SBIR-STTR Award

This Small Business Innovation Research (SBIR) Phase I project proposes to research ways to increase accessibility and utilization of census microdata in secondary school mathematics classrooms. Historically, microdata published by the Census Bureau as part of each decennial census has rarely been used in schools for lack of access and lack of software tools to handle it. The Internet and the availability of software tools such as KCP Technologies' Fathom tm change this situation dramatically. In collaboration with the Integrated Public Use Microdata Series (IPUMS) project at the University of Minnesota, this project will develop streamlined interfaces with which students can use the World Wide Web to gather data from one or more Public Use Microdata Areas (PUMAs) in the country from any of the census back through 1850. Research into modifications to the Fathom software will aim to develop new and better ways to gather data from the Internet, to create enriched data structures, and to design other functionality particularly well-suited to working with microdata. New curriculum and professional development materials created in this project will provide a means for teachers to begin using census microdata in mathematics and statistics classrooms. The proposed research will lead to licensing opportunities for the software technology already embodied in Fathom software, web-based technology for gathering and analyzing microdata, curriculum products to be sold to schools, and an increased market for Fathom in education.

This SBIR Phase II project proposes to research ways to increase accessibility and utilization of microdata from censuses of the U.S. and other countries in secondary school and college courses in mathematics. A seamless, XML-driven interface to a web server at the Minnesota Population Center will make it possible for teachers and students to specify, request, and import this microdata into Fathom Dynamic Statistics software. Enhancements to Fathom software will increase its already considerable ease and power for working with census microdata; curriculum materials in mathematics will provide teachers with effective ways to begin working with this highly motivating data--both to teach existing content and to teach data literacy. Phase I research suggested strong similarities between census microdata and school census microdata data that is gathered by K-12 schools about student demographics and performance, course offerings, and classroom practice. Accordingly, Phase II leverages this overlap to produce greatly needed interfaces for easily accessing school census microdata, survey tools for producing it, and extensions to Fathom for analyzing it. KCP Technologies' census microdata project exploits the merging web connectivity in American schools, thus symbiotically fitting a larger pattern of evolution of school technologies. The project offers a product that supports analysis of complex data through an easy-to-use interface which will contribute to data anlysis and learning from data analysis. U.S. education is very much in need of the kinds of software and curriculum resources to be produced under this project.