BEYOND THE DATA: EXPLOITING THE IT TOOLS YOUNG AND ADULT PEOPLE USE IN THEIR EVERYDAY LIFE

摘要

Teaching statistics requires initiatives different from those carried out in the past. The web 2.0 (participation, interactivity, reputation systems) affects the way in which students approach knowledge and education; at the same time, the web provides tools that can be adopted in teaching statistics. Students use the net for blogs, Facebook, videogames and in a limited way for educational purposes (consulting, copying, pasting). Nonetheless they could exploit it for collective work, as happens in experiences like Clickworkers, the NASA experiment that used public volunteers; or SETI@home, an experiment that uses Internet-connected computers in the Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence, or the use of mashup (application that combines data or functionality from more sources) applied to collective projects in statistics. The reputation systems, for example, can be compared to the role played by statistical metadata in building trust in statistical data. This paper illustrates the possibility of adopting the web 2.0 tools in teaching statistics.