News

Kia ora tātou,

The end of the school year is approaching fast, and we hope you are enjoying the warmer weather with your students.

Over 38,500 students have taken part in CensusAtSchool this year! Wow!

We love seeing photos that teachers in kura and schools have sent in. Thank you so much for sharing these great action pics.

Photos from: Hay Park School, Tahuna School, Napier Girls’ High School, Marian Catholic School

We hope you enjoyed thinking about the standing jump data, which is a new question designed to allow comparison between groups – those that had a target and those that did not.

Because we’re all about data, it’s interesting that the top three participating senior schools are in the South Island, while the top three primary and intermediate schools are in the North Island!

We wonder what year levels your school plans to do the census and why, and do some students do it more than once, and if so why? We’re reviewing your survey feedback for our end of year report.

Thanks for taking the time to tell us about your survey experiences. This will help make things better for future surveys.

Coming Up

DECEMBER 4

Statistics Teachers’ Day Illuminating Data Pathways

Hurry – Register Now! 

Packed with presenters from around the motu sharing what’s going on in their classrooms, work, and research as they explore the world and develop their ideas and understanding with data. Plus: Our new data detective classroom posters will be given out on the day!

NOVEMBER 29

Online Colloquium on Artificial Intelligence and Data Science Education at School Level

Learn more and register 

Free for all, held via Zoom.

Seen Elsewhere

Some A.I. entertainment: “Walking Backwards into the Future”

Chris Wild’s keynote address, which opened the IASE 2023 conference, is packed with AI-generated images and music, examines drivers and priorities for statistics and data science education and its students in the light of recent data trends including the rise of generative A.I.

Youcubed Classroom Data Talks

Great ideas here.

CODAP – Common Online Data Analysis Platform

Free online software for exploring data. The datasets have activities that suggest questions that students can find out the answers to by creating data visualisations. See CODAP Examples and Data Science Games.

Objections to data science in K-12 education make no sense

Article by Freakonomics‘ author Steven Levitt looks at the argument for teaching students with the human and physical sciences data.

Winning Data Science Posters by Students

This South Australian competition has students follow their passion and collaborate to use their statistical and communication skills to answer questions. Reflect on the marking and feedback by other statistics educators to improve classroom teaching of data literacy.

Bird of the Century

A great, fun example of bias! Learn about this extraordinary bird and the extraordinary efforts that have gone into saving it. Thank you John Darby and the students at Mt Aspiring College. Kia kaha Pūteketeke!

Nga mihi nui
Rachel & Anne and Chris

Snapchat has emerged as the top app among high school students, with 61% of them reporting that they used it four or more times the day before participating in the CensusAtSchool questionnaire. TikTok closely followed with 60%. In contrast, primary school students preferred YouTube, with 59% stating they used it four or more times, followed by TikTok at 29%.

These insights come from CensusAtSchool TataurangaKiTeKura, a non-profit online educational project that brings statistics to life in English and Māori-medium classrooms. Supervised by teachers, students anonymously answer 34 questions in English or te reo Māori. The project is run by the Department of Statistics at the University of Auckland in partnership with the Ministry of Education and Stats NZ. This year, around 35,000 students from 647 schools have participated in the project so far.

Apps Used Four or More Times the Day Before

High school students (Years 9-13):

• 61% Snapchat
• 60% TikTok
• 49% Instagram
• 48% YouTube
• 18% Discord
• 17% WhatsApp
• 12% Facebook
• 11% Pinterest
• 7% BeReal
• 5% Twitter

Primary school students (Years 3-8):

• 59% YouTube
• 29% TikTok
• 22% Snapchat
• 13% Discord
• 10% Instagram
• 9% WhatsApp
• 7% Pinterest
• 4% Facebook
• 2% Twitter
• 2% BeReal

Screen Time After School

High school students said they spent a median of 3.5 hours on screens after school the day before participating in the questionnaire. A quarter of them spent 5 hours or more on screens, while only 1.6% said they spent no time on screens after school that day.

Primary school students said they spent a median of 2 hours on screens after school the day before taking part, and a quarter of them spent 4 hours or more on screens. Additionally, 7.8% of the participants reported not spending any time on screens after school that day.

Co-director of CensusAtSchool Annel Patel says, “Screen time is a big issue in our home and my 8 and 10-year-old daughters don’t even have phones yet! We use tech to monitor their screen time, enforcing a daily two-hour limit and only allowing access to YouTube Kids. I’m mindful that my own screen habits set an example for my daughters’ healthy expectations.”

Online Blocking

Online blocking is also prevalent among high school students, with 33% stating that they had blocked someone online in the past week. This behaviour was more common with the younger high school students and females.

The CensusAtSchool team is collaborating with Tūturu – a modern approach to student wellbeing – to create a resource that helps students analyse and explore the CensusAtSchool data.

Annabel Prescott, Learning & Development Director for Tūturu at the NZ Drug Foundation, commented on the high percentage of students saying they had blocked someone within the past week. “Young people use blocking as a strategy to manage relationships and set boundaries. This is perceived by young people as very normal behaviour, and quite different from how adults engage with social media”.

“We are excited to be working with CensusAtSchool and health and education experts to develop a teaching resource that will help students explore data, what it means to them, their peers, and their wellbeing; and consider what health-promoting actions can be taken to help students navigate a digital world”.

The eleventh biennial edition of CensusAtSchool was launched on February 13 and will continue until the end of 2024. See the questions, which schools are taking part, and a live dashboard on CensusAtSchool’s website: www.censusatschool.org.nz.

