What opportunities do you see for embedding data literacy more deeply into your curriculum?
What opportunities do you see for embedding data literacy more deeply into your curriculum?
For Axum, I can use data of current religions to show past present connection between the Orthodox religion of Axum and Ethiopia today. Similar approach can be used with Mali. When we get to the black plague, students can analyze a population graph of Europe.
I would like to use more data literacy in my teaching. Infographics in particular are a favorite of mine and I'm always looking for infographics on my content. A picture is worth a thousand words right?
I think the possibilities are endless--as long as there is data available. For example, when comparing the development of civilizations, we can present data on climates and weather and let students come to their own understanding of why different civilizations developed differently rather than just telling them the characteristics of each civilization. This can even be a springboard into simulations and other role-playing activities that can help students connect with the content on a deeper level
Even though it is the end of the year, it is never too late to add data literacy activities into the lessons. In the next few weeks, we will be talking about WWII and the Civil Rights movement in US VA History. There are plenty of opportunities to utilize data resources, such as when we look at the use of technology or the number of deaths in WWII. For the Civil Rights movement, graphs could illustrate where, when, and how often protests occurred before the Civil Rights Act of 1964 was signed. Within my World History 1 course, I can use maps or graphs to discuss the spread of Islam during the Islamic Empire. Using interactive maps to show the available resources in medieval Africa is another way to embed data literacy into this course.
There are a lot of complicated charts about the effects of the Great Leap Forward that will be a lot easier to tackle thanks to the scaffolded questioning in data literacy.
For connections to current events -- the Washington Post has a "How to Read This Chart" newsletter each week that does a deep dive into some fun data relevant to that week. Recent topics have been the increasing polarization in the US in baby naming and which names are more common in red areas and blue areas, March Madness, how rumors spread (in this case, about election fraud), and federal spending. The New York Times has "What's going on in this graph?", but I find that my students can read those pretty quickly and they don't inspire much conversation -- though there is a nice recent one about tariffs and the cost of sneakers: https://www.nytimes.com/2025/03/06/learning/whats-going-on-in-this-graph-march-12-2025.html
Increases the types of sources we can use in the classroom. Rather than finding the right text excerpts to describe a particular historical trend or topic we can utilize graphs and maps that show the trends. With data literacy, our students can more easily understand how these charts and maps showcase historical trends and topics.
