This is an interesting "dear colleague" letter from the NSF Geosciences Director that encourages researchers to engage in "data citation" so that the data is accessible to others.
This will be interesting to track. A joint call for proposals from NSF and NIH. From the call, "BIGDATA seeks proposals that develop and evaluate core technologies and tools that take advantage of available collections of large data sets to accelerate progress in science, biomedical research, and engineering."
Unfortunately, when you say big data in educational circles it applies only to data about educational outcomes not students tapping into scientific research data.
This page provides access to a talk by Jim Collins about changes in how science is done and how NEON (National Ecological Observatory Network) fits into that landscape.