Working the Data

As an Apple Teacher and  now Apple Learning Coach I enjoy attending the Apple Live Learning Conferences hosted on Mondays and Thursdays throughout the year. They provided new insights into different Apple products and activities in the classroom. Their are many classes that they offer on a rotating basis.

Recently they had a class titled Research for Educators. This name can sound intimidating at first. The last time that I did any research was when I was working on my masters degree and that was tedious.

  Well, after taking the class and going through the book, I was pleasantly surprised. The research studies in the book were easy to follow, and provided feedback on your class and your teaching almost immediately.

It is a relatively short book, around 43 pages, but it is filled with all sorts of great information. There are 7 different research studies listed in the book that you can follow along with: student attitude towards learning, student engagement, student achievement, student creativity, student experience and learning initiative, deeper learning, and creative environment. Some of these studies can be done in a single class and some may take a bit longer to gather the necessary data.

Each of these studies provides a scenario for the survey as well as examples of the questions that you want to answer, what benefits the study can provide, specific details about the study such as how long it will take, what grades it works best for, and suggested apps to use. It then explain the steps to conduct the study. Apple provides example topic prompts, but you are more than welcome to use your own.

Once you have conducted the study you will need to analyze your data, and Apple has your back there too. They have provided template for rubric, entering data, and visualizing your data. This is all done in Pages and Number of course, and yes, you can modify and customize as you like to you and your school’s or districts preferences.

From there Apple provides some prompts for you to use to reflect on the information that the survey too reveals about your teaching practices and provides a path to improvement.

Overall this is a great class and book of any educator to look into if they are wanting to see what type of learning is going on in their classroom.