Thanks to Mike Davey of Awahono School – Grey Valley for these great shots of his class taking part in CensusAtSchool!
Students will be able to see how their pocket money stacks up against their peers and whether they’re getting less after-school screen time when they become data detectives in this year’s CensusAtSchool TataurangaKiTeKura.
The online statistics project, which starts today, is open to all English and Māori-medium schools. Teachers can register their classes and take part in CensusAtSchool at any time before it finishes on 7 July.
In class, students aged 9 to 18 (Year 5 to Year 13) use digital devices to answer 35 questions in English or te reo Māori about their lives and opinions.
The census explores present-day childhood; for example, asking students about whether they get pocket money, and how much; whether their screen time after school is limited; and if anything in their lunchbox that day was grown at home. Students also carry out practical activities such as weighing the laptops and tablets they take to school.
Ministry of Education deputy secretary Karl Le Quesne says more than 830 teachers from over 530 schools have already registered to take part in CensusAtSchool in their maths and statistics classes. From mid-June, the data will be released for teachers to use in the classroom.
“CensusAtSchool gives teachers relevant, real-life data to help students tell stories about themselves and their peers,” Mr Le Quesne says. “Students become data detectives, mining the census to reveal the stories hidden in the data. The CensusAtSchool questions are wide-ranging, and in analysing the answers, teachers have opportunities to start conversations that touch on many areas of the curriculum, including technology, sport, and environmental studies.”
CensusAtSchool started in 2003. Every two years, the University of Auckland’s Department of Statistics runs this census, with support from Statistics NZ and the Ministry of Education.
Statistics NZ’s education manager Andrew Tideswell says that in our data-driven world, statistical literacy is as important as knowing how to read and write. “People with statistical skills are very attractive to employers, but statistical literacy isn’t just about careers. If you’re confident with data, you have a valuable toolkit to negotiate everyday life.”
CensusAtSchool is part of an international effort to boost statistical capability among young people. Teachers and students in Australia, the United Kingdom, Canada, the United States, Japan, and South Africa take part. The countries share some questions, which allows students to make international comparisons.
Message from NZAMT received from NZQA 13th October regarding the 2016 External Examinations for AS1.3, 1.6 and 1.12:
We have had notification from NZQA that they believe schools will find the Level 1 examination papers for November consistent with their expectations and recent previous assessment of the identified standards. Hence schools can confidently use recent past NZQA examinations (since the 2011 realignment of L1 standards) in preparing their students for the external examinations.
Posted by Derek Smith
Future Learn are offering a new online course combining coding and data analysis skills.
“Software and data make the world go round.” Learn programming, to analyse and visualise open data, with this free online course that starts on the 10th of October.
Share this with students or colleagues that have one or both of these topics as an interest. The coding language is Python.
Learn more and sign up.
A webinar for you or your students, brought to you by the American Statistical Association.
Statisticians and data scientists are employed by all types of organizations, including professional sports teams. Join the AMA sports analytics webinar to learn what sports statisticians do and what education is required to become the “Bill James” of your favorite sport.
View the webinar details here. Remember to set your alarm!
Want to get a handle on BIG data? A course for scholarship students?
The Queensland University of Technology is offering a free online PD course. Get a practical insight into big data – and popular tools for collecting, analysing and visualising it.
Kia ora Statistics teachers.
We hope you are enjoying teaching students to discover stories in data, and to practice their statistical literacy skills.
Skills in statistics will be invaluable now and in the future, check out The beauty of data visualization then see New Zealand clearly.
Term 2 Updates:
- NZQA Assessment specifications for Externals
- Free online professional development courses: Teaching Statistics Through Data Investigations & Statistics in Medicine
- The Stats for Stats: Student data for all standards by Robyn Headifen
- TED resource: Why statistics are the key to fighting crime & The rise of human-computer cooperation
- Your life by the numbers video. (1.5 hours)
Nga Mihi
The CensusAtSchool team
See how your students could soon be using statistics and models to predict the future.
There are examples of statistical careers and what statisticians have done to help solve problems with data.
Some ideas to help students reach their statistics and statistical literacy learning goals:
Primary and Intermediate:
- Futureintech: Bring the real world into your classroom: Learning from people in industry to highlight when, where and why we need to learn this!
- TinkerPlots: Technology for graphing and interpreting data. Have you checked out the lesson plans?
- Using literature to teach statistics A lesson plan.
- Exposing young children to activities that develop emergent inferential practices in statistics. (McPhee & Makar, 2014) Professional Reading for numeracy teachers.
Secondary:
- Fathom & iNZight: Technology for secondary statistics teaching.
- Herald article: on careers in statistics.
- A framework for thinking about informal statistical inference. (Makar, K. & Rubin, A., 2009) Professional reading:
- Figure: Lillian Grace was the plenary speaker at both Canterbury and Auckland Statistics Teachers day. The Figure site allows everyone be an explorer and user of data. If you or your students want data to answer a burning question this is the place to contact.
- 2015/16 Census: Have all your classes been involved? Experiencing the census at all levels of the curriculum is important for students to demonstrate that they are “managing variation” and are involved in every aspect of data collection and creation.
- Statistical displays: What about running a poster competition for Statistics week?! Below are some examples from oversea’s, how can we improve on these?
- Tour Aotearoa live! Robyn Headifen has suggested following the cycling so much much great data!
What other ideas do you have?
How are you linking with your colleagues in other subjects? How do they approach statistical literacy and use statistics in scientific (both social and the physical sciences) investigations?
Do you have an Investing in Educational Success IES project to share or would like to begin? Also let us know of any cool Stats Apps you’re using with your students.
Finally, a big thanks to teachers who are using the share resources function on CAS.
Nga mihi
The CensusAtSchool Team
This first term newsletter is important reading for all secondary mathematics and statistics teachers.
Upcoming workshops for current PLD are advertised and useful links and tips are provided by Derek Smith and the national facilitation team.
Secondary Mathematics and Statistics Newsletter Term 1 2016
Derek has also sent through some other interesting links that didn’t make it into the newsletter:
Some reminders:
NZAMT14 Conference workshop resources
2015 Ernest Duncan Award Winner Ricky Pedersen has offered to make his Critical Thinking Booklet available for download.
http://www.nzamt.org.nz/index.
Interesting bits and pieces
Some research on happiness in schools for your interest. It would be interesting to ask your faculty members, and yourself, “What makes you happy during the school day or during a lesson?”
https://www.ted.com/talks/
Some interesting data sets from a NZ long term study:
TED Talks links to videos
https://www.ted.com/talks/
https://www.ted.com/talks/
An ERO publication
http://ero.govt.nz/content/
Learning geometry via Origami
http://www.scholastic.com/
Why is learning fraction arithmetic so difficult? From STEM Learning
A look at the methods of teaching fraction arithmetic in Shanghai
Learning maths through song and dance
https://www.facebook.com/
Hope that your athletics and Swimming sports day are progessing well while the country enjoys the settled weather we are enjoying.
Our hearts go out to the people in Canterbury as they wrestle with nature.
Näku i roto i ngä mihi, nä
Derek
Derek Smith|Mathematics National Co-ordinator/Central South Facilitator (Secondary)|Education Support Services|
Te Tapuae o Rehua Consortium Mau ki te ako|University of Otago College of Education|021 913 150|
