Primary school children ace data visualisation competition
N14 – Data Education in Schools
A team of five Scottish primary schools were victorious at the end of last year when they pitched themselves against a host of grown-up entrants for an international data visualisation competition organised by The Data Lab.
Each of the competition entries from around the world were showcased to over 500 data and AI professionals at Data Summit in November.
The winning entry, called ‘Weaving Our Way to School’, used a technique called data weaving where the students used ribbons tied to their school gates to visualise how teachers and students travel to school.
The schools were supported by Kate Farrell and Jasmeen Kawal from Data Education in Schools, an Edinburgh-based data literacy programme. Kate told us “When we work with schools, teachers and learners we want to focus on the core data literacy concepts, rather than providing training in a software tool like Excel. What was nice was that the process was more important than the actual data, for example learners in one school discussed how to deal with a situation where there wasn’t enough blue ribbon.”
We love the fact that the school team took the data project outdoors, not only capturing attention beyond the school walls, but also highlighting the importance of community and collaboration in crafting data-driven narratives.
Just a month before, a similar data weaving collaboration took place between Well Woven and information designer Giorgia Lupi. They created beautiful woven rugs using data on lost and endangered textile techniques from around the world.
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