Data Visualization
"Infographic thinking." This isn’t just "how to make some numbers and
vector graphics look clever together." It’s a narrative language--it’s
"representation plus interpretation to develop an idea,"
Francesco Franchi
David McCandless: The beauty of data visualization
Articles
- Lesson Example with a listing of tools and data sources
- Data Visualized: More on Teaching With Infographics
- Visualizing Information for Advocacy: An Introduction to Information Design
- Teaching with Infographics: Where to Start video
- Anatomy of an Infographic: 5 steps to create a powerful visual
- Teaching With Infographics | Science and Health
- Teaching With Infographics | Language Arts, Fine Arts and Entertainment
- Teaching With Infographics | Social Studies, History, and Economics
- 5 Rules for Researching Data
- Teaching with Infographics: A Student Project Model - The ten worst man-made disasters in U.S. history a good model to use for other topics also.
- 10 Tips for Designing Infographics
- How to Create Outstanding Modern Infographics (high school and higher ed.)
- Tutorial: Create Cool Infographics (high school and higher ed.)
Infographics aren’t like Powerpoint presentations -- they don’t have to be one-dimensional. In the hands of a Fathom or a Felton, even a static infographic can feel immersive and interactive because of the way it offers multiple paths for discovering stories. John Pavlus
- Start using infographics in your teaching (exposing students to examples of infographics). This also fits great with UDL and multiple means of representation…
- Give students data related to a concept they are learning and have them practice determining what is the most important point of the data. What is the data telling you? What would be the main question it is answering?
- Select an easy tool that they already use the first time they are asked to create an infographic. Remember the tool doesn’t matter, it is the learning and with infographics it just needs to be a tool that allows students to create a graphical representation using images and text. Start with a tool they know, then branch out.
- Critique: don’t forget to have students critique infographics from the web and their peers. What makes the great ones great? What could be added or modified with ones that are hard to follow? Teaching students to critique respectfully allows everyone to improve their craft.
Data Sources
- DataMarket – Find and understand data.
- Our World in Data - Resource Link - Over 3,000 charts on topics including poverty, disease, hunger, climate change, war, existential risks, inequality, and more, with supporting research, data, and conclusions.
- Google Public Data - Filter and animate data sets from around the world.
- Google Dataset Search - Dataset Search is a search engine for datasets. Using a simple keyword search, users can discover almost 25 million datasets hosted in thousands of repositories across the Web, on nearly any subject that interests you.
- Currated List of Data Sources
Create Your Own USGS Maps Besides the galleries of free to use and re-use media that the USGS hosts. The USGS National Map Viewer. is more than just a place to look at a map. The USGS National Map Viewer lets you choose from a huge library of datasets to display on a map. You can view the source information for each dataset. Additionally, you can choose the base map on which the datasets are displayed. If that's not enough to get you to try the USGS National Map Viewer, I should also tell you that you can draw on the maps, measure on the maps, and print your customized map displays. Watch this short video
- The Data Hub – The easy way to get, use and share data.
- View Data Sources by Topic
- Listly This is a free tool to turn web data into Excel. All you need is just one-click. It automatically extracts clean data and arranges them into rows and columns.’
- The Eviction Lab It’s an interactive map that can give you a detailed report (even by Census Tract!) about history of evictions taking place in what looks like any community in the U.S.You can also read more about it in this New York Times article, In 83 Million Eviction Records, a Sweeping and Intimate New Look at Housing in America.It will be an indispensable tool for any class that is analyzing/comparing neighborhoods. A Lesson Highlighting Community Assets — Not Deficits.
- Knoema – a service that offers a huge collection of data sets and maps for public use. video overview Recently, Knoema introduced a Chrome extension called World Data Finder. World Data Finder will correlate information from Knoema's data sets and maps to articles that you read online.
- Statistics in Schools program for K-12 teachers and students from the US Census Bureau. Using current and historical data, the Census Bureau provides teachers the tools to help students understand statistical concepts and improve their data analysis skills. The program offers free online activities and other resources in geography, history, and sociology.
