Mapping challenges learners to think, develop literacy skills, and understand the complexity of global issues, design, and data. There is a direct correlation between the act of making a map and the knowledge acquired by doing it. Mapping their own visualizations increases a student’s understanding; they become more actively engaged in the learning process. This exercise in fine-tuning reinforces the notion of relational meaning and spatial adjacency. It is the fluid movement of change in time, position and detail instead of a static fixed point. It is about observing patterns or relationships alongside external connections. The chance to practice visual thinking through the mapping process builds proficiencies in reading multimodal, visual inputs.
Coming off a summer of the investigation into Russia’s involvement in the election, the riots and deadly violence in Charlottesville, Virginia, and the elevated nuclear threats from North Korea, it’s hard to believe that we’ve had constant turmoil since the presidential election almost one year ago. The most dangerous of all this unrest is the nuclear threat. It’s scary to think that world leaders want to spar over this. So as we return to our classrooms with our middle schoolers, we have our hands full as educators.
This summer, Neil Halloran released his sequel to The Fallen Of World War II called Shadow Peace. This new interactive documentary combines data-visualization and cinematic storytelling to explore the driving factors of war and peace. It is a web series intended to take a data-driven look at peacekeeping efforts since WWII. Part one of Shadow Peace deals with the nuclear threat.
It is a powerful portrayal of the human cost of a nuclear war and the catastrophic impact it would have on the world population and environment. Like its counterpart on WWII, the film can be paused to explore areas in more depth. The didactic possibilities are endless, and the rewards of enlightening others toward peaceful solutions immense.
On August 25, 2016, the National Park Service (NPS) turns 100. After a century of shepherding America's splendor, the Park Service and its personnel will rightfully be feted as dedicated, humble stewards of our country's most precious landscapes.
Personally, we have been lucky enough to visit many of the nation's 59 parks on all points of the compass. Each site has never failed to live up to its consecration as a place of American rarity, pride, and beauty. From the unspoiled trails to the popular overlooks, every curated destination within the wilderness is a testament to the work and vision of the Parks Service.
This august anniversary introduces many opportunities to weave the Parks into authentic classroom lessons. For example, the "Every Kid In A Park" initiative seeks to connect our nation's youth to its most treasured spaces. Additionally, a wide range of visualizations now provide easy ways to incorporate the centennial into state standards and skill-based curricula. At their least, these videos and graphics offer terrific kick-offs to a morning's discussion. At their best, these charts and illustrations support critical student proficiencies. They also bring to life the gorgeous panoply of natural wonder that would make any Disney confection blush.
To start, the "Find Your Park" website gathers videos and social media interactions of everyday first-person testimonials about the grandeur of America's vistas. As a companion, the NPS has opened its Geographic Information Systems (GIS) data to the public, for educators and graphic artists to tap in building models of terrains and visitations.
Some of the best renderings of the National Parks come from the Works Project Administration during the 1930s New Deal. These art deco posters from the Federal Arts Project capture the majesty of the otherworldly settings in colorful and appealing travel enticements. National Geographic has assembled a nice collection of these posters from the Library Of Congress.
In a video homage, the outdoor outfitter O.A.R.S. has put together a stunning tribute to the Parks, told through the stirring words of Theodore Roosevelt. As befitting its founder, the NPS takes seriously its safeguarding of America's geology. It invites students of energy, minerals, and paleontology to explore the singular contours and cliffs through open online access and badging of restoration and geoscience. These resources are terrific for earth science and environmentally minded teachers to investigate with their students.
In math and statistics, the minds at FiveThirtyEight (who usually spend their time worrying about political polls and baseball ERAs) have analyzed the popularity of each park. They crafted crisp graphs and charts for STEM educators to draw from in ranking the visitors to each venerated location. As they note, "the U.S. national parks have never been so popular," and the Great Smoky Mountains continues its reign as the most-visited National Park, due to its location and exquisiteness.
In probing the specifics beneath the Great Smoky Mountains' charm, researcher John Farrell raked the Instagram API to determine where in the Park photographs were most frequently snapped. His visualization layers social media atop traditional coordinate geography to present a new picture of the Park's usage. He includes similar map mash-ups for other coast-to-coast sites.
For its part, the NPS has put together its own retro advertisement, in the classic style of antique movie reels or 1950s television ads. This wry film is a perfect nod to the 100-year heritage of the organization. It also displays a warm embrace of every citizen who passes through the Parks' gates.
In order to help navigate the Parks, the Sierra Club has designed a System Map based on the urban subway template. This seemingly humorous rendering actually gives travelers a valuable guide in planning their vacations and in connecting the dots between regional marvels.
