Teachers Exploring Data: The teacher as a data scientist

Hyde Park, The Long Water, London, UK

Photo by Jonathan Acuña (2018)

Teachers Exploring Data

The teacher as a data scientist

By Prof. Jonathan Acuña-Solano, M. Ed.

School of English

Faculty of Social Sciences

Universidad Latina de Costa Rica

Thursday, July 25, 2019

Post 331 / DS Log 4

          Can teachers mine and explore data? A resounding yes as an answer needs to be uttered. Data Science (DS) is not exclusively connected to business management decisions; it can be perfectly manipulated by educators, who -in the search for answers- can make use of information to decide on various education issues. Though DS is not meant to be the cup of tea of every education professional, institutions ought to count with some to help in the visualization and explanation of behavior among students.

          Educators interested in Data Science should look for a role in data visualization. These teachers need to encompass a set of traits that can make their mining of data easier:

a)   The ability of manipulate data,

b)   The talent to analyze data,

c)   The capacity to come up with innovative solutions,

d)   The skill to present findings, results, and suggestions,

e)   The cleverness to tell the story behind the data, and

f)    The knack to deal with other stakeholders.

Due to the importance of these traits, teachers playfully manipulating data to make sense of their reality also possess curiosity, analytical strength, excitement about data, and some sort of technical skills to work with data from a database.

Copy the following Google Drive address to see the original infographic and to enlarge it: 
https://drive.google.com/file/d/1Jm1_QcrT48if_vWkB_LGSO-s2nTByDCW/view?usp=sharing

          Are educators ready to explore data? No doubt that there are many teachers who already work with data empirically. And this empiricism is perfect because it is the basis for helping them develop their competence in this area. Conclusion: as Professor Murtaza Haider stated (2018), he can train someone to use algorithms and software to work with data, but curiosity and the desire to explore data cannot be taught.

References

Haider, M. (2018). Specific Skills to Hire a Data Scientist. [Video File]. Retrieved from Laureate Edcuation, Inc. at https://dtl.laureate.net/webapps/blackboard/content/listContent.jsp?course_id=_165016_1&content_id=_801204_1&mode=reset