Category Archives: data visualization

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Fun With Digital Signage

  October 26, 2014 , ,

Hey all! Just wanted to give a quick update on what we’re doing with digital signage. In addition to trying out the iPad portal idea–we’re looking into making LeapMotion controllable screens where students can interact with 3d scanned objects from the MARTA collection housed in the Anthropology Department. It’s a little rough at the moment–but through Unity I’ve built a test run that’s working pretty well. Two hands enter the screen to manipulate the object with realistic physics. We’re using a 1920s whiskey jug at the moment–luckily I can’t break it in the virtual world, because I’ve dropped it multiple times. Using the LeapMotion is a bit of a skill in itself–albeit fun to learn. Later this coming week I’ll give more detail and some screenshots of a more finalized version! -Robert

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BatchGeo: a simple tool for visualizing point data

  October 26, 2014 , ,

I would like to begin a series of “Maps for the Classroom: How To” blog posts that will share with readers different tips, trips, and tools that educators can use with little to no training to visualize spatial data. The first tool I would like to highlight is called BatchGeo. In CURVE this week, we had a student who came in and wanted to learn more about how to bring a spreadsheet of addresses into the ArcGIS environment. Well, as is not unusual for ArcMap, we ran into challenges when the geocode address tool kept giving us an error message. But never fear! BatchGeo is here! BatchGeo is a website that generates point based maps from Excel spreadsheets.  Let me provide a little overview of the workflow this site: First thing to do is organize your spreadsheet in a way that allows BatchGeo to “talk” to the information.  I suggest making column headers such as “Address” ,”City” ,”State” and “Zip Code”. You can also add additional information (some examples may be the name of the location or contact information for a business you’re representing)-this information will be displayed whenever you click on that location on your soon to be created map. When you’ve finished organizing all your information-all you have to do is copy and paste your spreadsheet into the box at the top of BatchGeo’s webpage.  Then hit the “Validate & Set Options” button.    BatchGeo typically is able to automatically detect which column is which, but to make … Continue reading

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Where is the big picture?

  October 23, 2014 ,

I have been working as a SIF for about 2 months, I am excited about the projects that I am working on. Here is a status update regards what is happening to our main project and how things are shaping up. Project 1 Online Deliberation Mapping Tool Development This is our primary project. We had a design sprint meeting for the project, the participants were Heidi, Will, Justin, Nathan and the usual suspects Ram, Siva, Rushitha and Sruthi. The design sprint involves the following stages : – Understanding the problem Creating user stories Diverging of ideas Understanding the problem involves mapping the problem and the issues thereof. Here we discussed asynchronous spaces wherein there is lack of feel of shared experience, flow of conversations, development of ideas and their inter-dependencies. Most often in online spaces, the big picture is difficult to find and making the user not see the wood for the trees. This understanding of the problem at hand helped us define our goals for a space for asynchronous generative conversations. Participation is motivated by shared purpose, so the tool has to support formation and deliberation for a shared goal or purpose like solving or defining a problem, making a decision and to develop shared understanding. All these goals were defined from a pedagogical perspective. Possible solutions regarding the tool were discussed. User stories from the perspectives of instructor, early contributors, mediators and late contributors were discussed. With these broad use case scenarios, we proceeded to the next step. Diverging … Continue reading

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Data Visualization in the Modern Browser

  October 20, 2014

Hello all, got some good stuff to talk about this post. My ThreeJS stuff is hitting off the roof now with more and more projects coming in from a lot of different places. So much in fact I can’t process it all. So I have decided to spearhead renewed energy into all this ThreeJS stuff. Originally, my plan was to add to it gradually, but I see that time is of essence to get my point across. Well, enough about me. It’s time for you guys to see what I’m doing. First of all, I have been researching a lot of the potentials of ThreeJs and WebGL in general. WebGL is the standard of graphics in the browser. It’s the flip side of OpenGL, which is a larger library with more potential, especially for phones. Anyways, I’ve been looking at a lot of Google Talks and research stuff, which was all kind of exciting, but I could have done with a paper I could browse in 5 minutes vs a 20 minute video. Anyways, I looked at this thing called ROME made with a lot of people and some Google employees. It’s a movie that interprets a lot of content in just a browser. Pretty amazing interactive music video. Click here to see it. Awesome visualization through shaders in WebGL as well as a little pick up from ThreeJS Cool stuff. Also, I looked at a lot of cool data visualizations using just simple JS to make graphs and charts: Polis is … Continue reading

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Deliberate and Develop

  October 16, 2014 , ,

This week at SIF has been a brainstorming week. Everyone in the team has been putting lots of thoughts into the development of the Deliberation Mapping tool.The major discussion has been about the functionality of the Deliberation tool. We are planning to develop the tool in such a way that it is scalable and expandable.The application has so far been developed using Javascript for the client side programming. We have also planned to develop it by using PHP and mysql in the back end. However, considering the complexity of the application, we are now considering to migrate the code to ASP.Net and MS SQL Server. We are now checking for the feasibility of the migration. ASP.NET is used to create web technologies and is an integral part of Microsoft’s .NET framework vision.It allows us to build compelling web applications by making use of Visual Studio. We have also been informed that the Deliberation mapping tool will be integrated into the Desire to Learn system of GSU. So, we need to make sure that there would be no problems during integration and possible upgradation. We are yet to get the information regarding the desire to learn back-end system. There are a couple of meetings scheduled in the next few weeks to discuss about the possible integration and also finalize the design functionality. So, probably by the end of this month we will be finalizing the design and start the development of the application. Siva Kondeti