Data collection tool for science lab work

[calebl]

I am interested in helping science teachers in the lab work they do in class. After talking to a few teachers, they said they normally spend one lab session having the students record the data from their experiments and the next session entering that data into excel in order to plot the results. So half of their classroom lab time is spent entering data. Is this normal for science teachers in high school who do lab work?

 

It seemed to me like there should be a better way for teachers to collect and visualize the data. We have a product that we built for scientists to collect, visualize and collaborate over data that we plan to offer for free to high school teachers for their classrooms. It would allow students to see trends emerging as they enter data instead of having to wait until the next lab session. Is this something that would be useful in the classroom?

[Archimedes]

My experience with high school lab work (physics): We'd do the lab and plot the data the same day using a program, (the name is escaping me... ugh), that we'd have running through our equipment. Very rarely would we use MS Excel to plot data, though we did several times, (more to estimate data before testing). However, I know that not all high schools are the same in the way they do things, especially science labs. I can see the benefits and drawbacks of the way you described in your first paragraphs, namely 1). You'd get more time for the lab, a whole class session, and 2). You'd get more time working with the raw data to produce plots. Now as an undergrad physics major, this is one thing I definitely could have asked for.

 

Now, as for your product: It sounds similar to what we would use in our labs, (may have to contact my high school physics teacher to ask the name of it). It would definitely be useful for students to visualize data, especially if it were more intuitive and interactive than entering data and functions into an Excel spreadsheet, which can get tedious if you do something wrong and get back #VALUE... So, maybe it would be something to test out in a few classrooms. See how the teachers like it, and see if the general success of the students increases when that is used versus when that school or teacher's traditional lab method is used. I would think it should definitely be helpful, but that's just IMHO.

 

- Arch