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HS BRIDGES (https://bridgesuncc.github.io/bridges-hs/) is a collection of programming projects, including "student scaffolds" and "teacher walkthroughs", that use UNC Charlotte's BRIDGES Java Libraries (https://bridgesuncc.github.io/) in order to enable students' creations of data structure- and real world data visualizations. In this Demo, we show sample projects from the HS BRIDGES collection (https://bridgesuncc.github.io/bridges-hs/). We discuss the pedagogy behind the design of our instructional materials, the importance of our "teacher walkthroughs" as supports for teachers who are new to computer science OR who are new to teaching, and the meaningful learning outcomes that students achieve as they solve project problems. Programming agility and understanding of data structures flourish when engaging problem solving challenges, scaffolded learning materials, and dynamic visualizations converge. Overall, we aim to engage session participants with HS BRIDGES projects during the session, and then back home with their students. We've recently published our collection via the Web and we are eager to share the joy of cool visualizations that make data come alive. This work is supported by NSF TUES and NSF IUSE.
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This content will become publicly available on February 17, 2026
Integrating Data Practices into Middle School Social Studies through Project-Based Learning
This session presents the work of two middle school humanities teachers who co-designed interdisciplinary data-infused project-based-learning modules that were implemented with their 8th grade social studies classes. The goal of this session is to share what we did with our students, how we aligned the social studies learning with an existing ELA curriculum, and our biggest takeaways from the experience. While some may question whether data is relevant in a humanities classroom, we found through this project that data literacy significantly enhanced our students' confidence and critical thinking and improved their research, problem-solving, and analytical skills, making connections between math, humanities, and the real world around them.
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- Award ID(s):
- 2200887
- PAR ID:
- 10627183
- Publisher / Repository:
- Data Science Education K-12 Research to Practice Conference
- Date Published:
- Format(s):
- Medium: X
- Location:
- San Antonio, TX
- Sponsoring Org:
- National Science Foundation
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