Thanks to Uane Davidson of Hay Park School for sharing these photos of students taking part in CensusAtSchool.

Tēnā koutou katoa

Welcome back! We hope you are feeling refreshed and ready for Term 3. A big thank you to all teachers and students who have taken part in the 2023 survey.

Over 33,800 students have taken part so far! We are set to have our biggest CensusAtSchool ever! It’s not too late to take part.

What’s New

Our Data Detective Posters are now available in six languages (English, Te Reo Māori, Te Reo Kūki ‘Āirani, Lea Faka-Tonga, Gagana Sāmoa, Vosa Vakaviti), and two styles!

Coming Up

August 7-11
Maths Week/Pāngarau Wiki- registrations are open.
FAQ

Can’t remember if you have registered or not?
Check by entering your email here. If your email doesn’t come up, register here. It’s never too late to register and take part.

Need your registration code?
Get it again here

Need your class data download link?
Get it again here

Unsure when you can take part?
Any time during school hours. The survey is open all year. 

Need help preparing?
Please ensure that you have read the essential Teacher’s Guide. All the equipment needed to take part successfully with your students is included in it.

Want to take part over multiple days?
You can divide the activity into two sessions. Use the first session to take the measurements and fill in your data cards. Use the second session to fill in the survey online. The survey itself needs to be completed in one sitting by a student. However, different students from your class can fill it in on different days, for example if you have limited devices or some students are away.

Have another question?
Reply to this email and we’ll get right back to you! Or you can call Rachel Cunliffe on (027) 383-3746.

censusatschool.org.nz
Ngā mihi nui,

Rachel, Anne, Pip, and Chris

A big thank you to all teachers and students who have taken part in the 2023 survey. Cashmere High and Newlands Intermediate are the leading schools to date.

Over 33,300 students have taken part so far! Another 2,300 students taking part and this will become our biggest CensusAtSchool ever – and the data is super interesting.

Now available in te reo Māori:

• Teachers’ guides
• Data detective posters
• Audio while taking part in the questionnaire

Of note:

2023 Garden bird survey starts June 24 – Get involved! 

Get students outdoors for homework! Classroom resources here.

Teach Data Literacy: a guide for teachers – a new primary statistics resource from Data Education in Schools in Scotland.  Excellent lesson ideas and classroom resources.

Maths Week/Pāngarau Wiki – registrations are open. Submit a topic for Maths Week and be in to win prizes! Maths Week runs 7-11 August, 2023.

Thanks to Sean Minhinnick for sharing these photos of his class at Tahuna School taking part in CensusAtSchool.

Thanks to Tawnee Sowman of Marist School for sending these photos of her class taking part in CensusAtSchool!

Thanks to Karin Carnachan of Remuera Intermediate for sending in this photo of her class taking part in CensusAtSchool this term.

Kia ora koutou,

Over 28,400 students have taken part so far! Can we get another 1,600 students to take part this week to round off a fantastic term? Thank you!

Have a wonderful much-deserved holiday and we’ll be back next term with more findings from the questionnaire and more resources to share.

Ngā mihi nui,
Rachel, Anne, Pip, and Chris

FAQ

Can’t remember if you have registered or not?
Check by entering your email here. If your email doesn’t come up, register here. It’s never too late to register and take part.

Need your registration code?
Get it again here

Need your class data download link?
Get it again here

Unsure when you can take part?
Any time during school hours from Monday – it doesn’t need to be next week if it’s not convenient. The survey is open all year. 

Need help preparing?
Please ensure that you have read the essential Teacher’s Guide. All the equipment needed to take part successfully with your students is included in it.

Want to take part over multiple days?
You can divide the activity into two sessions. Use the first session to take the measurements and fill in your data cards. Use the second session to fill in the survey online. The survey itself needs to be completed in one sitting by a student. However, different students from your class can fill it in on different days, for example, if you have limited devices or some students are away.

Have another question?
Reply to this email and we’ll get right back to you! Or you can call Rachel Cunliffe on (027) 383-3746.

censusatschool.org.nz

Kia ora koutou,

Over 27,000 students have taken part so far! Thank you! We’d love to make this our biggest year ever – can we get to 30,000 by the end of term?

The questionnaire is open all year. We would love for you to take part during this term, but whenever it suits you best is fine too.

What’s new:

• 56% of all students taking part said that they had used YouTube four or more separate times on the previous day
• 33% of high school students taking part said that they had blocked someone online in the past week
• More photos of students taking part

We’d love to see your students too!
Please email us to share.

FAQ

Can’t remember if you have registered or not?
Check by entering your email here. If your email doesn’t come up, register here. It’s never too late to register and take part.

Need your registration code?
Get it again here

Need your class data download link?
Get it again here

Unsure when you can take part?
Any time during school hours from Monday – it doesn’t need to be next week if it’s not convenient. The survey is open all year.

Need help preparing?
Please ensure that you have read the essential Teacher’s Guide. All the equipment needed to take part successfully with your students is included in it.

Want to take part over multiple days?
You can divide the activity into two sessions. Use the first session to take the measurements and fill in your data cards. Use the second session to fill in the survey online. The survey itself needs to be completed in one sitting by a student. However, different students from your class can fill it in on different days, for example if you have limited devices or some students are away.

Have another question?
Reply to this email and we’ll get right back to you! Or you can call Rachel Cunliffe on (027) 383-3746.

Ngā mihi nui,
Rachel, Anne, Pip, and Chris

censusatschool.org.nz