Understanding data has always been an important skill, but particularly so now as data is all around us and interacts with so many parts of our lives. This week James is joined by Rebecca Franks, and together they explore the importance of developing learners' data literacy and discuss why they should care. Analysing and interpreting data can be challenging for learners, particularly if they don't see the value in doing so. Providing them with engaging and relevant opportunities to work with data is crucial.
Guests
Our guests this week are two experienced educators with a passion for data, who have both written about engaging learners in the subject:
Ben Garside was a secondary teacher with 14 years of classroom experience before he joined the Raspberry Pi Foundation as a learning manager, producing content and learning materials for secondary aged learners.
A former ICT & computing teacher, Simon Johnson is a Raspberry Pi Certified Educator, CAS Master Teacher, and host of the weekly Twitter chat #caschat.
James Robinson is a computing educator, trainer, and host of the Hello World podcast.
Rebecca Franks is a learning manager for the Raspberry Pi Foundation, specialising in secondary computing education.
Ben Garside is a former secondary teacher, and learning manager at the Raspberry Pi Foundation, producing learning materials for secondary aged learners.
Simon Johnson is a Raspberry Pi Certified Educator, CAS Master Teacher, and host of the weekly Twitter chat #caschat.
Together, we discuss the importance of data literacy for all learners and how educators can support their learners through the interpretation and creation of visualisations. We also re-visit the familiar theme of context and how carefully selected examples and contexts can help learners connect with a data set and make the subject more relevant.
For more insights into teaching and learning from classrooms all around the world, check out and subscribe to Hello World magazine. If you’ve enjoyed this episode, please subscribe and leave a five-star review wherever you get your podcasts.
We’ll be back in two weeks time with our next episode, where we'll ask the question: "How can we make a computing classroom accessible and inclusive for all learners?"
