Interacting with maps to learn about ...

Image above: The statsilk interactive thematic map.

Related links to Spatialworlds
GeogSplace (a teaching blog for Year 12 geography)
Geogaction (geography professional learning blog)
Spatialworlds website
GeogSpace
Australian Geography Teachers' Association website

Geographical thinking Scoop.it

Spatial literacy Scoop.it

History and geography Scoop.it

Spatial Education and technology Scoop.it
Just real interesting Scoop.it

Follow Spatialworlds on Twitter

Email contact:

manning@chariot.net.au


http://www.statsilk.com/software/statplanet

Visual interaction with data - thematic maps galore

Following on from recent posting about data visualisation, it is worth having a look at the Statsilk site. The site offers a download of the StatPlanet software, a free application for creating fully customisable interactive maps. StatPlanet can be used to visualize location-based statistical data, such as life expectancy by country or demographic statistics and voting patterns by US state. In addition to maps, StatPlanet also has the option of including interactive graphs and charts to create feature-rich interactive infographics. StatPlanet can be downloaded as a desktop application and used as free educational software. The free download comes with up-to-date world statistics in a wide range of categories and includes a world map (country level) and a US map (state level) - with a limit of 5 indicators.

 If interested, you can pay to upgrade to StatPlanet Plus, an advanced version of StatPlanet which supports map importing (such as shapefile maps), has no data limit, and includes many more powerful features and customisation options. This purchased program will enable you to build your own interactive world, country or regional maps

Check out Statworld on Statsilk

Most useful for the geography classroom is the free Statworld platform on the site that uses open data to create interactive thematic maps. This section of the website provides hundreds of free interactive thematic maps. For example, the map below shows car theft across the world in map an graph form.

Click here to view the categorized list of all interactive maps in StatWorld

Statsilk also has a range of customised maps for free use.

Video support

Very useful YouTube videos on using the Statsilk site are to be found at:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OZO01or2Lcw
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gjP4yW_tuDQ

The EduTube on Statsilk is also worth a look to help you make up your mind on its application and potential in the classroom.

Visualising: at the heart of geographical representation

 Image above: An animated map of global wind and weather.

Related links to Spatialworlds
GeogSplace (a teaching blog for Year 12 geography)
Geogaction
Spatialworlds website
GeogSpace
Australian Geography Teachers' Association website

Geographical thinking Scoop.it

Spatial literacy Scoop.it

History and geography Scoop.it

Spatial Education and technology Scoop.it
Just real interesting Scoop.it

Follow Spatialworlds on Twitter

Email contact:

manning@chariot.net.au

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

 
 Visualisations of interest

This posting is another opportunity to show some great visualisations to enhance student understanding and stimulate discussion on spatial technology. As mentioned on previous postings, an important skills of geography are visual and spatial literacy. Geographers love turning spatial data, statistics and information into visuals to make uncluttered sense of geographical happenings and phenomena. We are a very visual discipline - not only about the creation of visualisations such as graphs and maps but most importantly the interpretation and analysis of such representations. In the Australian Curriculum: Geography such skills are an important part of the Inquiry process i.e.

Inquiry Stage 2: Collecting, recording, evaluating and representing data

Inquiry Stage 3: Interpreting, analysing and concluding
   
Only by such interpretation and analysis of visualisations can geographers be problem solvers and decision makers based on geographical information and evidence.

Here are some sites to support this thinking:

* Mapping Ebola

Excellent case study on mapping Ebola to solve the developing problem. The website is the world’s leading source of reliable and authoritative news, views and analysis on information about science and technology for global development. Here is another interactive site mapping the distribution of Ebola.

* GIS practitioners are volunteering time to map. 
This site also has a nice pdf/digital presentation to use in class.

* Spatial comparison site
 A great site to show spatial comparisons between countries.

* Map fight: This simple WebApp allows the user to compare areas that are hard to compare on a map or globe because of distance or the map projection. This site helps strengthen student's mental maps and their ability to make regional comparisons. 

* When Google Earth gets it wrong
 Amazing distortions shown on Google Earth. 

* A powerful visualisation of world population
 A dot for every person on Earth - growing in front of your eyes.

* Animated map of global wind and weather
 Seen in this visualisation are the dual menaces, Cyclone Hudhud and Typhoon Vongfong (as seen from ISS). This visualisation of global weather conditions is updated every three hours from supercomputer data projections.  Click on the 'earth' text in the lower left-hand corner to customize the display.  For examining the wind patterns and oceans currents, this is much more useful than Google Earth.

Being visual - graphicacy

 Image above: Amazing maps

Related links to Spatialworlds 
Geogaction
Spatialworlds website
GeogSpace
Australian Geography Teachers' Association website

Geographical thinking Scoop.it  

Spatial literacy Scoop.it  

History and geography Scoop.it 

Spatial Education and technology Scoop.it   
Just real interesting Scoop.it

Follow Spatialworlds on Twitter

Email contact:

manning@chariot.net.au    

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


The art of visualising data

This posting is dedicated to the capacity of spatial technology to visualise data - the graphicacy skill/art of geography using modern technology. 
 
"Graphicacy is concerned with the capacities people require in order to interpret and generate information in the form of graphics. Our society is becoming increasingly reliant on graphics to communicate information. Until recently, words and numbers were the main vehicles for communication – compared with graphics, they have long been relatively easy to produce and distribute. However, advances in information and communications technology and visualisation techniques now mean that graphics are far more readily available and more widely used than ever before." 

