.  Project Ecologist, David Orwig, responded to these challenges by providing teachers with a broader data set to organize and graph,
• Technical difficulties on the part of HF staff in transferring and projecting documents from Mac users slowed the final presentation of teacher created graphs.

Teacher Followup:

• Now that they understand the process, Bud and Leaves new teachers will continue sorting, organizing, and submitting project data and emailing HF staff as questions arise.
• New Buds and Leaves teachers will have better sense of how to organize project data throughout the field season next time.
• Experienced Buds and Leaves teacher better understands the importance of sending students out to collect data at the end of the growing season and recording brown and crumpled beech and oak leaves as "fallen" in order to track the length of the growing season.
• Changing Forests Teacher will be aware of the need to double check student data sheets during field season in order to get a higher quality data set in the future.

Harvard Forest Staff  Follow-up:  

• We will work on revising the branch to tree level worksheet for easier use by teachers. Look for this in upcoming email notices.
• We are working on revising protocol materials and email messages to make the protocol for tracking the end of the growing season for oak and beech more clear.
• We will work to develop some guidelines for Mac users who want to share their graphs/work at HF so that we can project this work without as many interruptions in the future.
• We will become more familiar with Google Sheets prior to our next Data Workshop in order to better guide teachers using that program.

To see the entire exit survey with many more graphs and comments go to: https://www.surveymonkey.com/results/SM-FQC22VRJ/

Slides from Looking at Data Workshop are posted on our website at:

Intro to Data Visualization by Betsy Colburn

Level I Data Workshop Presentation by Emery Boose

Show me a Picture and Tell me a Story; Looking at Data Presentation  by Betsy Colburn 

Stay Tuned for a follow-up document,  Looking at Data; Teacher-Created Graphs and Tables of Harvard Forest Schoolyard Ecology project data.  Look for an update with this document next month. 

THANK YOU to the Harvard Forest Staff  members who contributed to this workshop:  Betsy Colburn, Emery Boose, John O'Keefe, David Orwig, Greta VanScoy, Luca Morreale, Joshua Rapp, Clarisse Hart, Admin. crew, and Woods crew.

Kudos to Hubbard Brook Education representative, Jackie Wilson and NH Project Learning Tree Coordinator, Judy Silverberg for participating in this workshop.

Congratulations to teachers, Melanie McCracken, Louise Levy, Sally Farrow, Maryann Postans, Jana Matthai,  Mary Reed, Colleen Casey, Lori Primavera, Elisa Margarita, Warren Perdrizet, Jessica Farwell, Erin Pitkin, Meghan Lena, Sharon Desjarlais, Emilie Cushing, Thuy Bui, Sue Warburton, Mit Wanzer, and Maria Blewitt for taking your data skills to the next level!!! 

 A Tale of Two Teachers 

From Collecting Data in the Field to Inputting Data Online to Graphing Data, Janet Gordon and Elaine Senechal have done it all!