UMass Amherst: Statistics Education Research Group

News and Events Archive

July 20 – 21, 2009
Cliff lead sessions on TinkerPlots at the 3rd summer meeting of the StatSmart project in Melbourne, Australia.

July 10 – 16, 2009
Cliff and Anthony Harradine presented the paper “Contexts for Highlighting Signal and Noise” at SRTL-6 in Brisbane, Australia.

May 25 – 29, 2009
Cliff is an invited participant at the workshop "Probabilistic Models of Cognitive Development” at the Banff International Research Station.

May 26, 2009
Craig attended the UPA-Boston Eighth Annual User Experience Conference.

April 23 – 25, 2009
TinkerPlots demonstrations at the Key Curriculum Press booth at the NCTM national meeting in Washington, D.C.

April 4 – 9, 2009
Craig attended the CHI 2009 Conference in Boston.

April 20 – 21, 2009
Cliff and Rich Lehrer lead the work session “Modeling Repeated Measures as an Entrée into Data Analysis” at the NCTM Research Presession in Washington, D.C.

January 23, 2009
Craig attended the BostonCHI Winter 2009 Professional Development Seminars.

January 23, 2009
Release of new version of Model 1 (Beta 04) with redesigned device-branching and history-object interface.

August – December, 2008
The following articles featuring TinkerPlots have recently been published:

Konold, C., & Lehrer, R. (2008). Technology and mathematics education: An essay in honor of Jim Kaput. In L. English (Ed.), Handbook of International Research in Mathematics Education, (2nd edition) (pp.49-72). New York: Routledge.

Konold, C., & Kazak, S. (2008). Reconnecting data and chance. Technology Innovations in Statistics Education, 2 (1) , Article 1.

Watson, J. M., Fitzallen, N. E., Wilson, K. G., & Creed, J. F. (2008). The representational value of hats. Mathematics Teaching in the Middle School, 14(1), 4-10.

November 20, 2008
The latest edition of Techcast at UMass features a podcast about TinkerPlots.

October, 2008
TinkerPlots has won another award, ComputED’s 2008 Education Software Review (EDDIE) Award.

October, 2008
Bill Gerace having retired and moved to NCSU Greensboro, Cliff was appointed the new director of SRRI.

August, 2008
Sibel Kazak completed her 2-year postdoc and returned to Turkey where she is waiting for the final word on which of several university positions there she will assume.

April 9-12, 2008
Come see us demonstrate TinkerPlots in the Key Curriculum Press booth at the NCTM national meeting in Salt Lake City.

April 8, 2008
Cliff and Sibel are presenters in the symposium “Contrasting Perspectives on Connecting Important Ideas in Probability” at the NCTM Research Presession at Salt Lake City.

January 22, 2008
Expected release of new development version of Model 1 (Alpha 36) that incorporates a new “wire” interface for the Sampler and object-imbedded menus.

Wire Interface to Sampler in Model 1 Alpha 36

January 14, 2008
Cliff hosted a webinar on teaching data analysis with TinkerPlots for the American Statistical Association’s "Meeting Within a Meeting."

January 1, 2008
Three recent articles describe our research on student learning using TinkerPlots:
1. Technology and mathematics education.
2. Understanding distributions by modeling them.
3. Designing a data tool for learners.

September 2007
Ibrahim (Slash) successfully defended his dissertation in cognitive psychology and is now Dr. Dahlstrom-Hakki. Congratulations. He also graduated from SERG, and we wish him the best.

September 18, 2007
Presentation “Bringing Data and Chance Together in the Middle School” at the STEM Education Institute, Amherst, MA.

September 10, 2007
Poster session “To understand a distribution, try building it from scratch” at the NSF DR-K12 Principal Investigators Meeting, Arlington, VA.

September 6, 2007
Presentation “Understanding Distributions by Modeling Them” at Concord Consortium, Concord, MA.

September 4, 2007
Two students joined our group. Shailesh Hegde, a graduate student in Electrical & Computer Engineering, is the webmaster and technical assistant. Anna Filshtinsky is a life-science major who is transcribing interviews and classroom discussions.

August 11-17, 2007
Cliff and Sibel presented research from our probability teaching experiment at SRTL-5, University of Warwick, London.

July 22-26, 2007
Cliff and Sibel made presentations at ICTMA 13 held at Indiana University, Bloomginton.

July 18-20, 2007
Paul Hyry, principal of Lynch Middle School, spoke at the America’s Choice Summer Leadership Academy at Saratoga Springs, NY about his experience using TinkerPlots to analyze student MCAS results.

May 3-11, 2007
Cliff consulted on a new funded project with Jane Watson in Melbourne, Australia and conducted a weeklong classroom teaching experiment with Anthony Harradine at Prince Alfred College in Adelaide.