Finally, the purest representations of America's National Parks have always come from the minds of the country's painters. Beginning with the light portraits of Thomas Moran, many artists have sought to capture the glory of glaciers and geysers. Most recently, David Hockney scratched a series of brilliant sweeps on his iPad in his "Yosemite Suite." These personal, stylized views prove to any viewer that the nation's Parks are love letters to its wilderness. They are the last vestige against urbanity and a hallmark of global distinction.
The quadrennial political conventions of the Republican and Democratic parties offer a mix of serious-minded civics and high-octane pageantry. For students, teachers, and outside observers, the 2016 extravaganzas provide important forums to dissect the details of the delegates and to hear our nation's leaders speak directly to us.
Whether for use now in July or for lessons in the fall, a host of valuable visualizations exist to explain the esoteric proceedings. These interactive infographics and animated videos touch on a range of learning standards. They also let users explore the conventions at their own paces and levels.
History And Civics
Political conventions as currently staged are relatively new phenomena on the historical landscape. The explainer video (above) from The Guardian supplies a helpful tutorial in the germination and the evolution of party gatherings.
The "National Conventions 2016" infographic from Independence Bunting also does a good job of summarizing the essential facts for this year's stagings, with an emphasis on the numbers and statistics beneath the process.
The Economist goes back to the nineteenth century with a year-by-year pictorial timeline of candidates and events that marked each party choice. The Economist also delves into personal identification by visually outlining the liberal or conservative leanings of current and past voters.
The political site 270 To Win aggregates polling and election data to compile data-driven maps and charts. These are excellent tools for both social studies and mathematics education.
On their convention pages, each political party provides engaging information about their host cities. The Democrats link to a multi-layered interactive map of downtown Philadelphia. The Republicans include similar Cleveland maps, but they also include a hoverable floor plan from inside the Quicken Loans arena.
The official websites of the Republican and Democratic Conventions will be streaming live the gavel-to-gavel coverage. Social media is also in play, with the Engage "Scorecard" tracking Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, and other mentions in real-time. For a comprehensive look at news and opinions, The New Yorker is posting a continuous series of cartoons, histories, and graphics about each convention.
For other teaching ideas about the 2016 election, check out:
Most famous maps capture a snapshot in time. Mercator’s Projection, Blaue’s Atlas Maior, John Smith’s Virginia — they all signal the cartography of an era. These geographies trumpet discovery and location. They welcome ornamentation. But they do not invite interaction. And they never change.
The blessings of technology today mean that maps now breathe in constant updates. The ability to track global changes and inform visual displays in real-time turns children and adults into earth monitors. Interactive geography provides unprecedented access to world data streams, such that humanitarian and ecological crises can be pinpointed in exact, colorful, dynamic degree.
The following resources have been painstakingly and brilliantly assembled by dedicated activists and educators. Each visual tool allows teachers, students, and viewers to explore past, present, and future conditions based on a host of critical criteria.
The Flint Water Map, by Loveland Technologies, provides a searchable database of 6000 residential lead samples from this hard-hit Michigan town. The relevant, valuable interface combines a color-coded visual field with a detailed, house-by-house catalog of lead testing results. The tool is easy to use for both Flint residents and interested students who are concerned about the state of localized health. It is a model of geographic action for public purpose.
National Geographic has once again produced a stellar interactive about history and geography. This scrolling motion graphic traces the idiosyncrasies of California's water supply. It pinpoints the causes of the state's current drought, and it highlights the importance of groundwater, snowmelt, reserves, and cultivation in managing the pipeline to the people.
The highly customizable map by Global Forest Watch melds multiple data sources into one terrifically educational (and at times terrifying) survey of tree cover, land use, conservation, and population. The options are too many to list here, but they include Google Earth resolutions, specific country statistics, timeline progressions, and zoomable analyses. This is a great first landing site for teachers and students interested in displaying how the world's forests are changing over time.
This index by World Air Quality employs an understated map of colored tags to let data be the star. Every flag reveals vital statistics for a global locale: the air quality index (AQI), air pollution level, health risks, and cautionary statements. Together, these figures furnish a revealing look at how atmospheric pollution can have concrete effects on the well-being of cities and citizens.
"The Human Fingerprints On Coastal Floods," by Climate Central, is a compelling article that includes a clear interactive graphic about the flooding of American cities. The clickable map projects graphs of year-over-year increases in sea levels. For example, since 1950, parts of the Chesapeake Bay have seen water levels rise by a foot, directly due to human influence.
