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Looking Back on 2020

This has been a tough year for many of us. COVID-19 has affected all of us in unforeseen ways. Work-wise, many of us here at ODI have had to adjust to working from home with spouses, kids, pets, and competing priorities. Conducting education research has been especially tricky as we’ve tried to adapt to ever-changing school situations.

But adapt we did! In our Streams of Data project, through both online and in-person activities (depending on the week, it seemed like!), we were able to observe 3rd, 4th, and 5th graders grapple with authentic stream and rainfall data. And our Building Students' Data Literacy through the Co-design of Curriculum by Mathematics and Art Teachers project was able to work with teachers, despite the pandemic, to co-design arts-integrated data literacy units that they will pilot in 2021.
Free Webinar: The Data Science Workforce Challenge  
December 9 at 10 AM ET 
Panelists from MassBioEd, Mass General Hospital, Broad Institute, LifeMine Therapeutics, and Foundation Medicine
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Our Preschool Data project developed and is currently field testing a set of nine investigations designed for preschool teachers and children to engage with. The investigations include hands-on activities and books, as well as the use of a newly designed app to help guide teachers and children through the investigation process and promote data literacy in preschoolers. The project team also developed an assessment of data collection and analysis (DCA) skills (which can be used virtually), to learn more about how preschoolers develop their DCA skills.

The SDLC project, which has developed curriculum materials that support high school students in exploring social justice issues with large-scale social science data, is currently testing a version of its three-week long module, Investigating Immigration in the U.S., with three high school teachers who are implementing  the module remotely in urban schools in Massachusetts.
 
In collaboration with three middle school teachers and their students in northern New Hampshire and Maine, the WeatherX project is currently testing the first of two three-week long curriculum units to support rural middle school students in investigating extreme weather on Mount Washington, NH, and in students’ local communities using large-scale data from NOAA.

In our Mentoring Big Data Careers project, in addition to mentoring six community colleges one-on-one, we created a community of practice that now has more than 40 members from community colleges/colleges across the country, meeting virtually on a monthly basis.

Our compilation of data resources for teachers had almost 6,000 visits this year alone and almost 13,000 views since we created it. Likewise, Ocean Tracks was popular this year with more than 50,000 visitors (over 100,000 visitors since it launched)!

Our ZoomIn! Science platform launched in September with six curriculum modules that build high school students’ data skills as they explore core topics in biology and earth science using authentic data sets.

ODI also created a series of learning modules for 5th and 6th graders that use authentic NASA and NOAA data to study the effects of the Earth’s changing climate on the animals and plants of Maine’s diverse habitats.

ODI's work was also featured in the Multiplex’s September theme focused on Leveraging Authentic Data Across STEM Curricula. I authored a blog framing the topic, and moderated a panel for the theme’s webinar. The featured video playlist included several ODI projects, including Real World, Real ScienceOcean Tracks, and Zoom In!).

This year, we are thankful for the support of the National Science Foundation, NASA, National Geographic, our many partners and collaborators (GMRI, AGI, and the Concord Consortium to name a few), and folks like you who are passionate about teaching students data skills from the early grades to undergraduate level!

We're looking forward to 2021 and all there is to come. We wish you all Happy Holidays, and a joyous and peaceful New Year!

Randy Kochevar
ODI Director
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