The Noel Baker Centre for School Mathematics at Prince Alfred College had a novel idea: Why not conduct a census of South Australian school children, asking them questions on topics that interested them, to build up a data base from which they could sample? If the data was interesting to students, then probably they would be more interested in analysing it.

To be effective, the census had to involve students from all over South Australia, and this presented substantial logistics problems. Fortunately, these problems were solved when goVote™ volunteered their experience and resources free of charge, to enable the census to be conducted online. Nearly every school had computer facilities, and by doing the census online there would be an opportunity to make data collection a classroom activity as well.

We were attracted to the SeniorSchoolCensus - Online project for the following reasons:

• We recognised the need for improvement in the teaching of statistics at secondary level, and the limited time that teachers had at their disposal.
   
• The project was being supported by a comprehensive professional development program for mathematics teachers, based on a 'grass roots' understanding of their needs.
   
• Our goVote™ systems had already been proven, and we recognised the benefits that would result from using them on a large scale to increase the integration of ICT methodology within the teaching and learning environment.
   

This was not a small project. Over 20 schools and 200 students were involved in developing the 34 questions in the census and piloting it. It was important to find questions which interested students, so that they would be curious about the data.

A total of 122 schools participated in the census, mostly from South Australia, but the news spread in the maths teaching community and several schools from the Northern Territory and Western Australia also got involved. Altogether, more than 21,000 students completed the census online as a class room activity during the first term of 2003.

The following term, students started using various sampling techniques to predict the behaviour of the total population, providing an enriching educational experience. The sampler is still operational, and many thousands of samples have been taken each year since the census closed.

This was a case of Australia using the Internet to show the way - a smaller and simpler school census had been conducted in the UK, but that relied on paper forms and e-mail which did not provide students with anonymity or privacy. By comparison, the goVote™ system provided absolute anonymity for students, allowing much more interesting data to be collected. Also, because the internet was used, classroom time was used more productively, students could input their own data directly, and all of it was valid and useable.

To find out more about the SeniorSchoolCensus - Online project, click on these links:

1. Media release
2. Benefits
3. SeniorSchoolCensus - Online web site