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The Challenge:

I want my students to explore their interests in science, formulate questions about those interests, then find and use data to answer their questions.  For example, a student may have an interest in protecting natural habitats from development.  They do Internet searches for basic information and explore websites that have data that they can extract and use.   The challenge is for the student to find usable data about natural habitats that can be visualized in different formats through charts, graphs, maps and tables.  There are numerous computer visualization applications that can assist a student in data presentation. The problem is there are too many to choose from, some are complicated, requiring a long learning time to use and also cost money. What to do?

 A Solution:

Finding a data source in a format that is conducive to data visualization is important. I suggest that students find data that is Excel or CSV format.  For example, for the student interested in natural habitats. 

1.       They can put this search term in Google (or ChatGPT), “Find data in Excel of Terrestrial Protected Areas in the World” Doing that the student would find Excel data from The World Bank (https://data.worldbank.org/indicator/ER.LND.PTLD.ZS). On the site they could find both CSV and Excel formatted data.

The student has the data, now what?

 Recently a professor friend of mine, who was helping my student introduced me to an AMAZING website, Datawrapper.  This site has all the ingredients to make a teacher, homeschooler and student very happy.  It is intuitive, easy and quick to learn, and it is free and fun.  Datawraper can make charts, maps and tables from the data that is inputted.  Under the Resources heading there are also tons of instructional information to help, if needed.

Here is how a student could proceed:

1.       Go to the website Datawrapper.

2.     Click on “Product” at the top of the page.

3.     The student can choose Charts (20 different graph types),  Maps (a large selection of base maps from a large geographic area) or Tables.  You can take the input data and display it in all three.

4.    Whichever presentation format is chosen the same action sequence is used.

5.    Upload data, Check & Describe, Visualize, Publish and Embed

6.    The student can upload the data by pasting it in a data table, uploading a CSV or Excel file, using Google sheets or an external data link.

7.     The student can edit and modify the chart, map or table and paste them into another file such a Word Document.

8.    A code can also be sent to the student’s email with the resulting visual representing the data they chose.

I was shocked at how easy this was to do and how beautiful the results came out and it took only about ten minutes to complete the to complete the task after following the intuitive prompts and instructions.

Resources:

https://data.worldbank.org/indicator/ER.LND.PTLD.ZS – World Bank Data Source

https://www.datawrapper.de/ - Datawrapper website