In a Nutshell

Data visualization is a blending of new capabilities in graphic design and computational power to create new ways of seeing patterns complex data sets. New research is beginning to apply data visualization tools to the social sciences and humanities as well as the sciences, and having students work with robust or light-weight tools is becoming an important digital literacy.

Tools

StatPlanet Map Maker 2.2 is an interactive mapping tool that can create interactive maps, graphs, and charts.
http://www.sacmeq.org/statplanet/

Sonogram 3.0 looks at sound spectrums and other technical aspects of speech.
http://www.christoph-lauer.de/Homepage/Sonogram.html

Swivel
http://www.swivel.com/

Many Eyes
http://manyeyes.alphaworks.ibm.com/manyeyes/

At Brandeis

Atlas Ti is a qualitative data analysis software purchased by Brandeis and used in several programs on campus. http://www.atlasti.com/

Books

Beautiful Data: The Stories Behind Elegant Data Solutions. By Toby Segaran and Jeff Hammerbacher. 2009. O’Reilly Media.

The Visual Display of Quantitative Information. By Edward Tufte. 2001. Graphics Press.

Envisioning Information. By Edward Tufte. 1990. Graphics Press.

Articles

Educause Horizon Report 2010 includes a section about Data Visualization,
http://wp.nmc.org/horizon2010/

Websites

General

http://www.wordle.net/
http://www.neoformix.com/
http://www.many-eyes.com/
http://code.google.com/apis/charttools/

(Moving) visualizations to check out

http://www.gapminder.org
http://vis.stanford.edu/protovis/ex/cars.html
http://sanfrancisco.crimespotting.org/
http://www.doodlebuzz.com/
http://projects.flowingdata.com/walmart/

Open-source

http://flare.prefuse.org/
http://www.axiis.org/
http://simile-widgets.org/
http://leebyron.com/else/streamgraph/
http://vis.stanford.edu/protovis/

9.3 ADDRESSING DIGITAL LITERACY BARRIERS TO BROADBAND ADOPTION AND UTILIZATION

Tasks that experienced users take for granted—using a mouse, navigating a website or creating a username and password—can be daunting for new or less experienced users of the Internet. As described earlier, 22% of non-adopters cite digital literacy as their main barrier to broadband adoption. This group includes people who are uncomfortable using computers and those “worried about all the bad things that can happen if [they] use the Internet.”

Digital literacy is an evolving concept. Though there is no standard definition, digital literacy generally refers to a variety of skills associated with using ICT to find, evaluate, create and communicate information. It is the sum of the technical skills and cognitive skills people employ to use computers to retrieve information, interpret what they find and judge the quality of that information. It also includes the ability to communicate and collaborate using the Internet—through blogs, self-published documents and presentations and collaborative social networking platforms. Digital literacy has different meanings at different stages of a person’s life. A fourth grader does not need the same skills or type of instruction as a 45-year-old trying to re-enter the job market. Digital literacy is a necessary life skill, much like the ability to read and write.

The recommendations in this section will help all Americans todevelop basic digital skills, lowering barriers to broadband adoption and utilization.

Recommendation 9.3: The federal government should launch a National Digital Literacy Program that creates a Digital Literacy Corps, increases the capacity of digital literacy partners and creates an Online Digital Literacy Portal.

• Congress should consider providing additional public funds to create a Digital Literacy Corps to conduct training and outreach in non-adopting communities.
• Congress, the Institute of Museum and Library Services (IMLS) and the Office of Management and Budget (OMB) should commit to increase the capacity of institutions that act as partners in building the digital literacy skills of people within local communities.
  • Congress should consider providing additional public funds to IMLS to improve connectivity, enhance hardware and train personnel of libraries and other community-based organizations (CBOs).
  • OMB consulting with IMLS should develop guidelines to ensure that librarians and CBOs have the training they need to help patrons use next-generation e-government applications.
• Congress should consider funding an Online Digital Literacy Portal.

And in Section 11:

• The U.S. Department of Education and other federal agencies should provide support and funding for research and development of online learning systems.
• The U.S. Department of Education should consider investment in open licensed and public domain software alongside traditionally licensed solutions for online learning solutions, while taking into account the long-term effects on the marketplace.
• The U.S. Department of Education should establish a program to fund the development of innovative broadband-enabled online learning solutions.
• State education systems should include digital literacy standards, curricula and assessments in their English Language Arts and other programs, as well as adopt online digital literacy and programs targeting STEM.
• The U.S. Department of Education should provide additional grant funding to help schools train teachers in digital literacy and programs targeting STEM. States should expand digital literacy requirements and training programs for teachers.

