ICT teacher handbook/Data representation and processing

From Open Educational Resources
ICT teacher handbook
What is the nature of ICT Data representation and processing Communicating with graphics

Chapter Objectives

  1. Understanding how to read data in various formats and representations and analyze
  2. Understanding methods of data organizing, analysis and representation
  3. Processing and representing data in textual, image and numeric formats with spreadsheets, concept maps and text editor
  4. Understanding the power of data visualization and how data can be used to hide or reveal information
  5. Developing a critical perspective on data and its ownership

Digital learning resources

  1. Handout for Basic Digital Literacy
  2. Handout for Tux Typing
  3. Handout for Tux Paint
  4. Handout for Freeplane
  5. Handout for Firefox
  6. Handout for LibreOffice Writer
  7. Handout for LibreOffice Calc

Additional Resources

  1. Data visualization
  2. Examples of data visualization

Transaction notes for activities

Typically, an activity will have a 'teacher demonstration' or a 'teacher-led' activity, which will be followed by 'student-led activities'. Students will be encouraged to 'self-learn' as well, by exploring applications and resources on their own, beyond what is expected of them for any activity.

Secondly, each theme of the textbook and the associated activities have been designed keeping in mind the possibilities for peer learning. Not all students will work with all data files; so the teacher should allow for an organized sharing/ presentation time for students to learn from each others' work. This can be done at the end of each activity or at the end of each level. This is left to the teacher to decide.

Level 1 -> 11 weeks

The first level requires eleven weeks of 3 periods each: 1 period is for teacher demonstration and discussion; two periods for hands-on work by students.

A suggested break-up of activity-wise periods is given below. This is indicative, the teacher is encouraged to adjust the periods between activities and also between demonstration and hands on activity as needed.

Title Reading No of weeks

(3 periods each)

Teacher

demonstration

periods

Student activity

periods

About data representation Reading included
Data can tell stories 2 2 4
How to make data meaningful 3 3 6
Concept map and text document 6 6 12

Data tell stories

  1. Data sets have to be prepared for each computer/ group of students. A data folder must be created on each computer and the data sets copied.
  2. Copy the data folder on the student computers. For each data set, make a set of questions for the students to answer after a study of the graph. After the students complete the analysis, encourage them to express the summary of the analysis in the form of a mind map. The following questions can be given to the students for discussion
    1. What data elements are captured?
    2. Does the data give you exact numbers or only relative estimation?
    3. What can you conclude from the data?
    4. What are the advantages in each kind of representation (maps, graphs, satellite images etc)? When do you think is each method suited?
    5. What further information on the topic would you like to find out?
  3. The data sets can be drawn so as to represent different subjects.
  4. Encourage students to create a concept map expressing their understanding after looking at the data.
  5. You can digitize these concept maps, by photographing them and saving the image of the concept map along with the data. Explain to the students that there are two ways of creating digital outputs. One method is directly creating the desired output using a digital tool or application. The second method is to take photographs of an output and using the image as a digital output. The difference will be in the extent of editing that is possible to do. An image of a concept map can only be edited like a photo, using an image editor. A digital concept map can be edited to change the actual content of the concept map itself.

Organizing data to make meaning

  1. This lesson can be used to talk about data elements and allow students to develop multiple perspectives of looking at data. Also, the focus will be here on learning to organize and as long as students have a logical basis for the organizing they have chosen, it is adequate. There need not be a single correct method of organizing the data.
  2. If any permissions for conducting surveys, going out of school is needed, they have to be taken.
  3. Let students collect the data and make their notes. Encourage them to discuss how the raw data has come and how we have to identify data elements for capturing
  4. Take photographs of raw data and tabulated data
  5. Take photographs of their notes - documented either as a concept map or a written text.
  6. The intention of this activity is to prepare students to look at data analysis and not so much focus on a digital output. Where students are able to also create the digital outputs, including in creating tables and populating the data, they should.

