Data Smart Schools | Read Write Collect

Bookmarked What do we talk about when we talk about ‘data’ in schools? by Neil (data-smart-schools.net)

One of the main conclusions from our DSS project is a very simple one – academic researchers, policy-makers, business interests, tech companies, administrators, school leaders, and teachers are often talking about very distinct and different forms of ‘data’ within schools and school systems.

Neil Selwyn unpacks what it is we talk about when we talk about data in education:

System-level digital data as a form of education governance
Data-Driven Decision Making (DDDM)
Trace data generated from official systems and learning platforms
Trace data generated routinely in classrooms and school

Liked M/F/X … why converting gender into data is more complex than often presumed by Neil (data-smart-schools.net)

The main issue here from a ‘critical data literacies’ perspective is why data about gender or sex are even being generated during the course of our everyday technology use in the first place – is this data that reallyneeds to be generated? Why exactly do system developers and software designers need to know this information … and what is likely to be done with this data?

Liked Why we need to talk more about data (in education) by Neil (data-smart-schools.net)

Whether they realise it or not, our schools are increasingly entwined with the logics of digital data and datafied schooling. As such, schools need to develop ways of raising awareness, interest and imagination around this aspects of contemporary education reform. We believe that datafication is not something that should be simply ‘done to’ schools. We believe that there is value in working with school communities to work out ways of ‘doing data differently’. However, for this to happen, everyone within a school community needs to be attuned to the fact that they are ‘doing data’ in the first place!