For plenty of educators, “data” is a loaded term. Otus co-founder and president Chris Hull jokes that it can feel like a four-letter word in schools, and he understands why. Data can feel overwhelming, and it isn’t always clear how it helps the kindergartners or third graders in front of you. When you’re teaching, time is the one resource you never have enough of, and anything that feels like extra work, like learning how to analyze data, is a hard sell.
Recently, Chris joined Annalies Corbin on the Learning Unboxed podcast, a show about reimagining teaching and learning, to talk about what changes when data is treated as information that serves teachers as well as students.
Data helps teachers connect with their students
At its core, data is little bits of information that, gathered together, give a teacher a clearer picture of the students in front of them.
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"At the end of the day, if I was able to connect with my students and really understand what they needed, I would be able to help them. And there’s nothing better than a teacher to help." |
That information makes conversations specific. If thirteen students in a class of twenty-five are struggling to use evidence to support their ideas, a teacher has something tangible to bring to colleagues or the principal. When a parent asks how their child is doing, the teacher can go past “doing great” to what the student does well and what the class is working on next.
Seen this way, data is just another part of what teachers show up to do every day: connect with their students.
The right question depends on who the conversation is for
“How are my kids doing?” can mean anything from math performance to engagement, so the right answer depends on who the conversation is for.
That’s the thinking behind the AI assistant Chris and the Otus team built. Educators can ask questions in plain English, such as which students are struggling or which student groups are excelling, and the assistant can ask questions back to find out what the educator is trying to do.
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"Are you preparing for a PLC? Because if you're preparing for a PLC, you're going to want a different set of information than if you're preparing for a parent-teacher conference. Those two conversations are going to be different even though you're looking at the same set of information." |
One place for a student’s full history gives teachers a head start
When a student's information is spread across tools, a teacher has to go looking for it. Doctor’s offices have figured this problem out with patient record systems, and Otus applies the same idea to schools. It connects to the tools a school already uses, so everything from demographics to assessment results lives in one place. A teacher can type a student’s name and see that student’s entire history in the district.
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"Realizing that technology is supposed to help us was really an eye-opening moment for me, and other industries have it solved. You go to a new doctor; they don't have to rerun every test from previous visits. They have a medical profile of you. A teacher should get the same treatment, starting the year already knowing their students." |