'15-'16 Intro to Data

Use this thread to discuss your questions and comments about how to run the lesson.

Hello,
I am wanting to use Unit 4 with my class; we have used 1 & 2 with great success! The problem, however, is that when I try to “add a section” for my students, Unit 4 is not listed as an option on the drop-down menu. Is it possible to get it added so that my students can start it?

Thanks,

Gary Gongwer

Hi Gary,

We have added Unit 4 as a course option and it should be live in the next day or two. Students should still be able to use it before its live by just typing in the url: https://studio.code.org/s/cspunit4.

-Dani

Cool. Thanks for the quick response!

Hi. Me again. Sorry.

I am trying to set up the data collection form for my students. I followed the instructions for making a copy of the form and having a copy in my Google Drive. (At least I THINK I followed the instructions.)

But no such copy of the form or the spreadsheet showed up in my Drive anywhere that I can find. Did anyone else run into this problem?

Thanks.

Hi Gary,

Can you check your Recent folder to see if it ended up there?

-Dani

Hi Dani,

Yeah, I looked at “recent” in Google Docs, Forms, and Drive. Didn’t see it anywhere. Ironically enough, the Lesson plan from which I accessed the form IS in my Drive. I admit, I am puzzled.

Gary

Ya thats very interesting. I’m not sure what to tell you without being able to look at it. Worst case scenario - you can create your own form from scratch.

Let me know if you figure out what might be happening.

The Buzzfeed survey isn’t really apropos for a high school setting, imho.

1 Like

Steve – I agree. Has anyone found another that could be used? I start Unit 4 next week and I’d rather not ask my students to pick their poison.

Hi Steve. Is the issue going to BuzzFeed in the first place? Or just that the quiz isn’t really relevant or interesting for High Schoolers?

Sorry, I took a closer look and see some of the issues with this quiz in particular. We’ll look to find a different one. If you come up with something please share, we’ll drop it into the curriculum. We can make a change like this overnight.

Okay @Steve @vlistman I found a new quiz: http://www.zimbio.com/quiz/3FlNH9tImJ4/How+Much+Left+Right+Brained+Person

I’ve updated the lesson plan (google doc), and I’ve updated the student view Code Studio. It should be live in the morning unless we have a technical hiccup in our nightly content push. If it’s not there, just point kids to this instead.

@baker - you are awesome!

Again, this is not exactly about this lesson in particular, but, it seemed like a good place to share.

I have been thinking about how I can get students to think more critically about the societal impact of computer science and then develop their writing skills to be more robust when describing their thoughts. TEDx has a “playlist” of Data Ted talks that I actually really like. I watched a few of them with my students and then had them write reflections about the impact of data.

While doing a unit on data seemed a little dry to my students initially, after watching a few of these videos, they were pretty excited about it!

Greetings – you might consider sharing the documentary “Terms and Conditions May Apply” with your students at some point during this unit (wherever opportunity presents itself):

“[Terms and Conditions May Apply][1]”

This is a great way to generate a discussion around some of the potentially more alarming implications of data/big data.

http://tacma.net/TACMAGuide.pdf

This lesson went really fast. Students were intrigued by what the survey revealed but they wanted grade level added to the sheet. They had a lot of hypotheses about what would happen to seniors.

Next year, I could certainly combine lessons 1 and 2 but it was nice to take time to make hypotheses and look at data. I think a TedX video might be a good intro too.

We used the last 15 minutes to explore google trends a bit which students where very interested in what those results revealed.

My favorite reaction to today’s lesson: “I wish we could have made a quiz like this, with different questions based on which answer is chosen, instead of that Question Bot last unit.”

I had the students use a shared Google Doc to brainstorm ideas about where they create data. The coolest part to me was when we completed the list, we realized that we had created another point of data.

Also interesting was looking at the spreadsheet version of the survey responses, and realizing that the “Timestamp” column represented another data point that the user did not purposefully submit, it just happens automatically.