• Babylon, Rediscovered – Photos and reflections from Christoph Bangert of the New York Times. This slideshow was produced as a news piece, but its format -  using images from a location or on the field could be applied to fields such as archaeology, history or art.

• Chandra’s First Decade – A review of images from Chandra, an X-ray telescope by Darren Baskill, an astronomer at the University of Sussex.

• The Future of Markets -A summary of key points from the University of Chicago’s Business School 57th Annual Management conference.

• Semester at Sea – University students and facilitators in the Semester at Sea program reflect on their program experiences on the theme of “War & Peace.”

• Tracking Narwhals in Greenland – a slideshow of maps showing the movements of tagged Narwhals in Greenland.

http://news.cnet.com/8301-17939_109-10243139-2.html

How to Get

In order to use ebrary, you must download a proprietary reader onto your computer.
The proxied URL for the collection is: http://site.ebrary.com.resources.library.brandeis.edu/lib/brandeis It can also be accessed via Brandeis Scholar: http://scholar.brandeis.edu.

NOTE: The ebrary reader software is already installed on all public workstations in the library. If you are not on a public workstation in the library, you will need to download the ebrary reader software from the ebrary site in order to view the content in ebrary.

Firefox 3 users will need to download the plug-in using a separate link on the ebrary site.

Patrons with special accessibility needs should use the new ebrary beta reader, which has improved keyboard shortcuts and built-in text read out loud feature.

How-to

The ebrary site offers excellent training materials on their homepage:

ebrary Quickstart Training Video : http://ebrary.com.resources.library.brandeis.edu/corp/collateral/flash/QuickStart/

ebrary User Guide:
http://www.ebrary.com.resources.library.brandeis.edu/corp/collateral/en/User_Guide/ebrary_Patron_User_Guide.pdf

ebrary Quickstart Guide:
http://www.ebrary.com.resources.library.brandeis.edu/corp/collateral/en/Quick_Guides/007.01-quick_guideGeneric.pdf

Examples

Many other university libraries provide access to the ebrary E-book Collection. Locally, these include Wellesley College, Boston University, and Brown University among others.

Cost

The Brandeis University library has an annual subscription to the ebrary E-book Collection. The e-books are available to all faculty, staff and students at Brandeis.

Benefits

• Powerful full-text searching across the collection
• Advanced search features and ability to combine and limit searches by field, format and language
• Browsing for lists of e-books by subject categories
• 24/7/365 access from anywhere (for authorized Brandeis users)
• The ability to establish a Personal Bookshelf and save books or chapters with personal notes and highlighting
• Easy bookmarking of chapters or pages for direct linking
• Live links from page numbers in the index
• Addition of newly-published online books purchased by the library

Drawbacks

• Downloading the proprietary ebrary reader is not an intuitive process and is dependent on browsers and versions.
• Printing is limited to 40 pages at a time.
• Newly-published titles are not, for the most part, included in the large ebrary collection.

Tips and Tricks

Technical help in using ebrary can be found as part of the Brandeis e-resource help guide at: http://brandeis.libguides.com/content.php?pid=15734&sid=108376#box_497697

How it’s Used at Brandeis

The e-brary E-book Collection is used in a number of ways at Brandeis:

• To research material on a particular topic
• To see what material is available on a topic in order to refine or expand the topic
• To provide links to books or chapters for reserve reading
• To supplement our existing collection of print books
• As a platform for the library’s newly-purchased online books

Overview

The ebrary Academic Complete E-book Collection contains nearly 40,000 full-text electronic books from major academic publishers, university presses, and research centers. The growing collection covers topics in business, computer science, economics, education, engineering, history, the humanities, the life and physical sciences, and the social sciences. In addition to full-text search capabilities, ebrary provides a set of InfoTools for creating a personal reading list, highlighting text, and making annotations.

Contributors: Amira Aaron
Last Edited: 01/15/09

Summary

In this first-year seminar, students were introduced to plays by Sophocles, Aristophanes, Pedro Calderón de la Barca, Susan Glaspell, and Ariel Dorfman.  They were asked not only to research and write about the texts but also to study performances of several of them.  For one assignment, they were divided into groups and required to produce a short video of a scene from a work that they had not seen in performance.  Professor Fox wanted to give their imaginations free reign to dramatize a text they had studied.

Intended Learning Outcomes

One of Professor Fox’s goals was to help her students understand that there are as many different ways of looking at masterpieces of the stage as there are people to perform them.  She was gratified to find that each group had a unique way of interpreting the scene they selected for their video, and that they were able to speak confidently about the specific choices they made to bring it to life.