- Data USA. MIT Media Lab, in partnership with Deloitte and the data visualization startup Datawheel, has just gone live with perhaps the most extensive tool ever created for mining and visualizing US government open data, called Data USA. Easy to navigate and visualize data
- The GTG Visualization Tool is an interactive global data mapping of hundreds of organizations that support the education, health, well-being, and success of young women and girls globally. Users can select a country or service area and see a list of organizations serving that geographic location, as well as the services they provide and their websites. Currently, the Visualization Tool includes information for 286 organizations.
Find the GTG Collaborative Visualization Tool here.
- Patchwork Nation makes open data easy. It delivers national data with local context while remaining visually intuitive for the reader. The interactive map helps break down national data to analyze how it impacts communities. We put data in the hands of the user, allowing him or her to compare different data sets and explore national data county-by-county.
- WorldMap – Explore, visualize and publish geographic information.
- Zip Lookup The map allows you to enter
any US zip code to discover demographic data about that area.
- US Census Bureau –
Measures America (people, places, economy). see below
- Maps & Data section
of the U.S. Census Bureau's website is a good place to find that data in
a visual format. In the Maps & Data section of the U.S. Census
Bureau's website you can explore thematic maps about the population of the United States.
Applications for Education Census data can tell us a lot about the United States. Comparing census data sets over time can tell us a lot about how the United States has changed through the years. Seeing those changes can be challenging to students when all they have is a data table. Mapped representations the data can make it easier to recognize patterns and make meaning from census data sets. After looking at the maps ask students to investigate - Data360 – Telling compelling and data-driven stories.
- Number Of – You ask, they count.
- Gallup – Public opinion polls.
- possible causes of changes in population profiles over time.
- World Data Finder – is a one-click assistant for a fast data discovery and data analysis.
- Get the Data – Ask and answer data questions.
- Influence Explorer – Provides overviews of political influence data for politicians.\
- datacatalogs.org – A comprehensive list of open data catalogs.
- Freebase – An entity graph of people, places and things from Google.
- World Bank Data – The world at a glance (key development indicators).
- EveryBlock – Uncovers info on large cities contained in government databases.1
- Daytum – Helps you collect, organize and communicate your everyday data.
- Gapminder - Displays time series of development statistics for all countries.
- Munterbund - Graphical visualization of text similarities in essays.
Work with a partner or small group to explore the infographic sites and examples below.
Use the Questions below to guide your thinking and discussion:
- Look at the examples and identify what you like/don't like about each one.
- What is the infographic about? What story is being told?
- How are colors used differently in each one? Are some colors more powerful than others?
- How are objects displayed on each one? Do sizes of the objects matter in showing the intended information?
- How could colors, sizes, and kinds of objects be used to mislead people away from the data?
- How do the words support or distract from the message?
- Make
notes about what you notice and like/don't like about the infographics.
Your students will be creating some throughout the year and these notes
will remind you of what you visually like to see and will serve as a
starting point for you.
Online Tutorials
- How to Create Outstanding Infographics
- 5 Steps to Create a Powerful Visual
- How to Create Infographics
- SIMILE Widgets
- Infographics Design Framework
- Creating Infographics Screencast Tutorial Easel.ly, where you can use one of their templates to create your infographic. sThe tutorial steps you through changing objects, object size and color, and adding text. Then the tutorial switches to Infogr.am, reviewed here, and shows how to either use their templates, or create your own, including importing your own data and images.
- Online Tutorials and Lesson Plans
Randy Krum. author of the blog Cool Infographics
Tools to create infographics
Graficto has hundreds of professionally designed infographic templates for lists, processes, cycles, or even charts. All you have to do is select the template you like and start adding content.
Canva Templates for Infographics
Infographics are harder to create than you might think. It takes a lot of processing to decide how best to organize your data and tell the story you want to tell. However, when done well, they are a very effective way of communicating complex data. Canva has a good selection of infographic templates that you can use for inspiration, but they also have many more elements you can use in the editor.
