Created By: Kienna Knowles

Course: EDUC-6662-T1004 Multimedia Tools: How to Research, Plan, and Communicate with Technology

Course Instructor: Kathryn Arnold

Technology Standard 4: Assessments and Evaluations

Program Outcome: S4.2: Uses technology resources to collect and analyze data, interpret results, and communicate findings to improve instructional practice and maximize student learning.

Rationale:

Professional educators continuously improve their professional practice, model lifelong learning, and exhibit leadership in their school and professional community. One method used to evaluate professional practices and strategies is to create relevant data. Data is typically used by educational professionals to assess progress of professional goals. In the following activity, data was collected and organized to evaluate one goal established by Blanche Ely Science department professional growth plan. The goal of the department was to increase the (Science Florida Comprehensive Assessment Test) mini assessment scores by 15%. The following graph displays the data for each teacher and their corresponding classes. This activity demonstrates how technology is used to evaluate and reflect on current research and professional practice to make effective use of existing and emerging strategies that support student learning.

Title: Using Graphs to Generate Departmental Data

The data and graphs can be retrieved using the following link:

http://www.e-scienceesearchcenter.com//S42graphs.xls

Tables and graphs are excellent tools for communicating information and can be found in several academic and professional disciplines. Many different types of data and graphs exist, and each has something different about it that makes it useful and unique. On average, most people use graphs to display qualitative and quantitative data. For this assignment, this learner organized the Blanche Ely High School science department data for their monthly mini benchmark assessment tests.

Each month core science classes administer standardized mini assessments for a set of determined benchmarks. This data is collected to determine which strategies and technologies are useful for teaching a particular science benchmark. The purpose of the mini assessment is to ensure that students are prepared to take the state administered science assessment (Florida Compres Assessment Test). The data contains two independent variables (science course and teacher) and two dependent variables (2 sets of average test scores).

To organize this data, a chart and two graphs were generated. Graph 1 displays the data in a bar graph and graph 2 displays the data as a pie chart. Bar graphs are used to display data in a similar way to line graph. However, a line graph is best for displaying for quantitative data (data that is continuous and usually associated with measurements) and a bar graph for qualitative data (data that is discrete and categorical). A bar graph uses a horizontal or vertical rectangular bar that levels off at the appropriate level, making them useful for most data. There are many characteristics of bar graphs that make them useful like: easy comparison of different variables and clear depiction of trends in data. Overall, the bar graph allows for easy comparison and trend depiction for this data, where as the pie chart is vague and omits important parts of the data.