Data Literacy Resources
Data literacy is the ability to collect, organize, visualize, analyze, interpret, and share data for yourself and other people to use and understand.
Whenever we work with data there are always three realms of things we are doing: getting data, exploring data, and inferring meaning from data. And YOU, the person working with the data, are the key puzzle piece that holds that together.
Regardless of what subject-area pathway or future career, all students need to be data literate in today's society. So how can we effectively teach data literacy skills so that students embrace being the key puzzle piece?
We believe strongly in creating an open and inclusive approach to teaching with data, as a rising tides lifts all boats. Therefore, we seek to develop and share resources to increase confidence and competence in a range of areas, be that grade levels, subject areas, or type of educational resource.
We have organized the resources into five categories: essential ideas, actions we take with data (related to each of the three realms), and general resources. As a reminder, our free materials are licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International license.
ESSENTIAL IDEAS
Essential Ideas offer a sense of purpose, function, and context for data tasks that students might undertake in a classroom. We can scaffold these ideas by subject-area, grade-level, across a year-long curriculum, throughout units, and within lessons. We can track student progress towards their next level of data literacy through formative and summative assessments.
To explore Essential Ideas resources, click hereFIND & ORGANIZE DATA
Teaching students how to generate, quantify, and organize data involves a blend of practical skills, conceptual understanding, and critical thinking. What questions are we trying to investigate by collecting data? What story do we think those data might tell? Getting data is more than making and recording measurements, it's also about YOU having a purpose.
To explore Find & Organize Data resources, click hereGRAPH & ANALYZE DATA
Learning how to graph and analyze data involves developing both technical skills (e.g., creating accurate graphs) and analytical thinking (e.g., recognizing patterns). When exploring data, YOU, the explorer, can try many different ways to uncover patterns, trends, relationships, etc. Exploring is more than surface-level observations and builds with practice.
To explore Graph & Analyze Data resources, click hereINTERPRET & USE DATA
Inferring meaning from data is about interpreting the information presented and drawing conclusions based on what the data means to YOU. This is more than just looking at the numbers or graphs; it's about understanding the context and making decisions or predictions based on the data. Background knowledge plays an important role to give meaning “within reason”.
To explore Interpret & Use Data resources, click hereGeneral Resources
Here we have collected resources that are about a range a data related topics or are more broad in scope:
- Building Blocks for Data Literacy - Reference and discussion-starter for all educators as we all explore how to engage K-12 students with data.
- Data Literacy 101 Articles - Interdisciplinary Ideas column article for NSTA's Science Scope focused on various data strategies.
- Data Bites Series on YouTube - Weekly short videos of classroom-ready resources or strategies to try.
- Book Suggestions - Recommendations of various data, data visualization, and education books that we like and wanted to share.
- Data Across Disciplines - Data is NOT just for math or computer science class. We also need to use it in science and social studies...and can use it elsewhere.
- Others' Resources - There are so many great teams working on building lesson plans, interactive data tools, etc.
Also remember to check out our Blog for more helpful connections to the many ways you can support your students building their data literacy skills.
