Digital Information

Working between old standards and new thinking.

The old standards required:

Apply digital information management tools to create a digital information outcome requires students to create a digital information outcome that involves manipulating and combining data from more than one application. The specifications for the digital information outcome, software and techniques to be used need to be determined prior to the outcome being made.

When creating digital information outcomes students will use appropriate techniques and data integrity and testing procedures. Students will apply appropriate file management procedures, design elements, and formatting techniques. Students will consider their legal, ethical, and moral responsibilities when developing digital information outcomes.

While the new one focusses strictly on the database.

Last year I spent time researching and developing ideas into what this could look like, and through a discussion I firmly realised that students get lost between the database and the development of the media. There needed to be more of a focus on what a database can do. Not just the simple work, but to develop the ideas of the power of them. Be it mysql, or sqlite.

Getting students to be able to create a database to hold the data is one thing. Getting them to be able to queries on it to be able to develop the answers that could be used someone else is another.

The focus for my students was to use the khan academy site. Intro to SQL, https://www.khanacademy.org/computing/computer-programming/sql

This provided them real time feedback from the software, suggestion on what to do when they got something wrong. The ability to problem solve, yet to be independent.

I had my doubts when I started it, but even I was impressed at the interaction it provided. It has provided me opportunities to develop my own skills. We didn't stop at the SQL basics. We went through the whole SQL course.

When I think back to what the students were developing and understanding, it was Level 3 NCEA, however these were only Level 2 students. How to show and grasp the information that they had learnt. I think this is where things got difficult. 

However with the new standards, the Level One standard 91879 is around

Develop a digital outcome to manage data involves: 

● using appropriate tools and techniques to structure, organise, query and present data for a purpose and end user 

● applying appropriate data integrity and testing procedures 

● describing relevant implications.

Develop an informed digital outcome to manage data involves: 

● using information from testing procedures to improve the quality and functionality of the outcome 

● structuring, organising and querying the data logically 

● addressing relevant implications

Develop a refined digital outcome to manage data involves:

• iterative improvement throughout the development and testing process 

• presenting the data effectively for the purpose and to meet end-user requirements.

I know one of the ideas around one of the assessments is to be able to bring in a large amount of data, that will need need to be structured or in my case manipulated, to organise that data in a way that it can be used to provide a solution, provide queries against the data.