The Climate Time Machine from NASA is beguilingly simple at first glance. Upon deeper digging, though, the different interactives prove their complexity. The high-octane maps reveal historic transformations in sea ice, water levels, carbon emissions, and global temperatures. The site is a data gold mine of evidence to rebut those who claim that climate change is just unproven fear-mongering, rather than an immediate cause for concerted global action.
With the continual debate in our nation's government over the immigration policy, and the political rhetoric of the current crop of presidential candidates, it is no wonder that our students have misinformation and questions about immigration. No matter how you slice it, the United States is a nation of immigrants who contributed their blood, sweat, and tears to build the country we are today. America's story is an immigration story, of people who continue to become productive citizens, defend our country, work hard, and help this country grow.
We are increasingly alarmed by the lack of understanding of just how much immigrants have contributed to who we are as a nation. The following motion graphic, entitled "Immigration and Growth," was produced by the George W. Bush Institute, and the statistical information brings to light just how much of an impact immigrants have made to the economy. The students are surprised to learn that immigrants account for one-third of new small business owners, or that 40 percent of Fortune 500 companies were founded by first or second generation immigrants.
The motion graphic called Just The Facts provides an additional, straightforward delivery of information about immigration in order to try to debunk some of the misinformation that leads people to make assumptions based on political alliances. It offers some enlightening statistics about who's here, who commits crimes, and who works.
Lastly, the recent article titled "The Secret Of Immigration Genius" by Eric Weiner in The Wall Street Journal sheds further light on the geography of genius that results from the influx of foreigners. He drives home the point that having your world turned upside down sparks creative thinking. Weiner points to recent research on the role of "schema violations" in intellectual development.
This occurs when your world is full of turmoil, causing temporal and spacial cues to be thrown off balance. People uprooted from the familiar see the world from a different angle, giving them another perspective that enables them to surpass the merely talented, including Albert Einstein, Sigmund Freud, and Marie Curie to name a few.
Weiner refers to studies based on historical analysis that support how creativity is spurred by the intermingling of cultures, and perhaps "we should be wise to view the welcome mat not as charity, but, rather, as enlightened self-interest."
As we enter into a presidential year, which from the outset seems more combative that ever, we need to constantly provide our students with a variety of viewpoints and build a learning community that questions information by not accepting everything they hear as gospel truth. As a nation built on the contributions of immigrants, it is our responsibility.
We were hoping to have this post ready for Memorial Day last Monday, but with one week of school left, final exams, report cards, etc., the time just vanished. The data visualization used to tell the story in The Fallen Of World War II is an interactive documentary showing the human cost of war. It was written, directed, coded, and narrated by Neil Halloran. The film is a timeline of events that allows viewers to pause the narration to interact with the data.
The documentary focuses on the casualties and the pivotal moments in the course of the war when there was a dramatic shift in the numbers. It counts both military and civilian deaths. It blends the use of icons and charts with actual black and white photographs to show the human side of the war, creating a narration that is both a visualization as much as a story.
The narrator informs the viewer at the appropriate time to stop the video to interact with the charts. It occurs somewhere in the middle of this 15-minute data visualization, and again just before the end of the film. While it may seem long compared to many motion graphics and explainer videos, it is well worth the watch. We can see how our students would be mesmerized by the continuous tale recounting the huge number of victims of World War II.
It is definitely one for any history teacher’s toolkit. It is a powerful reminder of the tragedy that war inflicts on people.
Aside from the physical drama and the halftime theatrics, the Super Bowl provides prime fodder for data analytics. The enormous volume of communication and marketing around this shared cultural moment offers a case study for exploring numbers and significance.
These days, graphs are no longer the sole purview of math class. This fall, for example, we spent a “math week” in social studies talking about how historians incorporate statistics and charts in probing the details behind pivotal events. Similarly, the Super Bowl bridges academic disciplines as an appealing touchstone for students to get excited about analytical reasoning and data design. That’s how right-brained and left-brained mindsets can merge perfectly in a contemporary STEAM study.
Some examples of lessons and visual aids that use graphs and charts include:
On Super Bowl Sunday, 1.25 billion chicken wings are expected to be consumed. The number of tweets is predicted to top 25 million, up significantly from the 13.4 million last year. And the average American is projected to consume 2,400 calories of Super Bowl chow.
The emphasis here is on the visual presentation of numerical sets. Graphic literacy (or “graphicacy”) means that learners can “read” the grammar of lines and bars. Understanding trends and anomalies are key skills in interpreting mathematical and scientific figures.
