Fall 2017 SAVI Online Magazine Emagazine Fall 2017 FINAL | Page 12

CASE STUDY | Park Tudor School
DEEP DIVING INTO DATA OPENS
UP WHOLE NEW WORLDS FOR
MIDDLE SCHOOLERS
“One thing educators talk about all the time is curiosity, and how kids struggle
to ask good questions,” Sidey says. “Data visualizations naturally lend
themselves to asking questions. Students routinely asked things like, ‘I wonder
why the divorce rate is higher here than here? I wonder why this area is much
poorer than this area? I wonder why this area has lots of parks and green
space?’ I mean, they were curious about everything from criminal records
to levels of education.”
The more answers they got, the
more questions they had.
Last year, students in the
“Messing About with Maps” class
at Park Tudor School learned about
their own neighborhoods—and
Indianapolis in general—by using
SAVI to create data visualizations.
Park Tudor is a private school
on the city’s north side. The class,
which was conceived and jointly
taught by faculty members Adrian
Pumphrey and Jane Sidey, served
two purposes.
Pumphrey, a math teacher, used it
to sharpen students’ understanding
of statistics and percentages.
Numbers are “far more meaningful
when they’re related to their lives,”
he says. Sidey, an English teacher,
used the data visualizations to teach
students to think about maps as
narratives that can both reveal and
conceal certain stories.
Pumphrey and Sidey offered
the class—which was part of a Park
Tudor program that encourages
faculty to create their own innovative
12
A student shares what he discovered in SAVI about
his own neighborhood, showing the class what he
found interesting, what surprised him, and noting
what was not shown.
classes—both semesters in the
2016-17 school year. About 15
seventh and eighth graders took it
each semester. At the end, each gave
a presentation about their findings.
Students started with their own
neighborhoods, but they soon
broadened their focus to include
nearby neighborhoods and other
parts of the city. “SAVI is so great
because it can take you down to the
street level,” Sidey says. “And then
you can spiral out and start seeing
other streets and neighborhoods.”