Create Your Own USGS Maps Besides the galleries of free to use and re-use media that the USGS hosts. The USGS National Map Viewer. is more than just a place to look at a map. The USGS National Map Viewer lets you choose from a huge library of datasets to display on a map. You can view the source information for each dataset. Additionally, you can choose the base map on which the datasets are displayed. If that's not enough to get you to try the USGS National Map Viewer, I should also tell you that you can draw on the maps, measure on the maps, and print your customized map displays. Watch this short video
VennGage Select template and then add charts, visuals and interactives to customize the design. video tutorial
Editing Maps
Editing Pictographs
Easel.ly is a tool for creating infographics. Easel.ly provides a canvas on which you can build your own infographic by dragging and dropping pre-made design elements. You can use a blank canvas or build upon one of Easel.ly's themes. If Easel.ly doesn't have enough pre-made elements for you, you can upload your own graphics to include in your infographic. Your completed infographic can be exported and saved as PNG, JPG, PDG, and SVG files. Watch the video below for an overview of Easel.ly. Tutorial video
Visual.ly Not only a good resource for finding infographics, but it now offers a create your own option
Free Infographic Creator Kit for PC
NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory website contains a large library of infographics that you can download and print for free. The library contains infographics about spacecraft, exploration missions, planets, moons, the solar system, and comets.
If printed in color, these infographics could make a nice addition to your classroom walls. More importantly these infographics could provide a model for your students to follow as they create their own infographics about topics in space science. NASA JPL not only provides a library of infographics, it provides tools for students to make their own infographics.
Infog.rm Creates rollovers for charts and infographics. You can now include videos in your infographics. You can insert videos from YouTube and insert videos from Vimeo. To add a map to your Infogr.am infographic just select "map" from the insert menu (on the right side of the editing screen) then double-click on the map to add data to it. When you double-click on the map a spreadsheet will open. In that spreadsheet you can enter country names and data points for those countries. Your map can display data for as many countries as you like. tutorial (second part is infog.rm)
iVisual Info Touch is an iPad app that you can use to create relatively simple infographics. The app makes it easy to create your infographics. It is not necessary to create an account in order to use iVisual Info Touch. To get started just open the app and select a background for your infographic. iVisual Info Touch is available in a free version and in a paid version ($2.99). The paid version includes more clip art, more backgrounds, and allows you to import and insert your own images.
The US Census Bureau conducts a wide range of surveys and research that spans far beyond the tallying of people and their basic demographics. With a newly redesigned website, the bureau makes it easy for users to find information they need and highlights a number of useful tools and visualizations. For example, in addition to basic data on enrollment and attainment, the education page has data from several surveys compiled into an infographic, “Education Funding: Where Do Schools Get Their Money? How Do They Spend It?” The site also shines with its selection of interactive tools and databases, ranging from simple games such asPopulation Bracketology, which asks users to choose which cities have more people, to vivid tools such asCensus Explorer, which lets users s can the country block by block and view color-coded data on age, education, income and more. Census.gov serves both as a reference tool for students and as a source of fascinating, interactive data ripe for use in classrooms.
Click Here to Visit Education Web Page
Click Here to Download Free Infographic
Canva is a service that makes it easy to create beautiful slides, flyers, posters, infographics, and photo collages. Creating these graphics on Canva is a drag-and-drop process. Canva offers a huge library of clip art and photographs to use in your designs. You can also upload your own images to use in your graphics. Your completed Canva projects can be downloaded as PDF and PNG files. You can also simply link to your online graphic.
Thinglink Make Your Images Interactive Give photos new life with sound, voice, video, social, and other fun links. Upload image and put tags parts of image to other sites or docs How to Embed Interactive ThingLink Images Into Blog or Website
65 Ways to Use ThingLink
Map a List turns Google Spreadsheet information into Google Maps placemarks. The finished product is a Google Map of the information you've selected from your Google Spreadsheets. To create a map from your spreadsheets you need to register for a Map a List account and give it access to your Google Docs account. Map a List then walks you through each step of selecting a spreadsheet, defining the parameters for your map, and choosing placemarks. Just like in Google Maps you can customize the placemark icons that are used in your Map a List displays. Your maps can be shared publicly or privately. Your maps can be downloaded as KML files to use in Google Earth.
Dio turn your photos into interactive experiences to share. Just upload a picture, then tag it with interactive hotspots
to add photos, text, and videos. You can even create an interactive album by linking to
other images.
