Data Champions 2019

Over the last 4 years I have become really interested in anaylsing data in schools. So when I heard about the Data Champions conferences hosted by the Ministry of Education in Wellington I jumped at the opportunity. I managed to be accepted to present a short workshop on using data in transition from Year 8 to Year 9. So hear are my notes from this day long mini conference.

Craig Jones – Deputy Secretary

Current state of educational data in NZ

Mark Hooper – Deputy Rector OBHS

Wanting to avoid Y13 slide. To make the best predictive model, at the eariest stages, with the best interventions, monitored and measured for their effectives at the individual level.

Went to data course at https://sdp.cepr.harvard.edu/

“Our data tells us our stories” (in place of the normal previous years results speil.

Attendence and discipline used to be the main driver of interventions. Now they use a combination of a number of factors (Academic, report, attendance, pastoral).

They will use 4 years of this data to create a predictive model. Using support from University of Otago Stats department.

Using wellbeing measures as well (https://www.awesomeschools.com/)

Use NZSSC data as well.

Jake Wills

Correlation vs Causation (http://www.tylervigen.com/spurious-correlations)

Evaluative thinking – http://www.cese.nsw.gov.au/

Suspending judgement
Asking important questions
Using existing evdidence well
Stengthening our evidence base

Lisa Cheney SISI – Te Rito

The right decisions, at the right time, using the right data.

Te Rito is provided by Edsby

Has dashboard functionality.

Jake Wills – Assay

Tip – use Notes tab on Student Info to add detail from academic conferences.

6 weeks between report being written by the teacher to being delivered to the parent. Comment is out of date.

Custom reporting for KAMAR: Completed via a Google Form. Then can get an overview of progress in Key Competencies AND Numeracy, Literacy, Science capabilities, Social Skills.

Chris Casey – Data Scientst

“Dirty data done dirt cheap”

“There is nothing we can do using expesnive software that can’t be done using free software”

Tools:

Data – SQL server Expres, MySQL, SQlite, R (recommended)
Analytics – R, Phython, Java
Presentation – R, Python, LaTeX, Imagemagick

Andrew Jefferson – Tracking Junior Progress using KAMAR

Made a custom KAMAR report that compares two asssesments from different years. Link to instructions

Rowan Johanson – increase teacher roll completion and student attendance.

Get from KAMAR the attendance entry log. ‘Class Attendence Marked Audit Log’ report in KAMAR. Clean the data by removing cover teachers (attendence entered by another user) and sports days etc. Put in to Google Sheet and allow a bunch of filters etc.

Created a Department Dashboard and a Teacher Summary. Can compare department to department, teacher rankings…

Made change from 52% completion to 77% in two years.

Attendance interventions for students

Single export by Deans, then import into Google sheets, each form teacher given Form class Dashboard.

Link to KAMAR explanation on attendence codes.

Jon Nash –Using Google Sheets to Improve Pastoral Tracking

Set up KAMAR export to Google sheets to track interventions/attendence etc.

Commands:

=query: treats the source as a database using SQL queries
=importrange
=index & match: like vlookup but more accurate

Can get a script a in KAMAR that exports to a location, then you can also get this to be imported into a Google sheet. Possibly with the Sheetgo Add-on?