Concept map and text document

  1. Students must understand that text is another form of data and text can be organized in different ways using different tools. They should understand the appropriate application to use for each requirement.
    • When text is entered digitally, it can be edited easily.
    • Text can be copied, pasted and formatted differently. Some features like copy-paste are available across most applications whereas some features of formatting are specific to some applications.
    • A "plain text" editor like gedit allows simple entry of text, copying, cutting and pasting of text and is linear. It is purely text and no images can be added.
    • But most text editors have more features. A text editor like LibreOffice Writer allows text to be entered, formatted and presented in different ways and designed for printing. The text document also can add links to other files or resources on the computer or the internet. It is the most advanced tool available for creating textual outputs.
    • The concept map allows text to be represented and connected in a graphic way. A concept map also can add links to other files or resources on the computer or the internet. Nodes can be copied, pasted. Text in the nodes can be copied or pasted.
    • In addition to this, presentation software, such as LibreOffice Impress is also available which allows combining text and images as well as embedding of videos to make a multimedia presentation.
  2. You could draw their attention to the different kinds of formats these different applications present and also explain to them about the cumulative nature of the portfolio which can combine multiple formats.
  3. Explain the use of a concept map to clarify one's thinking, make connections between the concepts. Encourage the students to use a concept map to explore the topic further, even beyond what the data contains; this can be useful to introduce the idea of secondary data later on. In concept map creation, the students can be introduced to the following (this is an indicative list, teacher can extend it based on the class)
    1. Opening the Freeplane application (in this course, Freeplane is used as a free and open application for concept mapping)
    2. Inserting nodes and child nodes
    3. Typing in the nodes - English and Telugu
    4. Linking nodes
    5. Linking an existing image/text file to a concept map - for example, the actual data they collected can be linked, the hand-drawn and digitized concept map can be linked)
    6. Adding notes to any node to give additional details
    7. Saving the concept map
    8. Exporting as image
    9. Exploring as text document
  4. To get familiarized with keyboard input of text, you can introduce students to text typing in a plain text editor (gedit), where they type an existing, available text, in English and in Telugu. Once they are comfortable with basic typing, they can open LibreOffice Writer and start creating a text document on the basis of the data they have taken up for analysis in the prior chapter. In text editing, the students can be introduced to the following (this is an indicative list, teacher can extend it based on the class)
    1. Open LibreOffice Writer
    2. Demonstrate how to create a new document
    3. Typing in English and Telugu
    4. Simple formatting
      1. making text bold
      2. making text italicized
      3. underlining text
      4. changing font size and color
    5. Creating listing of items in a document with numbers and bullets
  5. Discuss with students the advantages of different kinds of data representation and show how formats can be combined (by inserting a mind map as an image)

Level 2 -> 8 weeks

The second level requires eight weeks of 3 periods each. 1 period is for demonstration and discussion; two periods for hands-on work by students. A suggested break-up of activity-wise periods is given below. This is indicative, the teacher is encouraged to adjust the periods between activities and also between demonstration and hands on activity as needed.

Title Reading No of weeks

(3 periods each)

Teacher

demonstration

periods

Student activity

periods

About data representation Reading included
Columns and rows 4 4 8
Numbers and patterns 4 4 8

The teacher is encouraged to adjust the periods between activities and also between demonstration and hands on activity as needed.

Columns and rows!

