Activity

Students share their Communications Methods and Data Chart with their elbow partner.

o   This was assigned as homework in Unit 1.

o   Have a few students share “What data is available?”, “Who has access to the data?”

Data Journal Class Discussion

Have students:

 Compare journals with elbow partners.

 Write down 5 ways that they give off data.

 Take time to discuss what these data sources might tell us about ourselves if we “aggregated” or collected these data from lots of people – What good might be done? What services might be improved?

 Think about which of these ways can be linked directly back to you. What are possible implications of the data being linked back to you?

 Have students read this article about aggregate search data—technically, making search data available to researchers would help improve search engines, but it turns out that search history is intensely personal. http://www.nytimes.com/2006/08/09/technology/09aol.html 

 Volunteering data on Facebook and other social networking sites might tell people more about you than you intend. http://www.nytimes.com/2010/03/17/technology/17privacy.html

Activity 2: Solving Community Problems

New Haven Community Problem 

Teenage Car Thieves Are Everyone's Problem, Not Just Hartford's

Have students work in groups of 3-­‐4 to outline how they would

 Approach the problem

 What kind of data they might need to collect

 How they would collect and analyze the data

Lead a discussion to get at their thoughts.  Highlight the differences between making a case and discovery.  How would the choice between these determine the kinds of data you would collect?

Making a case (advocacy)—Use data to document situations that contribute to make a positive or negative case for something. (e.g., Let the Metro know about timing of trains and buses; tell the principal about something that needs to be done at the school; tell someone about something you’d like to see continued.

Discovery—Collect data to document situations and then use the data to learn something. (e.g., could your food choices be improved?; do I always take an efficient route to activities?)

What research questions might you ask in each case?

•   What is your research question?

•   Why did you choose to collect these data for this question?

•   What are the limits of this data?

•   What can you confidently say based on your data?

 What perspectives are left out based on your data?