Featured Nearby Data Educator Projects

Marshall County Schools, West Virginia

Sherrard Middle School, Mrs. Klemm's Digital Citizenship class incorporated the Nearby Data project into a unit on social media. The students watched ‘The Social Dilemma’ and created follow up questions and discussions on how social media uses peoples’ personal information. Students were tasked with polling students and teachers around Sherrard Middle School about their social media usage. Various data points were collected such as age, gender, and access to technology. Students then had to choose how they wanted to display the data visually and what pieces of data they found the most relevant to tie together and share. WLU’s Center for Arts and Education provided examples on what visuals might look like. The students then used ‘Canva’ software to create their visual representations. This work will continue and be expanded upon in this class during the 2022-2023 school year.

Social Media usage by Gender

Social Advertisements

Social Media Usage

Social Media Data

Mrs. Ana Klemm is a computer science teacher at Sherrard Middle School in Marshall County, West Virginia. She also has experience across almost every grade level working with various STEM areas but found her passion in teaching computer coding. She now teaches several computer courses including Digital Citizenship, two PLTW courses (Computer Science for Innovators and Makers and App Creators), and a Coding in Minecraft course.

Highlands School District, Pennsylvania

Highlands High School, we worked with high school Spanish teacher Laura Fleischer Proaño who had her students make data narratives using the EarthTime tool. Through her Spanish class, the students researched causes and effects of migration, including refugee migration from Spanish speaking countries. In many cases, the students found that people were fleeing their countries due to instability and violence. The students then learned how to highlight these factors using EarthTime and to write narratives (in Spanish) about the refugee situation in various countries.

This example takes “data” out of the technology or data classroom. The primary focus of this course was learning the Spanish language and culture in Spanish speaking countries. By combining existing curriculum with our data tools, students were able to understand how big data is used for storytelling, and how several different conclusions can be drawn from the same data. We are going to build on what this classroom has done by working with additional Spanish teachers throughout West Virginia who will work as a cohort to create EarthTime narratives with their students.

Ms. Laura Fleischer Proaño is a Spanish Teacher, Global Scholars Program Advisor and World Language Department Chair at Highlands High School in Natrona Heights, northeast of Pittsburgh. She actively contributes to ABC CREATE, a focused, regional approach to partner, assess, and expand STEAM Education in the Alle-Kiski area. She has worked, lived, studied and/or traveled to more than 30 countries around the world including Ecuador where she served as a Peace Corps volunteer for three years. Prior to teaching Spanish, she worked in the field of international development in Africa, Asia and Latin America for 10 years with a focus on education, health and microfinance.

Union Local Schools, Ohio

Union Local High School, Principal was previously involved in the Fluency Project, which led to his interest in Nearby Data. The Nearby Data team presented to small groups of teachers and the entire high school faculty. During that session, the principal and superintendent expressed interest in visualizing their district’s COVID data sets about the impact of masking and school attendance. We were able to develop and provide visualizations of the district’s data that were then used as part of their communications with parents and other stakeholders. This data included the number of students quarantined by grade level and number of students quarantined over time. We will continue to work with the principal at Union Local in year 2.

Quarantined by grade level 2021-22

Quarantined by grade level 2020-22

HS Students quarantined over time

Page updated

Google Sites

Report abuse