 Here is an interesting YouTube on Graphicacy, tied in with literacy and numeracy.

To illustrate graphicacy, here are some great examples from my Spatial Literacy Scoop.it

* An interactive representation of the urban world

An Urban World: UNICEF's new data visualization of urban population growth over the next 40 years. This graphic depicts countries and territories with 2050 urban populations exceeding 100,000. Circles are scaled in proportion to urban population size. Hover over a country to see how urban it is (percentage of people living in cities and towns) and the size of its urban population (in millions).

* Population pyramids: Powerful predictors ofthe future 

Population statistics are like crystal balls -- when examined closely, they can help predict a country's future (and give important clues about the past). Kim Preshoff explains how using a visual tool called a population pyramid helps policymakers and social scientists make sense of the statistics, using three different countries' pyramids as examples.

* World Interactive map

Interactive Map of the World, through a flash based Map Viewer application which provides a bird's eye view of every country in the world. It provides country facts such as population, area, GDP, time zone etc.

* Visualisation of world migration

To illustrate the network of globe-trotting journeys, Abel and Sander generated the above fantastic graphic for 2005 to 2010. Migration flows for different world regions are shown as color-coded arcs, with lines that begin close to the circle's edge depicting outgoing migrations (as shown with the arrows for "Central America"). Fatter arcs represent larger migrations and the numbered tick marks indicate how many millions of people are involved

* Someone’s best maps of 2013

"Some beautiful, information-dense cartography, which provide a moment of self-reflection like a giant, geographic mirror.”  Seth Dixon

* When people try to draw the world

People get the general shape of the world when the draw a map of the world from memory.

* Amazing maps

Maps after maps, some quirky some just plain interesting and useful.

Spatial sharing

Image above: Incredibly mesmerizing animated GIF is what the Internet looks like.

You are looking at, more or less, a portrait of the Internet over an average 24 hours in 2012. Higher usage is in yellows and reds; lower in greens and blues - as day and night passes across.

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'


You think you have seen something 'speccie', what about ... ?



The sharing culture is alive and well in the world of geographers interested in the spatial and beyond. I continue to be amazed by the number of ‘things’ spatial which continue to turn up on the Internet on a daily basis. Every time I think I must have exhausted the treasure chest of maps, visualisations and geographically interesting ‘bits and pieces’, someone says, "have you seen ...". Sure enough it is a treasure that I have not seen and am rather excited to see. This sense of sharing (I will show you mine if ...) takes me back to the days of stamp collecting when we were young, when we swapped something treasured for something even better! It seems to be repeatedly happening to me as I pass on some great sites only to have other fantastic sites passed back in reciprocation. Like a chain letter, the people who harvest the site from me via my blogs and the GTASA website newsletter 'spam' (which I have harvested via colleagues, Google Groups, Twitter, Scoop.It and blogs), then pass them on to others and it continues until the community of geographers around the world have shared. Then it starts all over again tomorrow as another site is sent out into cyberspace to share. I thought in this posting I would put up some of the beaut sites that I have come across lately, that I know have had a life with others who have then used them in their teaching and passed them on to others. So here are some of my recent favourites.

 Great visualisations

* Incredibly mesmerizing animated GIF of what the Internet looks like

You are looking at, more or less, a portrait of the Internet over an average 24 hours in 2012—higher usage in yellows and reds; lower in greens and blues—created by an anonymous researcher for the "Internet Census 2012" project.

* Global Pop pyramids

Interactive Visualization of the Population Pyramids of the World from 1950 to 2050.

* Demographic transition model in Prezi

Prezi in an online alternative to powerpoint for displaying notes and lecture materials (noted for it's ability to see the whole picture, zoom in and it's rotating animations).  Prezi is free for educators and the presentations you made can be kept private or made public.  This Prezi outlines the 4 stages of the Demographic Transition Model, with historical and spatial context

 ... and from the master of visualisations, Hans Rosling 

* Data visualisation with Hans Rosling

 * Hans Roslingon World Population

Interesting maps of ... for ... ?

* Finding a plane (and ships)

Amazing tracking site using spatial technologies.

* A study of Women’s rights using spatial technology

analyze the spatial and temporal patterns of the expansion of women's political rights.  This interactive map is excellent for seeing these few metrics, but a more expanded dataset with maps concerning gender (in)equality in the world and the status of women is WomanStats.  http://womanstats.org/

* Women statsmaps

The WomanStats Project is the most comprehensive compilation of information on the status of women in the world. The Project facilitates understanding the linkage between the situation of women and the security of nation-states. We comb the extant literature and conduct expert interviews to find qualitative and quantitative information on over 310 indicators of women's status in 174 countries. Our Database expands daily, and access to it is free of charge

* Turning Facebook into a map lesson

Most students have Facebook accounts...what is geographic distribution of their networks? What explains these patterns? Looking at personal life histories and geographies would be an easy way to make spatial analysis intensely personal and relevant.  They are on social media; they just need to be prodded to start using it for intellectual pursuits as well

Go to the Get Friend map app

 

* Systems of Government by country
 

* A surprising map of the countries that are most and least welcoming to foreigners    Can we see any patterns? Is there a correlation between unfriendliness to foreigners and nationalism.

* Mothers Day Dates around the world

 A map that show Mother's Day celebration dates around the world. The Mother's Day is celebrated on various days in many parts of the world, most commonly in May, though also celebrated in March in some countries, as a day to honour mothers and motherhood.