OER4Schools/Collecting and interpreting information: Difference between revisions

# Why you think it is important for the students to record their findings during the enquiry process?  

# Can you think of ways to help the students to engage with the recording information part of the enquiry process?  

Recall the four enquiry ideas (A-D) that were discussed in the last session. Get back into the small group you were in last session. We will assume your group has been able to develop one or two of these ideas into enquiry-based lesson(s) and you now want your students to start collecting data to answer the enquiry questions.  

There are many different designs of paper airplanes. Some of them have a very plain design but can fly a longer distance whereas some can have a rather interesting design but do not fly as well. ''What are the factors that affect how far a paper airplane can fly?''

# If it involves identifying sources of information, where do they find the information? How do they know the information is valid and can they access the information?  

An enormous amount of valuable, deep and exciting information is available on the Internet, but an enormous amount of total nonsense, falsities, half-truths and unsupported theories is also out there. Your students have to learn to distinguish between the two, but you cannot give them hard-and-fast rules. Everything that comes out of an established publishing source isn't good information, and everything that comes from a personal home page isn't bad information. The kinds of things that students ask may be answerable only by other people, perhaps only by a knowledgeable other like a teacher, parent, medical specialists etc.  

{{activity| Group activity}} (20 mins) After the discussion, assess if the resources that you have prepared so far would be adequate for the students to embark on the data collection process (whether is it in the form of experiment or enquiring through the internet/asking people). If not, make some changes or consider creating additional worksheets or perhaps a spreadsheet for the students. You should make sure that you have included an ICT element in each of your enquiry ideas.

Imagine that you are the students who are going through the data collection process. Now go ahead to complete the experiment or data gathering. By the end of the workshop, you should have the full data set and findings that you could be ready to share with the other groups next week.

* A question or a problem is posed

* Research is done to find out what is already known about the topic

* A hypothesis is formed - this is usually a best guess based on what’s already known

* A very detailed step-by-step experimental procedure is designed to test the hypothesis – this is the Method of investigation and must take into account all variables affecting the experiment

* The investigation is done (using whatever equipment/materials you have chose to use) and data is collected

* Data is analysed

* Conclusions are reached

* Results are communicated

The analysis of the data involves responding to the questions above. These questions help you to evaluate your guesses, and assess whether the data collected is '''valid '''(ie. whether it can actually answer the enquiry questions) or '''reliable '''(ie. whether the data comes from a rigorous and trustworthy method of data collection). If you do not think the data fulfills the qualities of validity and reliability, then you should immediately highlight the problem and try to find out why this could have happened. It may be the case that you need to to rethink or repeat the data collection process. If you are satisfied with the data collected, you can then go ahead to make sense of the data so that you are able to present a solution or different solutions to the rest of the participants next week.

Remember, to ensure that data collected is reliable it may be necessary to repeat the experiment a number of times. Averages can then be calculated if further processing is needed - for example in the paper airplane enquiry. To ensure that the data is valid, make sure to consider the variables and which to control.  

{{activity|Small group activity}} (20 mins) Navigate to the ‘Balancing Act’ simulation by following the link below. Play with the simulation for a few minutes and think about how you might use it in an EBL lesson. Can you come up with one or two enquiry questions that could be investigated using the simulation? Discuss with your colleagues on how would students record their answers to these questions.  

These are some possible extension activities you can do choose to do in your own time:

# level of enquiry they promote  

# ways of extending/differentiating the level of enquiry  

# how user friendly is it for yourself and students

# how engaging will it be for the students

# relevance to your teaching subjects or curriculum in general<br/>

{{ednote|text= The participants should set concrete days for their Geogebra day, as well as for the project day. Part 1 of the investigation should be carried out between 5.3 and 5.4. As you go through the homework, explicitly discuss days or lessons which teachers can set aside for this.

'''Part A:''' Try out the same mini-GeoGebra enquiry as in the first taster EBL activity above in your classroom, with learners working in mixed groups of 3-4 around a computer. In this consider the following question: How did your students respond to the open nature of this task? What other observations can yo make that will help you to evaluate the use of Geogebra to explore this topic. Note down the responses and the observations: In the next session you will share this with the others.

'''Part C:''' Continue to work on planning for a ‘project day’ or ‘field trip’ and share any development of ideas in the next session. It may be the case that you have introduced some form of EBL whether in the form of a mini EBL (as in Part A of this homework) or the ‘project or field day’. Be ready to share on the the positive, minus and interesting(PMI) points that you have noted so far of introducing EBL in your classrooms. The following additional set of questions can be considered for thinking and sharing of PMI, if you have already started to make use of EBL in your lessons:

* How are the students involved in framing the enquiry tasks and questions? (e.g. could groups or individuals generate and record ideas about "what I/we want to know"? Or for a whole class investigation, could the class vote on which enquiry is the most interesting yet feasible to pursue? )

* Are the tasks open-ended enough so that the students could also take some responsibility for how they develop, rather than just producing an answer or a solution? (open-ended tasks can still contain guidance)

* Can you and the rest of the class give comments or criticisms that are constructive and sensitive? Can the group be encouraged to take on board constructive feedback?