SlideRocket infographic templates Includes interactive and animated templates
Two Graphics Editing Programs that can be Used for Creating Infographics from a blank Page
- Splashup
- Sumo Paint
- Inkspace It has a simple and intuitive interface and besides being able to create your own inforgraphics, it also allows you to import your visualisations and combine them with other visuals to create your own. ( It requires download )
StatWorld contains more than 400 world maps of data on topics in economics, education, health, environment, the digital divide, and much more. You can explore the maps by selecting a data set and then a display format. You can also choose to display the data for all countries or only the countries that you wish to compare.
Applications for Education StatWorld could be a good tool to have students use to compare the economic development of countries and regions. Have students compare data sets from multiple categories and ask them to try to develop cause and effect relationships between the data sets. For example, can they find a connection between the duration of compulsory education and GDP per capita?
Create an infographic from social media sites
The Noun Project is a great collection of clipart of universal icons.
Venngage is a new site that is ideal for creating infographics.
Tableau This works just on Windows. It allows users to create interactive visualisations with colourful and unique themes. They can also share them with others or embed them in their websites. It is very easy to use
5 Simple Tools for Creating Infographics Ideas using, maps, Venn diagrams, word clouds, graphic organizers, and periodic tables
Quick and easy tool for creating data visualizations Silk.co's updated tools for creating data visualizations. you can upload data in a spreadsheet, manually enter data, or use one of data sets that Silk provides in their gallery. Once you've uploaded data or selected it you can use it to create fourteen different visualizations. video tutorial
Venn
- Google Fusion Tables
- A spreadsheet application that makes it easy to create visualizations
of data sets. At a basic level it can be used to visualize existing
data sets with one click. At a deeper level, you can compare your own
data sets and create visualizations of those comparisons. The types of
visualizations include tables, maps, charts and graphs.
Google Fusion Tables
Video Overview |tutorials - Map a List a tool to turn Google Spreadsheet into Google Maps placemarks. To create a map from your spreasheet you need to register for a Mapa a List account and give it access to your Google Docs account. Map a list walks you through each step. Within Google spreadsheets there are many gadgets that can be used to create cisualization of data. To explore the gadgets , go to the "Insert" drop-down menu then select gadgets.
- Spreadsheet Mapper Google Spreadsheet script that will allow you to create KML files based
on your spreadsheet data. Spreadsheet Mapper 3 allows you to map up to
1,000 placemarks based on your spreadsheet data. And because Spreadsheet
Mapper 3 is a part of Google Docs you can share your spreadsheets and
maps for collaborative editing. Click here for complete directions on how to use Spreadsheet Mapper 3.
- Batcheo Create a spreadsheet with an address column (and any other columns of
info), copy and paste it at batchgeo.com, and click “Map Now” and you
get a beautiful google map showing all the addresses! Tons of options
to customize, and much of it for free! No need to even log in! tutorial 1 tutorial
2
- Touchgraph Visualize spreadsheets in a graphic organizer format. Upload a spreadsheet and this application will transform into a graphic organizer to help see interrelationships.
- ChartsBin create mapped data visualizations. It's also a place to find data visualizations created and shared by others. The gallery of data visualizations include categories for education data, environmental data, and lots of economic data. All of the visualizations in ChartsBin can be embedded into blog posts and webpages. To create your own visualizations on ChartsBin you do have to provide your own data sets. You can upload data sets that you have stored on your computer. Once your data is uploaded you can customize the visualization of your data. The video offers a short overview of the process (the video does not have sound).
- Charts - Graphs
- Gapminder (Tutorial video ) A tool that allows the user to present a huge amount of world data visually, in moving, interactive graphs. video presention at TED Gapminder has a page for educators on which they can find thematic
animations, graphs, quizzes, model lessons, and a PDF guide to using
Gapminder. For teachers working in schools with slow Internet
connections or very strict filtering, Gapminder has a desktop
application that you can download and install for Mac or Windows
computers. This video demonstrates Gapminder
desktop.
- Many Eyes Data visualization tool provides the structure to present data 16 different ways. Helps to discover correlations between data sets. How to use video
- Chart Chooser
- Circos - great tool for creating infographics - present data within a circle
- Debategraph is in a category all its own. It visualizes arguments,
- Infog.rm Creates rollovers for charts and infographics.
