Chapter 8 Reflections

Can you identify two types of data your students could collect as part of a lesson?
Elementary students are collecting a lot of data for their lessons. One would be weather data. Students would track the temperatures of various cities across a week-lond period. They then could analyze the temperatures to determine the trends or which cities are hottest. If the class was comparing different hemispheres or coastal regions versus land-locked regions, they could also compare this data. Another type of data my students could collect would be favorites of the classroom. Younger students could collect favorite ice cream flavors or favoite food. They could create different types of carts to see the comparisons of the data.

How could students manipulate the data to discover relationships or trends?
As I mentioned above, students could collect weather data from cities across the world. They could identify the humidity and temperature, and sort that against whether the city is coastal or landlocked, or which hemisphere, and more. They could make sound judgments about temperatures and weather trends in the different regions.
Can you identify three graphs or charts your students could make that would help them develop a better understanding of the content?
Students could create pie charts. They would see the ratios of items to a whole. Students could also create bar graphs. Bar graphs use rectangular bars to represent the data. Students ould use this to show their favorite colors in the classroom. Also, students could create a line graph. This is a wonderful graph to use for comparing weather data. The plotted peaks and dips on the grid allow stdents to monitor and compare highs and lows.

Is it possible to create an interactive simulation or model with a spreadsheet?
Absolutely. One of the great features of using spreadsheets is that students can create an interactive simulations using it, but without the expense of purhasing extra technology materials. Our book gives an example of student learning about weights as they would be on the different planets and the moon (Morrison and Lowther, p.215). Students would weight themselve or different object and imput the data using the different formulas to change that weight to that of the planets.

Morrison G. and Lowther, D. (2010). Integrating computer technology into the classroom: Skills for the 21st. Century. Boston: Pearson Education.