Data Collection and Analysis - How do we visually demonstrate quantitative information with MS Excel?

Data Collection and Analysis

What a week!  We've been hard at work on our Geography and Human Interaction Research Project. This week, the Amazins collected and analyzed climate and population data using MS Excel.  We learned all about data tables, formatting, and pivot charts to visually demonstrate quantitative data for the purpose of persuasion.  Above, you'll find some examples of how well they took to demonstrating their quantitative research.

Now we're on to defending our thesis statements with topic sentences.  We have established our respective points of view, and we're confident that we will be able to persuade Congressman Serrano, the Democratic Representative from our voting district, to act on our suggestions for legislation related to climate and environment. 

 This week we will learn all about MS Word and letter writing.  Only six more class days to finish our portfolios!

And we're off!

It's a snowy Saturday morning at IS229, our gracious host of today's STEM grant workshop for creating podcasts. My students, 7 great kids at the Fordham Leadership Academy for Business and Technology, have worked hard on this semester's climate portfolio project. We've used video iPods to watch climate-related podcasts to learn more about the arctic, climate change, and the effects humans rendered on the arctic environment.

How have humans impacted our environment? How does our environment affect us? Do we interact sustainibly with our environment? These are the questions we've set out to answer. Our portfolio project is a Regents Task II type persuasive essay. We have read National Geographic articles on climate, conducted Internet research on a Webquest, and learned about arctic climate change on video podcasts on our iPods. Now we're creating tables and charts in MS Excel to demonstrate just how arctic sea ice has melted over the course of the last 25 years (check out the cool image on the Smart Board).

Our work is nearly done, and the end-of-the-semester rapidly approaches! Our letter to Congressman Serrano will hopefully convince him to vote for measures to curb greenhouse gas emissions. That is our goal, and we have very much enjoyed working towards it.

Return for more news on Mr. B's Amazins and our progress this week!