InspireData

classroom use

Context

A group of mixed ability Year 7 pupils worked their way through some of the supplied data sets, where they were comparing different methods of manipulating information. After a short skills-based introduction to expose the pupils to the ‘hows’ of the software, they had access to the program for a few lessons. It was interesting that some of the pupils immediately understood the premise of the software and were able to use it intuitively and chose to come back to it, sometimes just to ask questions of their own of the supplied data sets. The software ran without any problems on a small subset of the network, and was used on staff laptops and on interactive whiteboards. On the board, it worked well with both Smart and Promethean boards.

Student Response

Initially, pupils thought that this was a database or spreadsheet, but as soon as they saw the graphical representations, their response was very positive as they could grasp the process of enquiry design, collection and investigation. The possibility to display results was the icing on the cake!

Pupils liked the way that they could investigate charts by clicking on a record, and they liked the way that icons could be changed. Personalisation of work is quite often important to pupils, as is they way that their work looks. Pupils will appreciate some time in which they are allowed to become at home with the personalisation features of the software. They soon started to formulate questions that they wanted to use the software to help them answer. An example was using the Sleep Survey demo file; for which they started to pose questions like ‘Are boys more awake in the morning than girls?’ The software and a little understanding in the way of skills make it quite possible to investigate the question, and find a meaningful answer.

Personalisation

Other than the access issues that would affect any screen/keyboard/input software, there are no specific access issues to this software.

It may be argued that children who display a preferred 'visual' learning style may well access information more effectively using InspireData. More research would be required to prove such a statement, but is seems probable that some, if not all, pupils would benefit from the clear presentation of possibly complex data investigations.

There are no express ethnic or gender issues and the supplied data sets are balanced and suitable for classroom use without teacher concerns being raised. The opportunities for gifted pupils to develop their understanding and present evidence of their enquiries is clear.

Assessment and pupil tracking opportunities

This software is not designed as a pupil data analysis tool, but it could, if required fulfil that function, and enable teachers to ask questions of their own data.

Today’s teachers have at their disposal a vast array of pupil performance data, information on statistical near-neighbours, target figures and a host of other numbers. The problem is usually, what do you do with it? And what is it telling me? InspireData could be a worthy contributor to the answers to these key questions as it would allow teachers to ask questions of their own data. 'How do girls perform against boys in modules two and three? is a question that may take a while to make sense of in a spreadsheet while InspireData will give a detailed and visually clear report in a few clicks. The ability to highlight individual data entries also makes the visual monitoring and evaluation of pupil tracking much more possible and valuable as the visual comparison is much easier to draw.