Data Literacy Workshops Help Educators Tell a Story with Schoolyard Data

This winter the Schoolyard Ecology program hosted two data literacy workshops for participating educators, one in Petersham for western and central Massachusetts educators, and one in Cambridge at the Harvard Natural History Museum for eastern Mass folks. The workshop theme was data storytelling: What is the narrative that your Schoolyard Ecology data is telling? Harvard Forest ecologists provided training, insight, and context for their work. Educators received 1:1 coaching in data entry, graphing, and interpretation of their individual results.

The teachers not only learned the ins and outs of using our publicly accessible database to enter data and generate graphs, but also engaged in big picture conversations on the importance of data literacy in and out of the classroom.  Every year, Schoolyard Ecology instructors enter their students' observations to contribute to our growing understanding of how climate change is affecting different neighborhoods and communities around the northeast.

Since 2004, the Harvard Forest Schoolyard Ecology program has supported classrooms in collecting authentic ecological field data in their own local schoolyards.