week 5

I know I'm 2 days late but...thrilled to say I survived stats! I also think that I actually learned quiet a bit about stats in the process! I am also much more comfortable with the terminology and processes. :) woohoo!!

I would have to stay that discovering google trends this last week was probably one of the highlights in this class. I really enjoyed being able to see how certain things were trending over time. the way google set up trends was also really cool. I like to be able to change the region and time period to make sure the information is relevant to my needs. I am not sure how I can use this for my professional life yet, but do have fun with it in my free time. Maybe I will stumble upon a "prom dress" phenomenon myself!

Week Four

Statistics and Art...

Well now that we are over half way through class I have raelly been pondering how I use statistics in my classroom. I have never really considered doing too much data collection as my curriculum doesn't really have data collection assignments (tests, quizzes, homework) but rather projects and process grades. I am thinking that when I am back in the classroom next year (I will be out on FMLA for the remainder of this school year) that I will begin to track my students grades using some of statistic concepts we have been learning.

I know that my school uses data A LOT and we analyze it through a variety of different tools...MAPS, WKCE, Explore, AIMS, STEM, etc. but this data rarely makes its way into the specialists classrooms (music, art, p.e., health, spanish, face...) on a regular basis as we have such limited time with the students. We know the students scores and how/why the data is important but it is much more difficult to use it daily in our instruction.

I now know how to analyze data that come directly from my curriculum and students to make it relevant to me.

Week 3

Oops!! Having a baby last week has really screwed up my schedule!! :p I seem to have missed week 3's blog response.

Real life stats connection...

After having my daughter I was all of a sudden given tons of statistics about height, weight, breastfeeding, SIDS, etc. and I was thinking about how stats are everywhere in every profession (including motherhood!) Now that I am home and somewhat more coherent, I am wondering about how they get their statistics. Are they samples or populations? What does it mean if my daughter is not on the "charts"? (she was really chunky) How do they know that certain blankets and sleepers help lower the risk of SIDS? It just suprised me that there are statistics all around us that we don't even think twice about. I am now questioning how statistics guide many of our programs in schools and curriculum...interesting thoughts to ponder!