Showing posts with label data visualisation. Show all posts
Showing posts with label data visualisation. Show all posts

Sunday, May 11, 2014

The app opportunity for the geography classroom


Image above: The Social Landscape app.  Great for visualising and comparing data across space.

Related links to Spatialworlds 
Geogaction
Spatialworlds website
GeogSpace
Australian Geography Teachers' Association website
manning@chariot.net.au    

Where am I??  
Adelaide, Australia: S: 34º 55' E: 138º 36'


 Visualisation of data across space and real time quake feeds

Recently there has been an interesting shift in focus when looking for classroom friendly geography resources.  On a daily basis new apps are appearing for students and teachers to use on their iPads and iPhones to teach and learn geography in the classroom.  With iPads and iPhones now able to be linked (by wi-fi or cord) to data projectors and smart boards, these apps provide a great resource for some meaningful geographical learning.  This posting just showcases two recently launched apps that I have been using in my class and workshops over the past weeks. These two are just the 'tip of the iceberg' of geographical apps available for iPads and iPhones. Go to the App Store on you iPhone or iPod and download the apps - both are of these are free in their basic form.

 * The Social landscape app




Launched by a Melbourne app developer Blitzm in February 2014, Social Landscape is a fantastic local data visualisation app which provides quick and easy access to information about anywhere in Australia. By simply picking a location one can quickly explore the database of statistics to get a complete socio-economic picture of an area. The app is supported by a geospatial data platform that is highly scalable and capable of querying large volumes of geospatially organised data. The complete Social Landscape system allows statistical data to be queried and distributed efficiently so that is can be presented in a meaningful and effective way. Data from several reliable sources such as the Census from the Australian Bureau of Statistics is used by the app. The developer would love to hear data suggestions from users to gather future statistics to visualise on the app. The Social Landscape app is a really useful, easy to use resource for comparing data across space and from place to place in Australia.


* The QuakeFeed app
 

QuakeFeed has seven beautiful base maps, provided by Esri, showing plate boundaries and ocean floor topography for the real time earthquakes to be plotted. Quakefeed enables users to choose from either the 1-day, 7-day or 30-day USGS data feeds - variety of filter and sort options are also provided. The app is also location aware so you can find quakes that are closest to you. Push notifications are also free for M6+ worldwide quakes. You will receive an MSS any time of day - even during lessons - real time geography in the classroom!

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Thursday, December 12, 2013

Change over time visualisations




Image above: The Pinnacles in Western Australia. 


Where am I??  
Adelaide, Australia: S: 34º 55' E: 138º 36'
A visualisation of change over time

 The change concept of the Australian Curriculum: Geography can be brilliantly demonstrated by visualisation videos and Infographics showing change over time. Here are just  a few.

 * Visualisation of US expansion in North America from 1700 to 1900, seen through changes in the spatial distribution of post offices. The data from the USPS Postmaster Finder, with lat/long coordinates extracted from placenames through correlation with the USGS Geographic Names Information System.There is also an interactive version of this map.  More can be found at blog.dwtkns.com/2011/posted/ 

* Twitter World Tour


Many twitter users reply to their friends' tweets. When both the original tweet and the reply include location data, we can show the connections. The result is a depiction of the replies spanning the globe during one day. 

 * Watch the world get older

 The graph shows how, over the course of a century, Japan shifts from a nation where
children predominate to a nation of senior citizens.

*The power of visual representation

 A very interesting infographic using words to show change of focus with Presidential speeches.

 * Global Climate Change visualisation

 A video data visualisation showing the change in temperature across the world over the last 200+ years. It is based on the data released by the UK's Met Office in Dec 2009.


* Air Pollution Visualisation: Nitrogen Dioxide, London

This movie does not show change over time but is an interesting visualisation of N02 in London. Produced by University College, London in association with the Environmental Research Group at Kings College London.



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Thursday, May 16, 2013

Interactive visualisations to teach population



Image above: The age-sex pyramid for Australia.

Related links
Geogaction
Spatialworlds website
Australian Geography Teachers' Association website
'Towards a National Geography Curriculum' project website
Humsteach blog
GeogSplace blog

Follow Spatialworlds on Twitter

Email contact:
manning@chariot.net.au
 
Where am I??
Adelaide, Australia: S: 34º 55' E: 138º 36'


Three good visualisations of data.

Here are some great interactive and dynamic sites to teach the area of population and migration. These are really fantastic data visualisations, perfect for a creative geography classroom to help students see the diversity of our world in terms of underdeveloped, developing, developed countries.

* The migration flow
This interactive migration map allows you to see for every country in the world either the top ten providing countries of lifetime migrants or the top ten receiving countries of lifetime migrants. On top of that, when you let your mouse hover over a country, you can see the total population, the GDP per capita, the HIV and Tuberculosis prevalences and the death rate of children under five.




* Population pyramids 


This interactive site enables you to see the age-sex pyramids for every country in the world. A great resource for comparison across the globe and awareness of diversity in age-sex structures between countries. The pyramids raise many question as to why they are the shape they are.