She also wanted to give her students, all of whom were in their first semester at Brandeis, an opportunity to work on a long-term project as part of a supportive group.  The pleasure that they all showed in presenting their work, and that they all took from watching each other perform, provided ample evidence that they had come to feel comfortable with each other.

Reflections and Lessons Learned

We held an instruction session for Professor Fox’s class that had two goals.  Darwin Scott and Lisa Zeidenberg presented a lesson on how to distinguish between a scholarly article about a play and a review of a performance, and where to look for both of them.  Mark Dellelo provided instruction on best practices for shooting and editing a video of a performance.

Professor Fox now feels that it may make more sense to have two sessions in the future—one still focused on research but at a slower pace, as the students had difficulty following it.  And she feels that the session on videography, which the students all found helpful, might be more effective if it were taught closer to the start of their video project.

The students were all extremely positive about the help they received in the library from the staff of the Getz Multimedia Lab, which they depended on heavily in preparing their videos.

Contributors: Dian Fox, Mark Dellelo
Last Updated: 01/15/2009

Overview

Students in Alison Bass’ Digital and Multimedia Journalism course explore how the practice of journalism is shaped by new media and the ever-changing landscape of information technologies. They learn how to use different media platforms to tell stories through writing assignments as well as creating blogs, podcasts and slide shows. Students in this course also examine the political, sociological, legal and ethical issues raised by the Internet and explore how new media technologies are reshaping our culture.

As part of their coursework, each student creates a blog, addressing the question of whether or not blogs constitute original journalism. Other assignments include learning how to fact-check via the Internet, tap into the vast government databases available online, interview a person who has been in the news and write a profile of that person, recording the interviews on digital audio recorders. The students are also assigned to cover a news event, take pictures and then write a news story about the event. Their final assignment is to either edit and post podcasts of their interviews or put together an online slide show of the news events they covered, using digital audio and podcasting tools. The students are also given a taste of basic HTML and introduced to Dreamweaver software.

LTS Staff Sarah Walkowiak, Mark Dellelo and the staff of the Getz multimedia lab supported student use of digital audio software and hardware tools. Additional information resources, office hours and help were provided as needed.

From Alison’s Perspective

Many of the students in this course said they enjoyed the multi-media exercises as well as the training in how to write news stories and profiles. Several students in the course are continuing to post blogs on a regular basis. A number are also experimenting with Twitter and other new media technologies to cover stories and communicate with other journalists.

With the help of the LTS lab, most of the students had no trouble picking up the technology tools they needed to write a blog, or make a podcast and/or slideshow for Web. They are naturals when it comes to new media technologies. Where the students needed the most guidance was in learning how to write a news story and a feature profile. For future courses, I will be requiring first drafts and rewrites of all written assignments in an effort to help them master the craft of news and feature writing.

Contributors: Alison Bass, Sarah Walkowiak
Last Updated: 01/15/2009

In a Nutshell

Micro-blogging is a brief, intermittent form of text-based social networking.  Participants use computers and mobile devices to post very brief sentences of 140-160 characters (the size of a cellphone text-message) generally describing what they are doing or thinking.  Most participants also follow multiple fellow bloggers, so when logging in, they quickly read multiple updates from their community and in turn post their own update. This page contains information on microblogging and how it might be used for teaching and learning.

How it Impacts Teaching and Learning

Micro-blogging provides a kind of group learning experience that might translate to a classroom or group project that might benefit from collective intelligence; a group of students comparing brief notes on shared research; a class sharing questions on a given topic or lecture.  Other uses might be group writing or brainstorming projects.  Although micro-blogging is possible from a computer; it seems most effective when using a mobile device, and finding a classroom of mobile device users is a limitation.

Tools

• Twitter

Websites

Twitter for Academia.  Academhack.
http://academhack.outsidethetext.com/home/2008/twitter-for-academia/

Seven Things you Should Know about Twitter.  Educause Learning Initiative.  July 2007.
http://connect.educause.edu/Library/ELI/7ThingsYouShouldKnowAbout/44762

Matt Ratchel.  Introducting the Twiller.  New York Times.  August 29, 2008.
http://bits.blogs.nytimes.com/2008/08/29/introducing-the-twiller/

Pedablogy: Using Twitter to Support Teaching & Learning.
http://jerryslezak.net/pedablogy/?p=578

• Blogs
• Collaborative Writing

Contributors: David Wedaman, Sarah Walkowiak
Last Updated: 01/12/09