CensusAtSchool NZ is undergoing a major facelift/restructure.

The new website has been redesigned to put teacher needs in the new curricular and assessment environment at the heart of what the site delivers. We aim to be a current, comprehensive, resource bank for the Teaching of Statistics in NZ.

The new website is temporarily situated at https://new.censusatschool.org.nz and coexists with the old website http://www.censusastchool.org.nz until the end of the school year. Over the summer break, once the current census is closed, everything is planned to be transferred over to the new website. Once that’s completed, we’ll just have the new website at www.censusatschool.org.nz.

CensusAtSchool began as website in which students could participate in an online survey and contribute to an international database. Real data can then be analysed and used by schools. Teachers are able to receive their class data and there are a variety of classroom resources available on CensusAtSchool to direct their teaching of statistics.

Statistics has changed significantly in New Zealand over the last few years. As statistical practice has become computer based, there is much less need to be able to calculate statistics manually. Rather, students are being encouraged to consider the context, reason and origin of the data. The focus of assessment has also changed, with NCEA Level 2 being reorganised this year and new Achievement Standards for NCEA Level 3 drafted for next year. We found that teachers all over New Zealand use CensusAtSchool at times so that it is a good place to host and index Statistics resources and professional development.

CensusAtSchool’s website has been completely reorganised, updated and expanded to be a comprehensive and practical resource for teachers.

Everything is now grouped by the curriculum level and achievement standards. For each curriculum level and achievement standard relating to the teaching of statistics, teachers will find: details of the standard, detailed FAQ, vetted activities, resources and links to further their knowledge.

Everything is also now easily printable for teachers to have at their fingertips, along with the ability for them to provide feedback by rating and commenting on resources.

There is now a place to ask a statistics question called FAQ. Teachers can email a question to censusatschoolnz@gmail.com which will be answered carefully by one of a number of ‘experts’ and posted online.

Links to a large number of websites such as NZQA, TKI, Stats NZ, and Stats Chat, means teachers can always find relevant current material, competitions, road shows and articles.

We encourage teachers to contribute resources to the CensusAtSchool website so if you come across something good that we have missed or have any feedback on the new site please email us: censusatschoolnz@gmail.com.

We hope you enjoy using the new website,

Regards

The CensusAtSchool team.

Auckland, November 1, 2012: More than 500 teachers are expected to flock to a national road tour this month that aims to support their teaching of a new statistics curriculum to Year 13 students.

The road tour starts in Auckland on November 22 and travels to Christchurch, Dunedin and Wellington, offering presentations and real-life resources to help teachers make the most of the curriculum from the start of the 2013 school year. More than 15,000 New Zealand students studied Year 13 statistics in 2011, the last year for which figures are available. Continue reading »

Registrations are now open for the Statistics Teachers’ Day, Thursday 22nd November and will close on Wednesday 7 November (or earlier if full).

For more information about the day and to register, go to: Statistics Teachers’ Day 2012.

When you register you will need to choose one workshop for each of the 4 sessions and a further 2 back-up choices. These may be from any session but should be different to your other 4 choices. Registration for workshops will be on a first-in, first–served basis. In the event of one (or more) of your choices being full we will first try and accommodate you by offering you the same 4 workshops in a different mix of sessions. If we cannot do that we will use one (or both) of your back-up choices. We strongly encourage schools with more than one person attending to converse before making workshop choices and choose different workshops, to ensure that there is space for people from other schools.

Do you want to know more about teaching Year 13 Statistics? Then take note of the following.

To assist NZ teachers in learning about the Year 13 Statistics Curriculum and Standards we have organised a programme of professional development to be delivered in association with the AMA, CMA, OMA, and WMA. To find out about how to register for these days please email the contact person or go to the Association website.