- Graphmaster - Graph Master is a program is a one-of-a-kind program that allows
students to create three different interactive, printable graphs on one
screen based on data collected in a survey or poll of their classmates.
What makes Graph Master so useful, however, is the fact that after
students make their graphs, the program asks them eight multiple choice
questions about their graphs using the inputted data.
- Create a Graph Graphs and charts are great
because they communicate information visually. For this reason, graphs are
often used in newspapers, magazines and businesses around the world. Sometimes,
complicated information is difficult to understand and needs an illustration.
Other times, a graph or chart helps impress people by getting your point across
quickly and visually. Here you will find four different graphs and charts for
you to consider to use.. (gr. 2-8)
- ChartGizmo - an incredible chart builder for any type of data that can be typed or uploaded to this tool.
is a nice tool for creating a variety of charts for online display.
- Useful Charts - A wonderful collection of charts on any number of subjects.
- iCharts - A site for creating an online interactive chart, either from scratch or a spreadsheet.
- Hohli Online Charts Builder Using the Hohli Online Charts Builder you can create bar graphs, line
graphs, pie charts, Venn diagrams, scatter plots, and radar charts. Your chart will be generated as you enter
information so that you can see how each piece of information influences
the chart. When you're satisfied with your chart just click on it to
save it to your computer or to grab the embed code to use on your blog
or website.
Because the charts update as each new piece of data is added, students
will be able to see how each data set they add affects their chart's
display.
- AmCharts is a set of JavaScript (HTML5) and flash charts for your
websites and Web-based products. An ideal tool to generate charts for your
interactive infographics.
- Google Chart Tools Provides several tools for
making data more comprehensible.
- Choose a Graph Find the right chart type for your needs. Then download as Excel or PowerPoint templates and insert your data.
- Graphviz Website Graphviz is graph visualization software. It has several main graph
layout programs with web, interactive graphical interfaces, auxiliary
tools, libraries and language bindings.
- Rich Chart Live
- Hohli An intuitive, simple
online chart maker. It’s incredibly easy to pick your chart type, add
some data, vary the sizes and colors and see the finished chart. The
finished charts are also very well designed and look great!
- The Global
Economy.com is a nice resource developed for high school and
undergraduate students. It provides guides to
understanding the economies of individual countries and
the global economy in aggregate. It offers a database of articles about the economies of individual
countries. You can select any country from the list of more than 200 to
find basic economic indicators about that country. The country profiles
include not just the data associated with economic indicators, but also
explanations of the indicators, and graphs of the data in comparison
with other countries. For visual comparisons of economic indicator data There is an easy-to-use comparison tool. On the comparison page you can
select a set of data and the countries that you want to compare. The
comparison is then shown in the form of a graph.
- Visuals Engine
provides six customizable templates for creating choice boards, story
boards, schedules, and achievement charts. To use the Visuals Engine just
choose a template then choose images or upload images for each box on your
chart. You can type text to accompany each image on your charts. When you've
finished editing you can print your chart or save it as a PDF.
- Lucid Chart - A nice site for
creating a variety of different charts and diagrams. Also, it is a very
easy site to use with a drag-n-drop interface. Best of all, Lucid Chart
has an educational portal which allows chart creation free for
education.
- Pretty Graph - A simple site to
use to make a wide variety of graphs, such as: line charts, histograms ,
and more. Also, a user can embed into a site, share with others users
via email, or save as template.
- A Graphic Interpretation Students use data provided in a Times article to create a graph or chart
Teacher Instructions|Student Sheet
- Activity Sheet: A Graph Is Worth a Thousand Words, or At Least 50
Students write a textual explanation of a graph clipped from The Times
Teacher Instructions | Student Sheet - Google Graphs You can now search for a mathematical function and have an interactive graph generated at the top of your search results. You can zoom in on the graph and explore each function in detail.Similaries to Wolfram Alpha.
- Icon Archive Search through more than 297000 free icons. Browse icon sets by category, artist, popularity, date.
- Historical Infographic Students
will use chronological sequencing to demonstrate the relationship
between events and developments in different periods and places.
- Venngage is a new site that is ideal for creating infographics.
- MappingWorlds the site offers users a new way to look at the world by resizing countries on the map in relation to a series of global issues.
