This station, station 5, dealt with unemployment in the United States and the data obtained and what exactly it means for the state of the nation as it stands. In my group, I was the only member since I was not present in class and couldn't accomplish it there. The goal of this station was to use technology data analysis tools, in this case InspireData to look at employment rates over an extended period of time and look into trends that occur and identify why they occur. Because I worked alone, I accomplished everything myself which included finding the necessary data needed to complete the tables, creating the graphs and taking the screenshots of the data.
In order to manipulate the data to make it analyzable, one must change it from the table format to the scatter plot by selecting the x-y table at the bottom. Then one must adjust the x-axis to year and the y-axis to average unemployment percentage.
Once this is accomplished trends can be viewed. It can be seen that every time that unemployment rates go up, something must be done so that they must return lower. This can be seen by the fact that every time unemployment rates rise, policies or programs are enacted that hope to bring the percentages down. Monthly trends indicate that during the summer months, throughout a majority of years, unemployment is the highest. Reasoning for this could be that jobs tend to make the most layoffs right before the summer and in turn unemployment rates rise. It should also be noted that at this time, unemployment rates in the United States are the highest they have been since the recession of the mid 1980s and the Great Depression.
In regards to the state of Indiana from 2008 to 2009, Indiana's unemployment rates were higher than the national monthly average for 7 out of 12 months in 2008 and 2009 with one month being the same as the national average both years. This was determined by comparing the table of the national numbers with the numbers found in the table for the state of Indiana.
Personally, I believe that this activity is very useful when dealing with information or data to be analyzed. In the social studies classroom, this could include unemployment rates as seen in this case, demographics of regions, and other statistics. From a teachers perspective, I enjoyed how InspireData displayed all the information that was available and gave one the option to do many different things with it. From a students perspective, it was very easily understood what was trying to be presented and how it correlates with what needs to be learned. What I didn't like about this assignment from a students perspective was that it was very tedious and difficult sometimes to find the data to enter into the table. From a teachers perspective, I would not like to have to double check everyones data to make sure the students didn't just make up the data. I was very surprised to find that this year's unemployment rates are the highest since the recession of the mid 1980s and the Great Depression. It really gives you an idea of how bad the state of employment is in the nation today.
