Jan 8, 2018: Race and Neighborhoods
New York Times' Monthly "What's Going On In This Graph" Series which is part of their Learning Network
Flowing Data: a Data Visualization Blog and email list with great links ot interesting viz from around the web.
Information is Beautiful Awards Winners
There is a lot of amazing data visualization and explorable explanations content online which could be valuable resources in the classroom. That said, it's hard enough to keep track of the work as a practitioner in the field, much less find it as a teacher. Many of these are not easily searchable when looking for a teaching resource, especially because they are based on visuals and the text might not be crawlable by a search engine.
Having past experience as a high school teacher and many friends in the field, my goal for this blog is to feature visualizations and interactive online works that I think would enrich a classroom and tie these to topics that are already being taught. I want to share the works that I admire and find thought-provoking and inspiring.
In particular, my goal is not for these to be used to teach data visualization or web development itself, but rather use data visualization and interactives to support other topics. Just as you might analyze/discuss at a photograph or a video in a lesson, students should be engaging with, exploring, and discussing data. Therefore I'm sharing great examples of charts, graphs, and explorable examples that engage data meaningfully and address important topics. Posts will be organized by topic.
I hope that these are resources will be valuable for teaching concepts that are already being taught in school. In STEM topics, this might be percents, rate of change, modeling, simulation, data analysis, order of operations, and logical reasoning. Or, for teaching about history, racism, governance, etc.
In addition, it might help spark conversations about how we communicate information, and why. What makes these pieces work? Who is the audience? Why might the creator have made a particular decision about color? Or shape? Or animation?
These works tend to be highly interdisciplinary and hopefully can thereby engage students with a wide variety of interests. They also tend to engage with complexity, instead of trying to aggregate it away. Data visualization is analysis, engineering, storytelling, design, and so much more. You don't have to pick sides between art, humanities, and STEM. Students can choose them all in what they engage with, and in what they create. My hope is that teaching with visualizations will help break down the false dicotomuy between "dry technical topics where there is a right and wrong answer" and the "creative, artistic, or storytelling."
Please send me questions, comments, recommendations, and feedback. In particular, if you are a teacher, please let me know what types of resources you most need! And, if you use any of these materials, let me know! I'd love to hear what you found valuable. And, to update the post with any additional information or your teaching materials that would help others.