Supplemental+Programs

=Supplemental Programs: Free Programs for Data Collection, Analysis, and Presentation= Back to the Home Page

1. Poll Everywhere
This site allows students to answer a predesigned quiz using their cell phones or mobile devices (there is a web app available). It is good for collecting data for quick shorter more formative assessments rather than summative, end-of-the-unit type assessments. Obviously there are the limitations of hardware depending on what the student has. There are workaround, however, if the teacher has access to a computer lab. This is a better option than a class set of "clickers" in most cases because the teacher can make the quiz on the fly and the amount of devices supported is huge compared to "clicker". Basically, any cellphone can be used, but using "clickers" limits the teacher to one form for creation and assessment. media type="youtube" key="zZWM2-4Jf4k" height="274" width="378" align="left"

The video to the left gives an overview of Poll Everywhere and it's possibilities. The screenshot below shows my poll everywhere account. I used this question last year on my freshman to assess what they knew about tone before reading the short story "The Monkey's Paw". Even though they just seemed excited to have a Cee-Lo Green song up on the screen, I did learn that roughly 60% of my class knew the tone was angry. This also sparked further discussion on what words denoted the angry tone.



2. Wordle - Not all data has to be numbers.
Wordle was created as a side project by an IBM engineer and was featured in the book __Beautiful Visualizations:__ __Looking at Data through the Eye's of Experts.__ Very briefly, its purpose it to create word clouds in many different customizable ways; the words that appear more frequently in the inserted text become larger and more prominent. I have used it for presenting a short piece of text and having students determine themes based up key words. They can then relate this data to some of the questions they receive later on. Also, imagine if teachers inserted standards or tests into wordle. Throw esthetics out, and you have a world cloud which shows the key terms you are assessing and the key terms you are supposed to touch on in your teaching. A very powerful tool for data visualization, even if it doesn't seem like it at first. media type="custom" key="13360200" width="330" height="330"

3. OpenSource Alternative- TC Exam
TC Exam satisfies only the test creator and test taking portion of what ExamView can offer, but a major pro in its favor is the price, free. The program can connect over the internet and is available to any computer on the network much like exam view. It has lots of customizable features and can load html content unlike ExamView. Limitations occur though when you start to consider the data analysis portion. Information can be loaded via .csv files and exported the same way. The person on the receiving end of the data must be experienced enough to put the data together for analysis. This is where paying for ExamView might make the difference. It is a little more time consuming to create classes and run preexisiting tests through the test import utility, but you get a much more intuitive analysis software and everything is working in a nice ecosystem of software.



4. Data Visualization Web Apps
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This was a video of the Data Visualization Challenge that Google challenged the world with a year ago. The contestants were very experienced designers and coders. [|Many Eyes] can help even novice data uses create visualizations very similar to the video above from any data table provided. As the website points out, you simple insert the data table, customize your look and fields, and publish the visualization. This could be post data collection for presenting the results to students, administrators, or fellow teachers. The variety of layouts can fit any need. Also, the simplicity of this website would be a great exercise with the students. They could collect their own data for a number of different purposes and the be tasked with the challenge to present the data in the clearest way to the class. Not only are they learning about the use of excel and data tables, they are also learning about focused and efficient presentation of data. It also teaches them to keep their audience in mind. A group of high schoolers can only handle so much data on a screen versus some adults who want the most information in the fastest medium.

Although it is not free the new Pages, Keynote, and Numbers app supports 3D visualizations. You could export any of your assessment data as a .csv file and insert the chart into those apps. They are only $9.99 for the IOS apps, which in my opinion have all the necessary features of the OSX versions with a much more intuitive interface. Here are some examples of data visualizations created from the apps:

These two examples show very easy to read charts that any student or teacher could use to visualize data for their purpose. The nice thing about the Apple apps is the accessibility for the user. A very powerful program with hardly any learning curve.

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