TinkerPlots Turns Students Into Data Analysts

##AUTHORSPLIT##<--->

How do we approach the teaching and learning of data management in North American elementary schools?

Tom got the following marks out of 10 on a series of quizzes: 6, 7, 9, 8, 5, 8, 8, 7, 7, 8. What is the mean, median and mode for Tom’s quiz marks?

This type of uninspired data management problem typifies what students, teachers and parents would encounter in most grade 3-8 textbooks and classrooms. The ensuing mathematical activity is void of conversation, and involves more computation with numbers than reasoning about data.

In a more innovative textbook or classroom, students might be using spreadsheets to represent data graphically and compute the various measures of central tendency for a set of data. But for whom are spreadsheets really designed? They assume an expert adult user with very sophisticated algebraic reasoning skills. Is this our typical grade 4-8 student?

Enter TinkerPlots. Developed with a grant from the National Science Foundation at the University of Massachusetts, in collaboration with four NSF-funded middle school math projects, TinkerPlots is an inquiry-based software construction set of graph pieces. Students can order, stack and separate icons to eventually build their own plots for analyzing data.

Mathematics teachers who are striving to teach students data analysis in line with recommendations of the National Council of Teachers of Mathematics’ Curriculum Standards find TinkerPlots to be especially helpful.

In the last two years, several grade 4-8 teachers from Ottawa have been using the beta version of TinkerPlots with their students. The teachers quickly became comfortable with the fundamentals of TinkerPlots, and there now exists a series of five narrated online video clips showing the program’s basics and capturing many of the teachers’ introductory experiences. These video clips can be viewed online at www.umass.edu/srri/serg/projects/tp/tpmovie.html.

What teachers quickly realized was that with TinkerPlots they were naturally rethinking what data management learning might look like in their classrooms. The ready-made data sets included with TinkerPlots were powerful starting points for both the teachers and their students.

We began with the “Backpack” and the “Cats” data sets (see the related images below). By simply selecting an attribute from the data card, then clicking and dragging data points (or cats in the case of the “Cats” data set), students and teachers were quickly constructing data displays to explore their own questions.

Don Burke, a sixth-grade teacher from St. Luke Catholic School in Nepean, Ontario, has screen captures of several of his students’ work posted online at www.occdsb.on.ca/~luk/gr6db/tinkerplots.htm.

With TinkerPlots, our students and teachers were able to use rich data sets, pose their own problems, construct their own data displays, and tell their own data stories. The mathematical activity possible with TinkerPlots in the background is rich in dialogue and focuses on reasoning with and about data. This is a huge step in the right direction to making data management exciting and meaningful for our students and teachers.

TinkerPlots is a must for all grade 4-8 teachers who want to turn their students on to the power and beauty of data.

TinkerPlots is now commercially available in the U.S. through Key Curriculum Press. For more information, visit
www.keypress.com/catalog/products/software/Prod_TinkerPlots.html.

Featured

  • digital illustration of Estonia with glowing neural network-like connections spreading across the map

    Estonia to Roll Out ChatGPT Edu for all Secondary Schools

    In a nationwide artificial intelligence program dubbed "AI Leap 2025," the country of Estonia plans to provide free access to leading AI applications for all secondary school students and teachers. The initiative will launch with a rollout of ChatGPT Edu to 20,000 high school students in grades 10-11 and their 3,000 teachers, beginning Sept. 1.

  • computer monitor with glowing digital data and graphs bursting out in an abstract, energetic explosion of lines and elements against a dark background

    New OpenAI Agent Turns ChatGPT into a Research Analyst

    OpenAI has unveiled a new "Deep Research" feature that enhances ChatGPT with the capabilities of a "research analyst" that automates time-consuming research by retrieving, analyzing, and synthesizing online information.

  • glowing digital brain made of blue circuitry hovers above multiple stylized clouds of interconnected network nodes against a dark, futuristic background

    Report: 85% of Organizations Are Leveraging AI

    Eighty-five percent of organizations today are utilizing some form of AI, according to the latest State of AI in the Cloud 2025 report from Wiz. While AI's role in innovation and disruption continues to expand, security vulnerabilities and governance challenges remain pressing concerns.

  • blue and green lines intersecting and merging in an abstract pattern against a light gray background with a subtle grid design

    Gartner on Data Integration Market: Cloud Giants Down, AI Up

    "By 2027, AI assistants and AI-enhanced workflows incorporated into data integration tools will reduce manual intervention by 60 percent and enable self-service data management," according to Gartner.