April, 2007
Key Curriculum Press published the middle school math text Digging into Data with TinkerPlots. The development of these materials were supported by our original TinkerPlots project, and were written by Amy Brodesky of EDC along with two classroom teachers she worked with: Amy Doherty, and James Stoddard.

December 6, 2006
Released a development version of TinkerPlots which includes a new multiple mixer capability.

December 4, 2006
Released video "Engaging Museum Visitors with Data" as part of our Tinkerzeum Planning Project. The video shows visitors at the Museum of Science in Boston investigating data using TinkerPlots.

November 9, 2006
Began a yearlong after-school program at Lynch Middle School, in Holyoke, MA. Students are learning probability using new development versions of TinkerPlots. We'll be testing lesson plans, materials, and new TinkerPlots capabilities during this phase of the Model Chance project.

October 1, 2006
Began the NSF-funded S-Cast project. We're working with researchers at TERC and Harvard to build a plan-recognition interface to assist teachers and students learning probability using the new probability simulation capability of TinkerPlots.

September 1, 2006
Sibel Kazak, having completed her Ph.D. in math ed. at Washington U. in St. Louis, joined SERG as a postdoctoral research associate. We welcome her to the team.

July 2-7, 2006
Cliff will presented research at the 7th meeting of the International Conference on Teaching Statistics, Salvador, Brazil.

June 2-4, 2006
All-staff meeting of Model Chance project, Nashville, TN.

June 1, 2006
Started the NSF-funded project “A Learning Progression to Support the Development of Model-Based Reasoning.” Working with Rich Lehrer and colleagues at Vanderbilt, we're developing a learning progression and assessment system for learning probability in the middle school.

April 26-29, 2006
Cliff and Craig attended the annual meeting of the National Council of Teachers of Mathematics in St. Louis, MO, making various presentations of TinkerPlots.

March 15, 2006
We distributed the first beta version of TinkerPlots Sampler to Model Chance collaborators.

January 17, 2006
We released a development version of TinkerPlots which includes a new “measure tool,” one of a suite of modeling capabilities we are developing as part of the Data Modeling project.

December 12, 2005
Continued classroom testing prototypes of TinkerPlots sampling capability at Lynch Middle School, Holyoke, MA, working with teachers Nancy Moriarty, Carol Murphy, Cheryl Nickl, and Katie Ross.

November 10-12, 2005
Cliff is involved in various sessions introducing TinkerPlots at the NCTM Western Regional Conference in Denver.

October 18, 2005
TinkerPlots was chosen as one of 7 Top Winners by Technology & Learning Magazine in their 2005 Awards of Excellence.

October 15-18, 2005
Cliff presents results from the TinkerZeum project at the ASTC annual conference in Richmond, VA.

October 10, 2005
We conducted our first classroom test of the new TinkerPlots sampling capability in Katie Ross’s 7th grade class at Lynch Middle School, in Holyoke, MA

October 7, 2005
TinkerPlots Ontario French Edition CD, v.1.02, is delivered to Ministry of Education.

October 6-7, 2005
We demonstrate TinkerPlots at the Key Curriculum Press booth at the NCTM regional conference in Hartford, CT.

September 15-16, 2005
Cliff attends the advisory board meeting of the CSMC project in Chicago.

September 1, 2005
Antony Partensky joined SERG.

July 24-30, 2005
Cliff is co-instructor in the Key Curriculum Summer Institute,
“Technology for Middle School featuring The Geometer's Sketchpad and
TinkerPlots,” Oakland, CA.

July 6-9, 2005
Cliff, Craig, and Slash attend the all-staff project meeting of Model Chance, Park City, Utah.

June 28, 2005
Cliff presents TinkerPlots at the Boston Museum of Science (part 2 of 2).

June 7, 2005
Craig presents TinkerPlots at the Boston Museum of Science (part 1 of 2).

June 6, 2005
Ibrahim “Slash” Hakki joins SERG.

June 6-10, 2005
Cliff participates in a workshop for teachers involved in the
Data Modeling project, Nashville, TN.

May 19-21, 2005
Cliff is involved in a number of sessions at USCOTS in Columbus, Ohio,
including a Key note address on research in statistics education.

May 19, 2005
Cliff presents TinkerPlots at the Virginia State Department of
Education, Richmond VA.

May 1, 2005
The Model Chance project officially starts up.

April 18, 2005
We began our first round of field tests in Springfield's BasketBall Hall of Fame and in Boston's Museum of Science for the TinkerZeum project.

March 28, 2005
We released TinkerPlots Ontario English Edition and TinkerPlots Evaluation Edition.

March 15, 2005
TinkerPlots wins Parents Choice Award

February 22, 2005
The province of Ontario has licensed TinkerPlots for use by all schools in the province.

February 17, 2005
We've completed an alpha version of TinkerPlot v 2, which is being tested in Nashville schools as part of the Data Modeling project.

February 11, 2005
The 3-year project, Model Chance, has been funded by the National Science Foundation.