- Thematic Mapping Engine provides users with a very simple way to create Google Earth kmz files. Thematic Mapping draws on data provided by the United Nations to create maps depicting all types of development data and environmental science data. Users select a statistical indicator category, select a year or range of years, and the manner in which they would like the data displayed in Google Earth. If you're using a Windows computer you can preview your files before downloading them.
- UN Stat Planet Map allows you to create useful mapped displays of UN development indicators data. There are ten data categories from which you can choose. Within each category there are further refinements possible. You can customize the map to present sharper contrasts between the data indicators, change the indicator symbols, and alter the map legend. To visual the change in data over time, use the time slider at the bottom of the map. Your maps and the data that they represent can be downloaded as PNG and JPEG files for printing.
- Patchwork Nation makes
open data easy. It delivers national data with local context while
remaining visually intuitive for the reader. The interactive map helps
break down national data to analyze how it impacts communities. We put
data in the hands of the user, allowing him or her to compare different
data sets and explore national data county-by-county.
The US Census Bureau conducts a wide range of surveys and research that spans far beyond the tallying of people and their basic demographics. With a newly redesigned website, the bureau makes it easy for users to find information they need and highlights a number of useful tools and visualizations. For example, in addition to basic data on enrollment and attainment, the education page has data from several surveys compiled into an infographic, “Education Funding: Where Do Schools Get Their Money? How Do They Spend It?” The site also shines with its selection of interactive tools and databases, ranging from simple games such asPopulation Bracketology, which asks users to choose which cities have more people, to vivid tools such asCensus Explorer, which lets users s can the country block by block and view color-coded data on age, education, income and more. Census.gov serves both as a reference tool for students and as a source of fascinating, interactive data ripe for use in classrooms.
Click Here to Visit Education Web Page
Click Here to Download Free Infographic
- 5 Simple Tools for Creating Infographics Ideas using, maps, Venn diagrams, word clouds, graphic organizers, and periodic tables
- MapStory is a free tool for creating mapped displays of data sets. Data sets that are time based, the travels of Genghis Khan for example, can be set to play out in a timeline style on your map. Creating a MapStory might look complicated at first glance, but it's actually quite easy to create a map. To get started select a data set or sets that you want to display on your map. You can choose data sets from the MapStory gallery or upload your own. The notes option in MapStory lets you create individual events to add to your map and timeline. Lines and polygons can also be added to your projects through the notes feature in MapStory.
- Free Infographic Creator Kit for PC
- Timelapse is an incredible visual satellite timeline powered by Google. Timelapse is
about as close as you can get to a time machine, if that time machine
hovered above the earth and gave you a bird’s eye view of development
and change. Students can choose from some highlighted Timelapse views
including: Las Vegas, Dubai, Shanghai, Oil Sands, Mendenhall Glacier,
Wyoming Coal, Columbia Glacier, and Lake Urmia. Alternatively, students
can use the search box to view a satellite timelapse of any place in
the world. Students can change the speed of the timelapse, pause the
satellite imagery, and zoom in or zoom out. The imagery begins in 1984
and goes through 2012.
Timelapse The site itself sparks lots of questions. Depending on the location, students may inquire into climate change, history, development, expansion, human impact on land, satellites, etc. Timelapse could also be used in science classes and history classes. This is a great tool for students to use to analyze and evaluate visual data. - Google Data Explorer The Google Public Data Explorer makes large datasets easy to explore, visualize and communicate.
As the charts and maps animate over time, the changes in the world become easier to understand.
You don't have to be a data expert to navigate between different views, make your own
comparisons, and share your findings.
- GeoCommons provides
excellent tools for creating and sharing map-based data visualizations.
Users can select a from twelve base maps to build upon. Use GeoCommons to create visualizations in which they attempt to show
correlations between physical geography datasets and human geography
datasets.After choosing a
base map users can select from more than 49,000 public data sets or
upload their own data sets. Map creators can add more than one data set
to their maps. To complete the visualizations users can specify colors,
shades, shapes, and apply numerous filters to determine what is or is
not displayed from their chosen data sets. Completed maps can be shared
as KML files or embedded into blogs and websites. These two videos
provide an introduction to creating maps with GeoCommons.
video 1 | video 2
- If it Were My Home is a country comparison tool where students can compare living conditions in their own country to those of another.
