Up to now I had only filled in Google forms, but was now creating my own. It seemed pretty easy to set up, but there are a lot of further 'layers' with all the settings etc to make them look prettier and work differently; this will be something to tutu with in my own time.
Google my maps can be used in a number of ways; this could help you plan a route, plot different places or measure distance. I am sure there are plenty of ways we can use this in Social Science in future, such as plotting human rights abuses around the world.
Google sheets was the one aspect I was not looking forward to - up to now I have been very loath to try and set anything up on excel, as this seemed to fit with people of a more mathematical bent than myself. Once we'd gone through a few of the 'bells and whistles', it became more apparent how you could use it. I still feel like I am only scratching the surface with this programme, and it also seems to be very much about presenting numbers in 'interesting' ways, rather than in-depth analysing, but the more use I make of it, the more I will pick up I am sure.
The big 'annoyance' this week is the use of the phrase 'analyse', when 'describe' would be more accurate. As a high school teacher, analysis is a much more in-depth thinking skill which students are expected to demonstrate in Year 13 for all their assessments. What we seem to be asked to do is to summarise or describe the information.
Below is my summary of one of the students' blog sites:
Hi Alistair
ReplyDeleteYou're quite right there is so much more you can do with the Google apps we explored today, the possibilities are endless and looking at any of the Woolf Fisher Data you can see how Google Sheets is really put to work.
The use of the word analyse in conjunction with data is perhaps slightly different to what you are referring to where students need to show in-depth thinking. I think describe would be an unusual word to use with predominantly numerical data.
What do you think about the recent announcement that New Zealand history will be compulsory in every school? I already thought it was.
Perhaps explain will be a better term; having said that, often we are shown 'analysis' of data at the start of the year which is far too superficial (as far as I am concerned anyway!) to count as analysis.
ReplyDeleteNZ History was often left up to schools whether they did it or not - a lot of students think NZ History is 'boring' when they don't know enough about it! It seems a bit more proscribed, but still seems to leave a lot up to individual schools to set up.