As every educational institution searches for ways to blend STEAM proficiencies into the curriculum, the pop draw of the Super Bowl can be just the ticket to grab kids’ attentions in discovering the day’s dynamic details. Any of the tables or diagrams below would be terrific examples to show on Monday in kicking off a week of visual STEAM activities. The logical reasoning of numbers meets the illustrative narrative of the liberal arts:
Super Bowl ads often get the most attention from both football diehards and passing revelers alike. This interactive tool from the New York Times allows students to compare a timeline of percentages as they parse the media blitz across the years.
The media literacy component of Super Bowl mayhem cannot be overlooked. Many avenues exist for teachers to guide students in realizing the emotional tug of advertising during this high profile event. Yellowfin has designed an easily understood graph of Super Bowl ad prices to engage any student.
For aficionados of the sport itself, Yellowfin has assembled a horizontal bar chart of MVP winners by position. The results are familiar enough to let the content drive the comprehension. In other words, even the youngest mathematicians can expect QBs to win awards, and thus the extended blue bar becomes a visual signifier for their predictions.
We've written about data visualizations in real time in the past, including the Internet In Real Time and Breathing Earth. Our students are always amazed to watch the speed at which the data changes, and they're even more curious about how it is compiled. While the numbers are staggering for the sheer volume of data for social media and the Internet, they pale in comparison to those for the Chinese company Alibaba in real time.
Since we play The Stock Market Game in our classes, our students were well aware of Alibaba and its initial public offering (IPO) this fall. They know that it was the largest IPO in history and that it trades on the New York Stock Exchange. Now they know why.
We had the students open two screens to compare Amazon data on the Internet In Real Time with Alibaba to see just how big this global wholesale trade giant is. At the end of one class period, Amazon orders were 160,000 compared to Alibaba’s 1.7 million. That got their attention and drove them to make more comparisons with other information between the two sites. It also led to discussions about the role social media plays in financial success.
Real time data visualizations provide kids with real world connections to what they know and recognize. They pique their curiosity; that's their power. As with other visual content, there are a host of possibilities for using them in the classroom to demonstrate the strength numbers have on perception and success.
Aside from the fascination in watching the aggregation of data, it also is a pointed reminder that this could be done for an individual as well.
With the constant discussion in the news about the high-tech use of social media by the terrorist group ISIS (Islamic State in Iraq and Syria) to recruit members from around the globe, we know that many of our learners will have questions as we head into the new school year.
National newspapers show armed police in public places, and the threat of homegrown terrorism is a daily conversation from the networks to the Congressional floor, no matter what the media.
While we don’t want to make the discussion of terrorism a routine part of our classes, we do know that providing ways for students to process and understand what they see and hear can ease anxiety. Giving them concrete ways to visualize information provides opportunities to decipher the constant bombardment in the news on the subject.
The World of Terror was produced by Periscopic to visualize the University of Maryland’s Global Terrorism Database that catalogs terrorism events from 1970 to 2013. It is a fascinating interactive view that adjusts depending on the categories, including longest active group, recent activity, victims, geographical spread, and name of group. It’s color coded to show the number of incidents, and a click on the map provides more information depending on the selection criteria.
The GTD WebGL Globe from the University of Maryland is an interactive geographic visualization that plots location and frequency. The timeline of incidents sparks at different lengths in a neon show to pinpoint sites on a darkened globe. The globe itself can be rotated to view each year and the number of incidents that have occurred.
The last interactive graphic called Strange Bedfellows was produced by The Wall Street Journal. It shows how the spread of ISIS may be pushing enemies often at odds with each to work together against a common enemy.
The educational process is not just the prescribed curricula; it's about the need to help our learners understand to the world around them. Anytime we can provide multiple views to help them comprehend the complexities of world politics, the better off they are at making informed choices as young adults.
We continually look for resources to use for “mini” lessons or “do nows” to help learners interpret data and draw conclusions through visual analysis.
The Statshot column in the weekend edition of The Wall Street Journal provides just that. David Goldenberg compiles the data, and the graphics are designed by Carl de Torres. The topics run the gamut, including pop culture, finance, technology, and science.
Each week, Statshot picks three different subjects and creates a simple graphic to highlight the data in one image. For example, last weekend looked at screentime, self-image, and Nascar. The examples from this column are straightforward enough to use with a variety of age groups, particularly elementary and middle school students.
Statshot is part of The Wall Street Journal’sNumbers blog which provides daily posts with graphic interpretations that are more complex and perfect for high school students. The Numbers blog “examines the way numbers are used and abused,” and the topics are equally as diverse as those on Statshot.
Integrating graphic interpretation wherever we can using charts, graphs, and tables helps our students with multi-source reasoning. The pervasive use of infographics, motion graphics, and other data visualization materials requires exposing our learners to as many different modes for deciphering information. It is one of the core skills of graphicacy that they’ll need to be competent in today’s world.
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