- StatSilk Search for interactive maps that compare economic, social and human development and create your own maps
- StatWorld contains more than 400 world maps of data on topics in economics, education, health, environment, the digital divide, and much more. You can explore the maps by selecting a data set and then a display format. You can also choose to display the data for all countries or only the countries that you wish to compare.
Applications for Education
StatWorld could be a good tool to have students use to compare the economic development of countries and regions. Have students compare data sets from multiple categories and ask them to try to develop cause and effect relationships between the data sets. For example, can they find a connection between the duration of compulsory education and GDP per capita? - BatchGoo Fast way to create google maps from your data. It accepts
addresses, intersections, cities, states, and postal codes. We do the
hard work of figuring out where all your data lives in the real world. You can sort the placemarks on the maps, e.g., perhaps you want only to show cities by population. Can upload easily to a Website also. video
- Heat Map Tool is an online service for creating mapped representations of your data. A heat map allows you to quickly visualize spatial data using a range of colors, and when combined with the power of the Google Maps API, visualizing location information has never been easier
- Google Maps Mania
Terrific site for finding maps that zero in on economic and political
issues, e.g., states and countries poverty levels or worldwide slavery.
- Animaps is a service that was built for the purpose of allowing users to create animated Google Maps. The basics of creating maps in Animaps is
very similar the process for creating maps in Google Maps. The main
benefit of using Animaps over Google Maps is that you can create a tour
of your placemarks that plays through according to the timing that you
specify. Another benefit is that you can build in colored shapes to
expand and contract to demonstrate patterns. You can also import images
to your map from Flickr, Picassa, and Facebook.
- Target Map is a service that allows anyone to create mapped displays of data sets. Users of Target Map can
importa and map their own data sets, use data sets from other users,
use data sets found online, or manually input data onto a map.
- IndieMapper Make thematic maps from geographic data
- Flowing Data infographics and demo examples how to create ones
World Map developed by the Center for Geographic Analysis at Harvard University. You can build some great mapped data visualizations on the service You can use the more than 1800 data sets that are stored in the service or you can upload your own data sets. The majority of the data sets in the World Map library have abstracts explaining a bit about the purpose and scope of the data. There are five default base maps that you can choose to build upon. Alternatively, you can choose to create your map completely from scratch and upload your own base layer to build upon. Maps that you create on World Map can be embedded into a website, printed, or viewed in Google Earth. Watch Video
- ikiMap
is a free service for creating custom maps online. The service allows
you to build custom maps on top of Google Maps, Bing Maps, and Open
Street Maps. You can also use a completely blank canvas and upload a
map. The maps that you create on ikiMap can be shared publicly or
privately. Your maps can be constructed collaboratively on ikiMap.
To create a custom map on ikiMap you do have to register on the site and confirm your registration in an email. Each placemark you add can contain text, images, links, and embedded videos. ikiMap provides easy-to-use tools for drawing shapes. Upload feature to import data sets and KML files. You can download your maps from ikiMap as KML files to use in other applications. An online alternative to Google Maps that offers a little more in terms of customization features. - Knoema is a huge
collection of data sets and maps for public use. Knoema offers data maps
and charts for almost every country in the world. There are dozens of
data categories to pick from. Some of the data categories that you will
find include GPD Per Capita, Government Debt, Migration, Housing, Energy
Consumption, and Agricultural Production.
To find a data map or chart on Knoema to use with your students first select a data
set then choose a country from the drop-down menu tied to each data
set. Each data set, map, and chart can be exported downloaded and or
embedded into a blog post or webpage.
- Surging Seas, produced by ClimateCentral.org,
is an interactive map of the potential impact on the United States of
rising sea levels. The map allows you to click along coastal areas on
the east coast and west coast to see how high the sea level could rise.
The Surging Seas maps also project the number of people, homes, and land
area that could be affected if the projections are correct.
- What About Me? is a free infographic
generator from Intel. The purpose of What About Me? is to create
infographics based on your Facebook, Twitter, and YouTube activities.
The infographic created includes parts of your recent Facebook posts,
when and what you post about on all three networks, and What About Me?
even evaluates the average tone of your messages (mine are neither angry
nor overly happy in tone). When your infographic is complete, you can
download it from What About Me?
