Thursday, February 2, 2012
Data Visualization
What did you think of the video? What was striking? Interesting? Eye-opening? What type of impact did this video have on you
How did this video affect you as a learner? How did this video affect you as a teacher?
We are trying to re-hone our view of science towards story-telling, a concept aimed at “softening” and making the process of science more accessible. How does story-telling hook into “The Beauty of Data Visualization”? Can you give some specific examples of how his use of visualization enhances story-telling using data?
This is a bit of a jump – can you see connections between his work and our very simple investigations on burning candles? Think about how you presented your information and some of the presentations that other people made.
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The video was very intertaining to say the least but at the same time very informational. Through data as teachers we can find new and better ways of teaching, what children respond to at different ages in the school systems. Data shouldn't just the looked at in the big spectrum but also in the more minor areas of education like do children respond to the weather, or maybe aven color in the classroom. Through Data you can tell "stories" by underlining the causes and effects in the changes in data. A big "story" presented through data in schools is the marrital status of the childrens parents. The part of the video that I can relate to most with our candles is the senses graph and data because it is very true. My group is using mostly our sight to see the effect on the candle.
ReplyDeleteI really enjoyed the video, it made me think in a way that I have never done before. I look at graphs and take them for face value, but I don't take into account other things that should be factored in before evaluating something. I am a very visual learner and can comprehend things better if I can look at it. This video with all of the visuals was so profound and interesting to me. It really makes me think about how I will present information in my classroom. Being that I am still a students I like when difficult information is presented in multiple ways to me. As a teacher I have had trouple with how to present information in a visual way that presents all of the important data. This video really got me thinking about how I can use technology to present data and got me more aware of the facts that I need to input into the visuals, and to better explain the visuals. I think that "The Beauty of Data Visualization" is that it becomes real to the viewer. An example of story telling in science that I can think of mitosis. Well with the burning candles investigation I can see how to document things in a powerful visual way. By using prezi you can accomplish a visual presentaion that tells the story of the journey the candle went through in order to accomplish my task of having the candle travel from one end of the room to the other.
ReplyDeleteI thought this video had a good perspective on the way we view information. It showed the importance of researching data and statistics before you come to conclusions. The video was striking in that it showed the way the meaning of information can change when other information is provided, like with the army examples. providing population and budget information about the total country really showed how dedicated each country was to its own military force. This video impacted the way I will see information that is presented to me. I will know that one statistic may not be as it seems and that other research can be used to show its true meaning. As a learner I will pay better attention to how information is presented and make sure that I understand what statistics are actually saying. As a teacher, I will try not to give misleading information to others and provide background info so that the statistics actually mean something when I share them.
ReplyDeleteStory-telling scientific information allows for more of a background in the information and makes it easier for processing, especially with the visual aids to go along with the message. Like the graph of different fears and when people experienced them allowed for great comparison of information. With regard to the candle experiment, this video showed the benefits that can come from the way you present information. using visual aids and following a story timeline can aid the teacher and the learner with the information being presented.
I thought this video was very entertaining and informative. His presentation was very interesting because he did his research; he worked for a long time trying to gather all this data to support his information. This video made me think about how much we actually use all our senses.
ReplyDeleteAs a learner, this presentation got me thinking about sight and patterns. There are patters in everything we see and most of the time we don’t “see” them. Our unconscious mind sees them but we are not aware of what we see. As a teacher, this video makes me want to teach how to see past our unconscious mind and see the patterns we are missing.
The story-telling hooks us into “The Beauty of Data Visualization” because story-telling is entertaining and fun. Sometimes data can be boring; however, if it’s given in a fun entertaining way, we pay much more attention and remember more of what we learned. His data was given in entertaining ways which kept my attention with his colorful charts and his examples were things that I could relate to.
I think the connection between his work and our burning candles is that there is a fun way to present information. Candles can be boring and simple, but if the information is given in an entertaining and informative way, people can take more from it and learn more.
