#842: Promoting Students’ Critical Data Literacies Through Their Creation of Dynamic Visualizations of Real-Time Biometric Data

Creative, dynamic data visualization offers opportunities to develop learners’ critical data literacies—the skills and understanding needed to evaluate and use data to inform decisions. We describe You:Quantified, a web app and curriculum for middle and high school students to visualize real-time biometric data through dynamic displays. Individual and focus group interviews with nine teachers reflecting on their program implementations with their 67 students suggest that creative, dynamic data visualization can spark students’ awareness, curiosity, and experimentation with data. At the same time, it can pose challenges due to the need to build fluency in, and understanding of how physiology, technology, and data intersect to capture experiences that are biologically, socially, and environmentally complex. This study adds to the literature on pedagogical approaches for building students’ critical data literacies. It especially highlights opportunities and challenges in using real-time biometric data visualization in classroom settings.