Data+Analysis

For data analysis, there are several ways that technology may be of use. I will describe a couple of examples here. One website that may be helpful to teachers is [|polleverywhere.com]. Poll Everywhere is a website that allows for the gathering of live data through the use of mobile text messaging. With survey audiences that contain 30 people or less, Poll Everywhere is free. Poll Everywhere is spam-free and keeps the phone numbers of its participants private, so that they will not receive text messages that are unsolicited by the cell phone owners themselves. Creating a poll with Poll Everywhere is simple. To begin, users click on create new poll. The user is then given the choice of selecting one of the three types of polls offered. The user has the options of applying a multiple choice poll, a free text poll, or a goal poll. A multiple choice poll allows the author of the poll to create the list of available options that the poll's audience may choose from as their answer. The graphs used in the multiple choice poll exhibits the results in real-time as the answers are sent in. A free text poll does not list answer options for the audience to choose from. Instead, a free text poll allows the audience to text in any response to the poll. A goal poll has its audience text in numbers, and as the numbers come in, the thermometer depicted on the page will rise up towards the goal at the top. Typically, goal polls are used to track things such as donations, sales, and pledges.

To view an example of a survey from Poll Everywhere, click on the link below.

[|Poll Everywhere]

Another website that may help teachers in the area of data analysis is [|surveymonkey.com]. SurveyMonkey is a website that allows users to create surveys for free. With SurveyMonkey, users are able to construct a survey with various types of questions such as multiple choice with one or multiple answers, an essay box, images, descriptive text, demographic information, numerical textboxes, drop-down menus, multiple textboxes, and rating scales. Additionally, SurveyMonkey also has spell-check under each question and answer textbox, to ensure that all words are spelled correctly within the survey. There are also various setting options available with each question, depending on which type of question it is. Some examples of the setting options are whether or not the answers will be randomized, to make an answer to the question required, to enable participants to enter a comment about the question if they please to do so, and to change the question size and placement.

To view an example of a survey from SurveyMonkey, click on the link below.

[|SurveyMonkey]

A third way that technology can be used in data analysis in the classroom is through a set of equipment called the Classroom Performance System (CPS). This technology allows the teacher to ask to ask a question to the class and then gives the students an opportunity to respond to that question anonymously. CPS also gives the teacher the ability to go back later and view how each student does with the various types of questions. After viewing this data, the teacher can then assess what he or she has found and make teaching decisions based off of this data. The teacher now knows where the class' strengths are as well as where each individual student's strengths lie. Additionally, the teacher also knows the class' weaknesses and each individual student's weaknesses. Therefore, the teacher is now able to more thoroughly address the class' weakness as well as each individual student's weaknesses. The teacher may also use CPS for individual student practice and for group practice that is divided up into teams.

Below is a link to the website about CPS technology.

[|CPS]