I thought the video is very interesting. The interesting part is how you can use a graph to tell a story and give evidence and creditably to what you are saying. What was very interesting is how a graph can depending how you look at things like it was about military and the wealth of each country. As a learner it affected me in the way that I was able to believe him more because he had evidence in this case very good graphs, and as a teacher it affected me in the way that in able to prove points I have to have some form of good evidence to gain creditably from the students and give them something visual to learn from. "The Beauty of Data Visualization" is a better way to tell a story because you are backing up everything you say with evidence in a visual way. A way you can use this method is like when you are explaining the changes in weather in each month. Both visual data can be a "so what" kind of thing as well as the candles they don't seem important but, with some interesting information with visual data and the candles connected it can make and entertaining and interesting presentation.
ReplyDeleteI thought this video was very interesting and brought a new perspective of how information can be presented and understood. It makes you think about how we present data and how data is presented to us. It provided a better understanding as to what information means not just by reading it or having it taught but visualizing it. As a learner having information presented visually can help not only understand but gain more insight as to what is being presented. Although the information that is given visually is only presented in a small amount and not giving background details, you can still understand what the data in graphs represent and what they are trying to convey. As a teacher, it made me think about how I could present certain information to students. Younger students do learn and understand information visually so providing them with something to visualize will be helpful to them. Also having them read and interpret data at a young age can be helpful to them in the future. In this video he provided a lot of information in just one graph. Him showing which country spends the most on its military and then changing it by saying which country has the most soldiers is giving two different ideas but about the same topic. You can present information differently but still understand it visually. For our own experiments with the candles, we can now present our information in a way that people can understand it by just looking at the data we would present instead of telling them a bunch of information they may not understand or be interested in.
ReplyDeleteI really enjoyed the video, it was extremely interesting and reminded me of freakenonomics, like looking at things with a different perspective and looking at odd patterns that occur. It effected me as a teacher because its a way of looking at data and exploring the data for more than just plain facts. Its brings light onto how to deal with the issues you are presented with and what is the root of the issue. As a learner this video affected me because its just a new fresh look on data and the evidence he had to back him up was really good and made the strange information more believable. -Aubry Styka
ReplyDeleteI thought it was a really good video. The thing I found was when he broke down the sizes of armies. The most interesting part was the facebook break-up chart. Also the break down of the war expenditures and the sizes of the army was very eye-opening. It effected me as a learner because it was about more relevant items than what we usually learn. It effected me as a teacher because now I can find more interesting ways and newer ways of presenting data and newer data that is more relevant to what is happening in the world today and to what students are more willing to learn. With data you can tell stories that explain changes and why things change and that is how it hooks into the "Beauty of Data Visualization." The part about Columbine is an example. The part of the video that relates to my groups candle project is the senses chart. Our group is relying on mostly sight to complete our project.
ReplyDeleteI really enjoyed the video, as a visual learner myself I found it very easy to pay attention to it to say the least! In a digital age we are exposed to so much sight because of computers, phones, and other technology, and the information we receive is so much at one time. The video was sort of eye opening, although I felt like I knew some of this already, learning is definitely geared into a visual way. As a learner I felt the same way because I know how I learn and I learn in a visual aspect better than any other way, I am not entirely sure if that is connected to how I grew up with technology, but it could definitely be a contributing factor. As a teacher I want to incorporate all types of learning styles so that children can benefit from instruction in the way their own mind works. Of course as a visual person I would expect my own teaching to be more visual than most other teaching. I like the idea of of making science more accessible, because science plays such a big role in education and society, making it accessible seems only natural. If we take a picture book for example it presents information with pictures so you get a visualization. If you take that same information without pictures, it could be boring. If we apply visualization to data we have now we would probably have a better chance at understanding it. By using our prezis in a later class we will have a chance at using a visual based learning to teach our peers on our experiments by using visualization.
ReplyDeleteThe video was interesting because it gave interesting information about data that could typically be dull and/or less appealing to visual learners. Like stated in the video people can relate and follow when a presentation or source of information is giving colors, blocks and pictures. You tend to take more out of a presentation when you follow along and tend to understand the information given. You start to accept the ideas better because you remember them through the visualization of information. If you were to read this same presentation many things won't pop out to you and or you will not get the full effect or total information given. Many students love to skim and get "quick" information for what they are to do. Through pictures, graphs and other visual techniques a lot of information can be given in a single picture.
ReplyDeleteThis enables the audience to gather more information with less "work". The main thing is to engage your audience to turn attention to what is happening in a particular presentation. Personally I think we start grammar school as visual learners; colors, shapes and picture to help us learn certain "things". Then we are supposed to shift into a more dull or old fashion way of learning through loads of information and just plain words. If we want to compete with TV, video games or other visual activities schooling as to adjust and give all this information through visuals.
