The Database Project

Day 1 | Day 2 | Day 3 | Day 4 | Week 2 | Test Day | Week 3 | Student Summaries
My idea for use of the database methods, that we were fortunate to observe, was to center it around a theme of jobs in our small valley. My intention was to get the students thinking about the jobs that are available locally, to help them see a correlation between higher education and higher pay, and to tie it in with a field trip to the local community college computer lab for a career search.

Day 1; Brainstorming ideas and getting the thoughts on paper.
An interesting side note on 2nd period. The first word uttered and written down was the word "NONE". One student was convinced that we live in such a remote area that there was no chance of finding any work. By the end of the period he was asking his peers to not mention any more jobs because it was making his "none" look silly.
1st period's chart
2nd period's chart
3rd period's chart

Day 2; Categories
Today we looked for items that seemed to fall into similar categories. We discussed that fact that some of the items aren't easily categorized and the fact that sometimes we choose a category that we quickly find doesn't work or make sense.
Period 2 was leery of volunteering additional categories, thinking ahead that it might result in more work. Period 3 came up with several good suggestions as to what information they would want to retrieve from a local job database.
1st period's categorized chart
2nd period's categorized chart
3rd period's categorized chart Top

Day 3; Fields, Records, and Access
Today we discussed what fields and records are. We discussed information that we would want to retrieve from a jobs database. The students quickly caught on and came up with some good ideas for field names. Most of the fields will be beneficial. A few fields will turn out to be hard or impossible to fill in.
2nd period drifted slightly. They suggested a field for job openings. I mentioned that the field would be set up to be yes or no entries. They mentioned then that the information would somehow need to be updated to stay current. One student questioned how to turn this information into a web page. That started a discussion about turning this job database into a local jobs/business directory web page.
The last half of each period was spent introducing the students to Access, renaming fields, and entering the jobs.
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Day 4; Record entry, Sorting, Data entry
Today we finished entering all of the jobs. Because the jobs were written helter-skelter across the butcher paper, it was easy for the students to miss or duplicate entries. We discussed ways that we could check each database to come to a consensus. I guided the students into realizing that an alphabetical sort would help. We then looked at how to sort a field using the sort button on the toolbar. We also discussed multiple sorts; using the phone book as an example of an extensive database.
Next we started entering keywords about each job into the job description field. Some students caught on and added some excellent keywords. Others only put a single word in for a description. It will be interesting to see the different results later when we do keyword searches and filters.
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Week 2
This week we get into the classic continuation school syndrome; everyone at a different place in the project. I have students who are finishing up filling in their fourth or fifth field of approx. 80 records. I have other students who have walked in this week not even knowing that we are working on databases, they missed the entire last week. So I'm looking at showing students how to modify their fields in the design view, how to do sorts, how to do filters, and I've got students who don't know how to start their database, don't know what a field or record is, and obviously aren't really into finding out. Top
Test Day
Today is the last day of the week. While shaving this morning I was picturing what we were going to do in class today. I decided that everyone was getting burned out on the jobs database. But I didn't want to drop the database topic cold turkey. So I had the idea of a database test. Here is their assignment for today:
They are to create a new database. The theme is Rock 'n Roll. I told the students to work together. What I am looking for later today on their student disks is to see how far and creative they got in putting together a rock n roll database. They are to collaborate with each other to come up with the fields and records. I'm not looking for a lot of record content, I'm looking for database familiarity.
Period 1: It took almost 30 minutes before this group of 4 students started talking to each other about what they were doing and how they were doing it. Late in the period they started tossing rock group names back and forth; they started warming up to the assignment.
Period 2: 2nd period came in to class at each other's throats. Took about 15 minutes for the anger to subside and the fun of the project to start. By the end of the period the ideas and creativity was flowing pretty good.
Period 3: Fairly confused in the beginning about the whole database thing. One new mom just looked at the whiteboard with apathy and declared "I just don't really care about databases". She did eventually enter some bands, but then gave up when the file didn't automatically save to her student disk. Another misplaced file on the harddrive, never to be accessed again. The other two students continued trying and entered more information into a variety of fields.
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Week 3
The completion level of the student databases is still varied, but hasn't drifted too much farther than last week. The absences and other school activities are staggered enough so that no one has gotten too far ahead. This week we will finish up this assignment. The students are going to finish as many fields as they can by Wednesday. Thursday their assignment will be to turn in 3 different filter print-outs with a written explanation of what the data, that was filtered out, meant to them.
After trying to initiate the filtering portion of the assignment I have to step back and re-organize. The students understand the filtering concept when I tell them specifically which word to highlight. They understand that the computer has hidden the information, from their view, that doesn't apply. They also are comfortable with the fact that the information can be returned to its original condition (they were worried about this in the beginning).
The hang-up comes when asking them to filter the information in a way that is meaningful to them and to draw a conclusion. Repeated attempts to encourage them to do this met with extreme resistance and apathy. No one seemed to have a natural curiosity as to what the information could tell them. No one was interested in finding patterns.
The result is that I have created 5 specific questions on the board to help direct them:

Which job description word occurs most often?

Compare the jobs that require college to jobs that don't.

What does your database tell you about:

evening only jobs?

minimum wage jobs?

the best paying jobs?

If you notice any other interesting relationships in your data, describe them.

Describe what this database exercise meant to you. Was it interesting? Useful? Informative?

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Student Summaries
Logan - "I thing (sic) the data base is pretty interesting because you can use it to find out other things such as what kind of food people most prefer, how many people would rather be at school than at work for minimum wage and other stuff like that."
Eric - "This data base was very interesting because it just goes to show how many jobs there are in Scott Valley, which was very useful and some of them don't sound too bad it's just that finding them is the problem."
Lacey - "This database will almost definitely help me in the future, it helps organize and it would probably make things a lot easier."
Billy - "This data base tells me that I could probably get a job with-out having to go to college.
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