Get your education facts and more at the NCES Kids’ Zone
March 20, 2009
The National Center for Education Statistics is “the primary federal entity for collecting and analyzing data related to education.” Basically, if it involves a statistic about education, you can find it at NCES. Their Kids’ Zone is a branch of the site geared towards children, and provides activities for statistics and/or education.
Users can look up any school, college, or university, public or private, to get information like student-teacher ratios, class sizes, and tuition costs. In addition to demographic information, the NCES Kids’ Zone has tools to help kids create their own graphs using their own data, and games and quizzes in several subject areas. Some are great, and some are just silly (like matching universities to mascots, although I will admit to being pleased to see my own alma mater represented, even if there isn’t any true academic merit to the game — go Black Bears!) but poking around, you can find some gems. The Math Teasers would make a good weekly puzzle or challenge question for extra credit, and if you’re into things-of-the-day to get your students thinking, the home page has a daily word, quote, and historical fact.
NCES is also asking for kids to submit their own suggestions for activities for the site, which might be a great way to have kids think about technology, games, and learning. -GRETCHEN SCHAEFER
