Formula 1 Datafiles Race into
Logotron Resources
Logotron
Ltd will be proudly flying the chequered flag for the British
F1 Grand Prix at Silverstone this summer with their FREE
Formula 1 Datafiles – a teaching resource for Junior
Viewpoint and Viewpoint software.
The
Formula 1 Datafiles are the final in a series of Sports
Datafiles that have been released over the last few weeks. The
others in the series were Athletics to coincide with the
Olympic
Flame (Torch Relay) coming to London on the 26th June
and Football to coincide
with Euro2004 and the start of the Premiership
One of the
problems associated with data handling activities in schools
is that usually too little data is used. For example, a class
of children may spend a lot of time collecting and entering local
data, and at the end of their work, they are able to prove something
which was probably already well known, or could have easily been
seen. One can forgive the cynic who considers the need to use
ICT for data handling to be unproven. In the real world,
however, large data sets are constantly used for purposes including
comparing the skills of top sports men and women, their teams
and their countries.
When
large amounts of data are involved, it becomes impossible to see
patterns or predict results and you really do see the value
of ICT when you have hundreds or even thousands of sheets in your
Viewpoint datafile. This is where the Logotron Sport datafiles
will really help you cover the data handling aspects of ICT and
give your students a head start in the use of ICT for data handling
in the wider world. For example, if
you had hoped to find out about races at Silverstone you
would need to be able to find the venues of all the races and
then either add them to this database or create a new database
in which one of the fields holds that data. The Formula
1 datafile contains information about the winner of every Grand
Prix race from 1950 to 2004. Information includes, drivers,
countries, cars and construction teams.
These
datafiles give your students the opportunity to investigate and
interrogate sets of real data on a series of topical sports.
You can use them to support work accompanying the live events
or simply use them at any time to provide focused work with a
theme that will appeal to almost all children. They are
not exhaustive. In fact, they only scratch the surface of what
is possible.
So,
for teacher’s using Viewpoint in the ICT and Mathematics
Curriculum and National Numeracy Strategy, this Formula 1 datafile
will provide much enthusiasm and inspiration for
pupils as it ties in with the Grand Prix season. Plus, you will
be able to impress all your colleagues at the next quiz when you
can answer which driver won 51 races (Alain Prost!)
The
datafiles are all published on the Logotron website and can be
located at http://www.logo.com/juniorviewpoint
