Purpose of the grant - Study learning with geographic data

• How can we design inquiry projects to help students learn to reason with geographic data?
• Create 4 projects using GIS data maps
• 2 science and 2 social studies – choose topics to fit the curriculum
• Do each project 2 to 3 times in two 6th-grade classrooms (over 3 years)
• Study student talk, and their work on the projects
  

• 4 learning outcomes:  study how students learn to
  
1. Reflect on what the data mean (step back from their work and make a connection to some other perspective)
   
2. Talk mathematically about the data (use words of quantity, quantitative relationships)
   
3. Use science / social studies concepts to talk about the data
4. Coordinate their questions, observations and explanations about data

• Question:  How can students' inquriy artifacts help them learn these 4 things?
• Compare versions of each project:
1. Students keep map drawings showing their changing understandings, compare them by stacking “layers” on a base map.
2. Students keep computer screen captures of their maps as they work and create presentations from them.
   
3. Combination of the above conditions.
   

• Each teacher try each version of each project (over 2 years)
• Compare kids’ talk between the 2 versions
• Not comparing teachers or students

Schedule of the project