As a past registrant of the 4T Virtual Conference on Educational Technology, we invite you to join us Thursday, July 20 - Friday, July 21 (12pm - 5pm Eastern time) for a two-day exploration of data and statistics in the real world of high school students.

We'll explore questions like these:

• How do high school students encounter and make sense of data behind science and math class?
• How do they make sense of Big Data, citizen science, managing their personal data, and recognizing and contributing to ethical data use?
• How do we choose a good citizen science project for our students?
• What are the strategies that high school librarians, educators, and administrators can use to better prepare their students?
• How can we use tools like http://socialexplorer.com to map Census data and bring American history to life in the hands of students?
• How can a tool like http://databasic.io help us and our students become comfortable and confident in manipulating and making sense of data?

Registration is free, and those registered with the Michigan Department of Education can earn 3-8 free SCECH credits. Those who are not Michigan K-12 educators may receive a certificate for $25 -- details will be shared during the live webinars.

Webinars will be archived, so if you can't attend live, please register so we can email you when those links are ready.

Register here!

Behind the scenes, we've been working on two books to help high school librarians and educators become more fluent in issues related to data literacy. These titles will eventually be available as PDFs on our website, in a machine-readable version for those with accessibility needs, as an Amazon Kindle eBook, or as a print-on-demand title.

Book one, Creating Data Literate Students, is now available in PDF form here. Other formats are coming by Fall 2017! This title features chapters in which expert educators unpack nuanced strategies for understanding, discussing, and working with data, statistics, visualizations, infographics, and more at the high school level.

Book two, Data Literacy in the Real World: Conversations and Case Studies, will be available in multiple formats in Fall 2017. This book is designed as a professional learning reference with some components that can also be used directly with high school students. In Part I, we bring the experts to you, providing plug-and-play PD via high-quality archived webinars from the 2016 and 2017 4T Virtual Conference on Data along with discussion questions and hands-on activities. In Part II, we share over 40 case studies about data literacy in the real world. With issues drawn from the headlines, these case studies can serve either as PD with colleagues or as classroom conversations.

Plug our blog URL into your RSS reader -- we share weekly posts about data literacy in the real world, link to important stories, and share data visualization to spark conversation among colleagues and students.

ou can reach our University of Michigan team at contact.data.literacy@umich.edu .

The 4T Virtual Conference on Data Literacy is a satellite conference of the 4T Virtual Conference led by the U-M School of Education. This conference is a project of the University of Michigan School of Information, and the U-M Library. This project was made possible in part by the Institute of​ Museum and Library Services RE-00-15-0113-15.

Register here!