Auckland

Thursday 22 November, Tamaki Campus

AMA Contact: Ross Parsonage (r.parsonage@auckland.ac.nz )

Christchurch

Tuesday 27 November, University of Canterbury Maths/Stats Dept

CMA Contact: Kristian Giles (gilesk@staff.cbhs.school.nz )

Dunedin

Wednesday 28 November, Otago University

OMA Contact: Munro Doran (munro.doran@obhs.school.nz )

Wellington

Saturday 1 December, Wellington Girls’ College – Pipitea Block Level 1

WMA Contact: Nada Andic (nada.andic@qmc.school.nz )

Proposed Road Tour Programme

Plenary Talk – Changing Needs in a Changing World by Chris Wild and Maxine Pfannkuch, Auckland University

Workshops offered:

• 3.8 Time Series, A new look at time series analysis using iNZight – Rachel Passmore, Saint Kentigern College (NZ Royal Society Endeavour Teacher Fellow) and Ruth Kaniuk, Lynfield College
• 3.9 Bivariate Data, Investigating bivariate measurement data using iNZight – Ruth Kaniuk, Lynfield College and Maxine Pfannkuch, Auckland University
• 3.10 Formal inference: Conducting and assessing sample-to-population investigations – Michelle Dalrymple, Cashmere High School
• 3.10 Formal inference: Bootstrap method – Joss Cumming, Auckland University
• 3.11 Experiments: Conducting and Assessing Experiments – Anna Martin, Avondale College
• 3.11 Experiments: Randomisation method – Marie Fitch, Auckland University
• 3.12 Statistical Literacy: Surveys and Non-sampling errors – Dru Rose, Westlake Girls High School
• 3.12 Statistical Literacy: The Margin of Error – Dru Rose, Westlake Girls High School
• 3.13 Apply probability concepts – Marion Steel, Team Solutions (Epsom Girls Grammar School)
• 3.14 Apply probability distributions – Marion Steel, Team Solutions (Epsom Girls Grammar School)
• Risk (Relates to 2.12)– Stephanie Budgett, Auckland University

The Road Tour has been made possible through support from the following:

The Teaching and Learning Research Initiative (www.tlri.org.nz); Department of Statistics, Auckland University; CensusAtSchool; the Principals of Lynfield College, Cashmere High School, Westlake Girls High School, and Avondale College; NZ Royal Society Endeavour Teacher Fellowship Scheme; and Team Solutions.

Teachers have been telling us that it is very hard to navigate in the landscape of new curriculum materials, achievement standards, exemplars, teaching resources and so on. Because everything is so scattered, it Is often almost impossible to find what you need.

To overcome this Tracey Meek and Lindsay Smith have put together a CensusAtSchool resource which starts with each achievement standard and then links to all relevant resources that we know about. We provide a summary of resources for each Achievement Standard providing links to NZQA, exemplars, TKI, PowerPoint presentations, teaching resources and background articles.

Link: http://tinyurl.com/9kuo52f

Continue reading »

You can now save or copy+paste data-viewer graphics into documents

We have changed the format of the graphics files produced by data-viewer to png.
While they do not look as crisp as the previous swf graphics the big advantage is that they can now be saved or copied and pasted into another document.

PS Please let us know how you’re using CensusAtSchool’s data-viewer with your classes!

Welcome back – we hope you had a lovely break!

Planning is now underway for CensusAtSchool 2013. We would love to know your ideas for questions we should include in next year’s questionnaire. You may wish to ask your students for their suggestions too.

Please email all your suggestions to censusatschoolnz@gmail.com by the end of this week.

As a reminder, here’s the current questions:
http://www.censusatschool.org.nz/2011/questions/

If you also would like any question to be removed from that set, please let us know too.

Thank you!
Rachel Cunliffe

The 2011 database is now in the data-viewer (thoroughly cleaned)

It’s also the data-viewer‘s default database. A lot of effort has gone into cleaning the 2011 data – combatting a trend whereby an annoying but growing minority of students is entering silly values. In preparation for the 2013 survey, we will have a dialogue with teachers later in the year about how this trend might be reversed. The 2011 database is currently the cleanest of the databases.

Click here to use the data-viewer.

Continue reading »

The following files from the 2011 Statistics Teachers’ Day organised by the Auckland mathematical Association and The University of Auckland’s Department of Statistics have now been put up on Census At School’s website:

http://www.censusatschool.org.nz/2011/statistics-teachers-day-years-12-and-13/

Continue reading »

Use of the iNZight program for analysing statistical data analysis has just been made a whole lot easier. The software is now packaged in a form where it can be downloaded (or copied) and then used on Windows machines without the user needing to have administrative privileges because it needs no formal installation – see the downloads page at:

http://www.stat.auckland.ac.nz/~wild/iNZight/

Continue reading »