* World population data interactive map from the Population Reference Bureau. This site provides excellent data updates in tabular form, as well as a user friendly interactive data map for every region and country in the world.



* CIA World Fact Book
Whilst this site is not a visualisation, it does provide plenty of world data that would support the above population visualisations.
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Friday, September 21, 2012

Look and learn!



Image above: 'Into the mist' at Melbourne Airport at 6am. Not the slogan for Qantas, I hope!



Related sites to the Spatialworlds project


Email contact


Where am I? 
Melbourne, Australia: S: 37º 47' E: 144º 58'


Some resources and visualisations for the Geography classroom

* Geography Collaborative Learning.  
This is a fantastic GeogWiki for the classroom, with videos and animations to help teach/learn about population and population structure
Water, geomorphology,   climate, weather and much more.  A useful site which will just grow and grow.





* Teachers Domain
 
A great site with many useful videos for geography (yes you need to register but so free and worthwhile!)
To view the Geospatial videos put in this URL when you have registered on the site.  Some excellent Geospatial and why do Geography and GIS videos.




* How Googlemakes it maps

An interesting insioght into how they make GoogleMaps.

* Global Closet Calculator

This newly released interactive feature allows students of all ages to see the global interconnections in their lives.   By analyzing the items in our closets (or any of the items that we consume), we can easily see that  our own personal geographies create a web of global interconnectedness.

* The 100 People Project: An Introduction

If the world were 100 people, who would we be? The 100 People Project attempts to paint a portrait of the world population through video, photography, and other educational media. We're asking the children of the world to introduce us to the people of the world. Help us make the world portrait!
* Crime mapping 

An example of a student at Rhode Island College learning some mappings skills and applying them to the local news.
* Electoral Geography
 A great example of the power of maps (GIS) to unravel election trends in the past and now. Very relevant as election news hots up in the US and Australia.

* The New World 2012

Interactive maps of the New World from the New York Times. 

* The State of Women in the World

An Inforgraphic highlighting the state of women in the world.

 * World population distribution and location

 These attractive infographics depict the distribution of the 2008 world's population based on longitude and latitude. Beautiful depictions of population density around the world.

Following cloud cover

Cloud Globe is an interactive Chrome Experiment visualizing over 2 years of Earth's cloud cover on a 3D globe. You will need to have Google Chrome installed

Political geography

Who is protesting where? A great real-time political geography site.


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Friday, April 27, 2012

What raw data just can't show: geographical visualisations


Japanese Tsunami wave height map


Visualisation of Facebook traffic
  







 
Related sites to the Spatialworlds project
Email contact
manning@chariot.net.au
Where am I??
Adelaide, Australia: S: 34º 55' E: 138º 36'

 

 Translating data to the visual

Here is yet another great blog on maps and spatial visualisations.  This time from James Cheshire Centre for Advanced Spatial Analysis, University College London and his blog is called Spatial Analysis.co.uk.  I must thank our geography colleague Bridget Fleming from South Africa for passing on this amazingly rich spatial blog.  Just enjoy and wonder at what the representation shows us that raw data never can.   

One of the really good things about many of these visualisations is their currency – of the latest phenomenon (Twitter, Facebook), events, disasters and daily commuting and happenings - all extremely relevant to the life’s of young people. Although very UK and to a lesser extent United States–centric, the maps are a great resource to get over the message about the power of visualisations to provide instant analysis.

Mapping British, Spanish and Dutch Shipping 1750-1800
The visualisation of a dataset which contains digitised information from the log books of ships (mostly from Britain, France, Spain and The Netherlands) sailing between 1750 and 1850.

Also have a look at the Map Gallery on the site and see fascinating maps of things such as the Twitter languages of London, travel distances on London Underground, Muslim populations by countries,


If you want to look at these maps and their background in more detail, the site provides that opportunity as shown below.

* Mapping rivers and places 
Brilliant maps of “generic” terms for rivers in the United States and UK. These map shows how different cultural and linguistic factors have influenced the naming of geographic. For example French settlers named the streams they encountered “bayous”.
On the topic of naming, settlement names also have a clear geography as they, like rivers in the US, reflect the different settlers (or invaders!) of the British Isles over millennia. The map below (taken from my thesis) shows the different naming influences on settlements in Britain.

*  UK Carbon emissions

* Roads marking landscapes

* Mapping events

* Britain from above
Amazing visualisations produced for the BBC’s Britain from Above series. The taxis in London create a fantastic impression of the diurnal rhythms within the city. The air traffic over Britain animation (below) is just as impressive. I was especially taken by the amount of “stacking” that takes place over British airports.

* Londons population density 1801-2001

* Visualisation of Britain’s surnames

* Sound maps

* Resource postings

* Best maps of 2011 according to the Spatial Analysis blog
. Facebook connections map
. Surnames maps
. Iphone tracker map in Cambridge
. Fedex map 
. Scientific collaboration map 
. Twitter language map
. Road casualties maps
. Japanese Tsunami wave height map
 
Two other links of interest on the Spatial Analysis site.
* How to do Geography 
* Geographical mistakes.

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