There is an explosion of data and data visualizations available online that can connect us to the world around us and address data skills used in K-16 math and science curriculum. The amount of freely available Geoscience data is astounding, inspiring, and sometimes overwhelming to think about integrating into our teaching. One of the biggest challenges is that even with these freely available data and quick graphing options in online platforms, many students still struggle with making sense of the data.

Join us as we highlight one aspect of unpacking "Analyzing & Interpreting Data" when it comes to looking at lots of geoscience data: identifying data patterns. We will explore how utilizing online data portals' quick graph features for initial data exploration can help break down the black box of data for students. Then we will discuss how leveraging perception sciences to our advantage through graph annotations can further help students build their data analysis and interpretation skills more deeply.

There are many layers to becoming data literate and so many things to explore and do with geoscience data. Building our students' ability to identify data patterns is critical for their overall data and science literacy. We need to remember developing data literacy is a marathon not a sprint; so let's make sure we have running shoes, not track spikes, as we embark on helping our students get there. And let's make sure we are giving our students the range of training and conditioning that they need to successfully get to the finish line.