Digital Technologies, programming NCEA 2016

One of the areas that I am interested in each year, is what is the condition of programming in New Zealand Schools.

While it has been going up year upon year, with 5884 students taking NCEA Level One programming in 2016. Up from 3246 when the standards was introduced in 2011. What does this look like nationally.

There are 430 schools that teach Technology at NCEA levels in New Zealand in 2016. I have used that as the base information.
The above map shows the areas of the country where Level One, Level Two and Level Three are taught.

Big Data and NZ Digital Technologies NCEA Level 3 idea

How do students create understanding of Big Data, what can be some of the ideas that they can understand. Plotting data on a map to understand a crash analysis database(need to register to access, research purposes). This I did a couple of years ago. Now I am looking at the ideas of infographics. One that has helped me to understand a bit better the opportunities around this is Brian Foo, the creator of Climate Change Coloring Book on kickstarter.

The Climate Change Coloring Book contains guided coloring activities that explore scientific research and data related to climate change. The goal is to encourage learning, exploration, and reflection on issues related to climate change through act of coloring.

One of the great things about his kickstarter has been the sharing of the code, the code used to generated the art in the book will also freely available to use and extend. This has allowed me to think about what data we have in New Zealand and what could be used to demonstrate the understanding.

https://data.govt.nz/

Pushing the ideas.
Since working in Christchurch I am used to seeing in the papers the number of days that there was poor air quality. This is from http://www.stuff.co.nz/environment/82329452/Canterbury-unlikely-to-meet-air-quality-standards to be able to think about what the ideas of having and showing data could look like.
Gathering data to use from http://data.ecan.govt.nz/Catalogue/Method?MethodId=98
Seems like it does not like to show data from some sites, this could be that the data is no longer being gathered.

DateTime,StationName,CO (mg/m3),NO2 (ug/m3),NOx (ppb),PM10 (ug/m3),PM2.5 (ug/m3),PMCoarse (ug/m3),Relative humidity (%),Temperature (near ground - top of mast) (DegC),Temperature 10m (DegC),Temperature 2m (DegC),Wind maximum (m/s),Wind speed (m/s)
2017-06-01,St Albans,0.354879349470139,15.7742910385132,13.4651327133179,14.1038541793823,8.67333316802979,5.43052053451538,90.6372528076172,0.032423734664917,9.91655158996582,9.94897556304932,2.42499995231628,1.32716655731201

Looking at the data, we need to gather the PM10 (ug/m3), however the data that is being collected for the code in the coloring book above is for PM25. It seems that the New Zealand measurement is PM10 http://www.scoop.co.nz/stories/ED1706/S00006/air-quality-monitoring-continues-in-alexandra.htm

What students will need to understand is what is the data recorded, and how it is being used.