DFI Week 4 - Dealing with Data

Today we looked at ways to use data to inform us about our learners, ways to collect and organise data, as well as how important the 'share' part is in the cycle of 'Learn, Create, Share.'

 The Hapara hot tip showed us how to easily see which of our students had their blog posts commented on and how long ago. This will help to focus our commenting to make sure there is an even spread as well as see who has made a blog post recently and who may need help with this.

Share. The ability to share using the digital platform is enhanced by its speed and amplification. It is our natural inclination to want to share and being able to do this digitally means there is a global audience. Getting to the 'share' stage of the 'learn, create, share" cycle is important as it acknowledges that a piece of learning has been finished. This is an important life skill and is also often a starting place for new learning.

Why Blogger?

- Its functionality is similar to other social media platforms.
- Its legality, systems and security.
- It has the same google sign in.
- It has the 3 check system.
- Its large audience.
- It uses the same platform for both teachers and learners.


 Google Forms - This was a good refresher for me on remembering to use Google forms to get information from the students. I think it will be a very useful tool to use for gathering data, such as finding our prior knowledge about a topic, using forms as follow up reading activities to gague understanding of texts and getting the students to create their own google form to show what they know by creating surveys and tests for others.

    My maps - I think this will be a very engaging tool that the students will love to explore and create with. It would be very useful as students will be able to show their understanding about a place and with the ability to add information and pictures it.

I have always dreaded google sheets and in the past had forced myself to use them as they suited the majority of my team and allowed us to have a lot of information in one place. After today I feel a lot more confident about using them.
Top Tips
- Lock your rows and columns by hovering over the thick lines in the top first cell of the sheet  until you see the hand and then select what you would like to lock.
- Select multiple cells by clicking on the first cell and then going to the end cell and holding down shift before clicking.
- Resizing - select all rows or columns that you want to resize and then use the arrow to drag it to size.
- Drag handle - this is useful to put the same formula into multiple consecutive rows or columns.
- Hide rows or columns to protect information.
- Protect parts of a document so that they can not be changed.
- Explore tool to get other charts.
- Click chart to make 3 dots appear in top right-hand corner - option to move to own sheet.


Using data to make meaning ...
Using data to analyse student or class blogs to create a sense of ownership and accountability about how much you are blogging. You can look at visitors to your page and even track who is visiting on My Maps. This would be fantastic learning for any student. Here I looked at Candice's blog and analysed her average monthly blogging total.