  1. This activity requires 4 sets of periods and the objective is to introduce students to using spreadsheet software for data input.
  2. In the initial activities the focus will be on entering data and representing data graphically. Data visualization is very powerful and students will benefit from these skills. Students can work with data sets given as well as data sets they have collected in the previous activity on How to make data meaningful.
  3. Some of the learning points to emphasize are:
    1. How to view data
    2. What questions can be asked
    3. What further connections can be made are to emphasized in this
    4. Data with multiple variables - for example, crop production by year is a single variable, crop production by type of crop and year is multiple variables
    5. Doing simple numeric manipulations on the data to make new interpretations
  4. The first two examples have been chosen to illustrate how to use a spreadsheet. In spreadsheet session, the students can be introduced to the following (this is an indicative list, teacher can extend it based on the class)
    1. Opening LibreOffice Calc and demonstrating how to create a new spreadsheet
    2. Entering data in a spreadsheet - typing in Telugu and English
    3. Wrapping the text inside a cell
    4. Increasing and reducing the column sizes for fitting in the data (in wrap text mode)
    5. Sorting (alphabetically or numerically) the data
    6. Simple formatting in a spreadsheet - coloring of cells, making bold, cell borders
    7. Entering simple formulae in a spreadsheet to calculate data; some of the formula to be calculated include total, percentage, minimum, maximum
    8. Drawing charts - bar graphs and pie charts - in a spreadsheet
    9. Copying the table of data entered and inserting into a text document
    10. Inserting the graphs and charts entered into a text document
  5. Students can continue to work on the text document they created in the previous activity on ICT student textbook/Making a text document.
  6. Data is related to us; and we contribute to the data. To bring this idea more strongly, the map of India with fluorosis distribution is given as an example. The focus of this example is to talk about how we can collect data about ourselves and how analysing can help decision making.

Number patterns

  1. This activity requires 4 sets of periods and the objective is to introduce students to using spreadsheet software for exploring patterns in numbers
  2. The session can focus on the following:
    1. Features of a spreadsheet like dragging, dropping, auto-fill
    2. Using different formulae - like addition, subtraction, multiplication, division to create patterns and solve/ decode patterns
    3. Create a numeric pattern based on verbal descriptions of a problem
  3. You can also use spreadsheets to introduce the basics of algebra like generalization.

Level 3 -> 5 weeks

The third level requires five weeks of 3 periods each. 1 period is for demonstration and discussion; two periods for hands-on work by students. A suggested break-up of activity-wise periods is given below.

Title Reading No of weeks

(3 periods each)

Teacher

demonstration

periods

Student

activity

periods

About data representation Reading included
Spreadsheet for data analysis 3 3 6
Making a multi-page text document 2 2 4

The teacher is encouraged to adjust the periods between activities and also between demonstration and hands on activity as needed.

Spreadsheet for data analysis

  1. This activity requires 3 weeks to complete. The objective of this activity is to introduce to the students the various kinds of analysis possible and also learn the spreadsheet functionalities to be used.
  2. After completing different analysis, the spreadsheet tables as well as the charts can be included in a text document and students can be asked to write a description of the analysis.
  3. The teacher led activities have two sets of data - rainfall, temperature. The rainfall of Telangana data is over 10 years and the file will show a charting as a line graph as well as a bar graph. You can discuss with students what are the various kinds of analysis we can do. The temperature data is a multi-variable data with seasonal and annual temperature (mean and maximum) over the last century. Draw the students' attention to the difference between the two bar graphs.
  4. Students will also be exploring digital atlas, using the software Marble to study rainfall and temperature maps of the Earth during July and December. Ask the students to correlate both activities to develop a more integrated perspective of these phenomena across subjects like Mathematics or Geography. Encourage them to see connections of rainfall and temperature to Science (for instance water cycle)
  5. The focus in this activity is on the number of different ways in which data can be viewed and analyzed in a spreadsheet and how to infer from data.
  6. Some features to include and reinforce are:
    1. Sorting (ascending and descending, text and numbers)
    2. % share of total
    3. % growth across years

Making a multi-page text document

  1. This activity requires 2 weeks. The objective of this activity is to enable students to create a text document, that has content in text and image formats, is formatted neatly for easy reading. Tables created using spreadsheet, will also be inserted as tables in the text document.
  2. The teacher led activities have two sets of data - rainfall, temperature. The data from these can be used to make the multi-page document. Students can also create the multi-page document from their own data set they have been working on, in the earlier sections. Also in the activity using The globe on your table with Marble, students would have explored rainfall and temperature of different regions of the world, these two activities can be linked and students can share their thoughts on the two activities.
  3. Encourage the students to play with the document, freely adding, modifying and removing text, changing formatting, introducing sections, tables etc. This should help them understand that digital writing/editing has a very high degree of flexibility, not available in writing in a book. This 'fluidity' in writing can help many more students to feel comfortable about writing, since they can always go back and change/correct their writings when needed. More students may be encouraged to write.