At first the video was a bit bland but once he started with the visuals I really got into it. I really liked the idea of taking information and making it appealing to sight because I am a visual person as well and I find that I pay so much more attention and will get more engaged if I like what I'm looking at. I also found it interesting that he talked about digging deeper into the bigger picture and including many small factors into one big factor like military strength for example. As a learner this video kept me engaged and I actually enjoyed looking at his findings. As a teacher I think it was a good demonstration to keep me reminded that many children learn best when the activities are engaging and visually appealing. Story telling is a great method, especially for those who are not particularly fond of science. The stories come into play as he digs deeper into individual concepts and picking them apart to find more interesting patterns. The facebook status story is an example. What first looked like a boring graph turned into being a story of relationship status throughout the year. It was very entertaining, presented real data, and was pretty relatable if you pay attention to your friends statuses on facebook. This video was relevant to our candle lab because we started initially with "Does the candle burn." We asked questions and then formed the story of how does it burn, when does it burn, do different thing affect it's burn time, do the flames change color or temperature? Overall, this video was great and for once I actually paid attention to the data because it was so visual!
ReplyDeleteJoi Rhodes
ReplyDeleteI thought the video was an eye opener for how much our world is changing from when I was a child. In the video, data was collected in figuring out what ideas were worth spreading. They found this information by collecting 10,000 Facebook statuses. This was shocked me at first but then I realized how much I, myself, post topics on Facebook and how many other posts I read in one day. With this information one would wonder what information could be collected from all the random posts, but it was interesting how they figured what the most popular topics on Facebook are. What I also found interesting was the dent Africa was in, a whole $227-billion dollars. I wondered how they came up with this number and why is Africa in so much debt. As we all know, Africa has a lot of poverty and people who live beneath the poverty, and many people outside of Africa go there and build, trying to restore the country. When people come there, are they all just apart of community groups or are they sent by different countries. If they are sent by various countries, why would Africa be expected to pay them back? As a learner this affected me by teaching me something different, learning to not overlook anything because it could be used for collecting information. As a teacher this showed me different teaching styles I could use to promote learning for all students. This video can relate to my group project in a major way. In the video the five senses were compared to computer terms, and sight was the fastest sense having the same bandwidth as a computer network. For our project we used sight for the most part, but we also used feel to turn our opinions into facts when noticing change in form for each candle.
This video presented the ideas and perspective of the speaker in an organized fashion. The speaker related to his audience and was able to communicate effectively. David Candles held my attention and made his arguments using 'Data Visualization', interesting. While I did not agree with some of his data, he did make a good point about how data is interpreted and understood. Considering all aspects of this video David did give me some interesting ideas about data sets. This video impacted my understanding of critical thinking. Learning information requires critical thinking to challenge and learn about what your seeing through questioning your data. I think this is Davids underlining point. Teachers should not just commit students to memorization of data but allow them to challenge the meaning behind the data. Data can change when looking at different criteria. Take inflation for example, the data used to calculate inflation can be misleading. The key indicators used in this calculation do not include commodities most influenced by inflation such as fuel and food. Data visualization worked in my group project with the candles. The spectra of the candles varied and allowed some insight into what we were looking at. This can only be done with Data Visualization. My last commit on this video is that Data Visualization works to hold the attention of your audience. The average person has an attention span of only seven seconds, which means in a one minute speech you have seven seconds to get your point across. With Data Visualization I could make the argument that is is significantly increased.
ReplyDeleteThough the speaker is right about visually engaging subjects, I had a hard time getting into this video. I feel that the only point he really touched on was the ability to engage students in data visualization in a class room. I suppose that he had a point, but I don't know that I would use data in the method that the speaker did. I feel that there are uses for which data visualiazation can be used, very well in fact. But in general, the best use of the data is when viewing things that will be very interesting to a classroom. Probably his most interesting points were about breakups and media "scares". I think that the speaker should ajdust his speeches to be more comical to interest the audience. He could also adjust his graphs and data to be even more colorful. I just could not get into the video and if I couldnt, I don't think a child would be interested in the data visualization or in the speech.
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