It could
be a good tool for
getting students to look at their social media footprints. This could be
particularly important for high school students applying to college as
well as for students looking for jobs.
- MDG
Maps Could be a useful tool for students of georgarphy, political science and global economics. Data maps are good for providing students with a ameans to visually compare data sets. I can see MDG as being a resource for students to quickly compare development indicators of countries in a regions or continent. Use the comparisons students make as the jumping-off point for research into the causes and solutions of development inequalities between countries
-
Worldmapper: The world as you've never seen it before
World Mapper makes hundreds of the maps available PDF files that can be used to create posters for your classroom (click here for a land area map). World Mapper also makes available, as pdf files, the data sets used in the creation of each map.
A collection of world maps. where territories are re-sized on each map according to the subject of interest. There are nearly 600 maps. Maps 1- 366 are also available as PDF posters World Mapper offers a unique way to look at data sets. World Mapper hosts a large collection of over maps displaying all types of scientific, economic, historical, and demographic data. World Mapper uses density-equalizing maps to display each country and continent differently based on each data set. For example the birthrate map displays countries with a higher birthrates as larger than normal (standard projection) when compared to countries with a lower birthrate which displayed smaller than normal. Mapmaker interactive at national geographic site
- UN Stat Planet Map allows you to create useful mapped displays of UN development indicators data. There are ten data categories from which you can choose. Within each category there are further refinements possible. You can customize the map to present sharper contrasts between the data indicators, change the indicator symbols, and alter the map legend. To visual the change in data over time, use the time slider at the bottom of the map. Your maps and the data that they represent can be downloaded as PNG and JPEG files for printing.
Flare Website Flare is an ActionScript library for creating visualizations that run in the Adobe Flash Player. From basic charts and graphs to complex interactive graphics, the toolkit supports data management, visual encoding, animation, and interaction techniques.
UUorld - AMAZING! Immersive mapping environment, high-quality data, and critical analysis tools. Explain the world in maps. Depict data geographically and over time. WATCH the intro. video at the site.
Vidmap, lets users create maps that work in tandem with online video, displaying the location that appears in the video on an adjacent dynamic map.
The process to create a map is surprisingly easy: upload a video to Vidmap or use one already hosted on YouTube and click the map to create drag and drop markers. The result is a map that has an added layer of dimensionality and visual interest.
- Spotzi Website Spotzi is a world map reflecting different themes such as Agriculture, Climatology, Meteorology, Business, Health & Diseases, Transport and Communication, Environment and Conservation, Military, Geology and Biology
- UMapper Quickly create, edit and annotate maps with this web based tool. Mapping services to choose from include: Bing, Google, Yahoo and Openstreet. Maps can be tagged, routes created, and media embedded within the map (audio & image). Once a map is complete it can be shared or embedded.
- Batcheo Create a
spreadsheet with an address column (and any other columns of
info), copy and paste it at batchgeo.com, and click “Map Now” and you
get a beautiful google map showing all the addresses! Tons of options
to customize, and much of it for free! No need to even log in! tutorial
1 tutorial
2
-
IMF's Data Mapper If you're in need of a good visual representation of the World's economic outlook, check out the IMF's Data Mapper. The IMF Data Mapper allows you to see the current, past, and predicted distribution of wealth around the world. Use the slider tabs on the IMF Data Mapper to change the map's display.
Scribble Maps Edit and make notations on Google Maps with this web based mapping tool. Features include: text, image & markers. Final product can be saved and shared with an embed code.
Umapper UMapper is a mapping tool for educators. It allows its users to create and manage interactive maps and geogames online. These maps can be shared with others or be embedded in blogs and websites
MapTiler This a tool that allows users to create overlay of standard maps like Google Maps, and Yahoo Maps and can also be visualized in 3D form.
Build A Map This is another cool tool for teachers to create maps. Build A Map is powered by Google Maps and provides a wide range of tools to easily build interactive online maps.
World Map This one here is being developed by Center for Geographic Analysis at Harvard University and allows users to easily build their own mapping portal and publish it to the world or to just a few collaborators.
Map Faire This is a cool tool for teachers to create awesome maps and share them with their students. