Make your data speak

Numbers in a vacuum are rarely impressive. Now that you’ve got some organized data, there are lots of free applications that let you get really jazzy with your numbers. What should you do? Use your data to tell your story.

• In the first quarter of the 2016-2017 school year, INFOhio Staff, and ICoaches delivered 175 presentations to 4,701 students, educators, and administrators.
• In the first quarter of the 2016-2017 school year, the INFOhio main website had 1,143,692 page views.
• In the first quarter of the 2016-2017 school year, students in all 88 counties in Ohio logged into the INFOhio website.

How does that grab you?​ It probably doesn’t.

Ohio's Anchor Standards for College and Career Readiness require students to 

• Read closely to determine what the text says explicitly and to make logical inferences from it; cite specific textual evidence when writing or speaking to support conclusions drawn from the text.
• Analyze how and why individuals, events, and ideas develop and interact over the course of a text.
• Analyze the structure of texts, including how specific sentences, paragraphs, and larger portions of the text (e.g., a section, chapter, scene, or stanza) relate to each other and the whole.

Close reading and analysis of text require higher level thinking, patience and focus.