Two Bethel Park Teachers Participate in Data Fluency Workshop at CMU

Two Bethel Park School District teachers are among a group of 12 Pittsburgh area teachers from eight school districts who were selected to participate in a summer program at Carnegie Mellon University focused on data fluency. Participating in this program are Bethel Park High School Physics Teacher Lee Cristofano and Neil Armstrong Middle School Fifth Grade Teacher Joseph Rosi. The teachers spent two weeks at CMU’s CREATE (Community Robotic, Education and Technology Empowerment) Lab to explore ways to apply the concept of data and technology fluency in their schools.

“In our application, we pitched a project that will have our students working together to collect and interpret data,” said Rosi. “We thought it would be a good experience for the younger students to be able to work together with the older students. “We want the students to understand that in today’s world, anything they want to do or know about is data driven. My goal as their teacher is to help them learn how they can use this data to tell their story. We want them to understand their thinking as multidisciplinary, something that involves writing, math, science and art – essentially the STEAM model.”

Cristofano has been a proponent of Big Data for the past three years, mentoring groups of Bethel Park High School students involved in the Big Data Jam competition. Additionally, he is co-teaching a class on Big Data at the High School – the first class of its kind in the area. He is also working with three other Bethel Park High School teachers to offer a pilot ninth-grade STEAM class this year at the high school. Within the first two weeks of school, Cristofano could already see the impact of data fluency on his students.

To learn more, see http://www.bpsd.org/protected/ArticleView.aspx?iid=6GIPPUI&dasi=2I0.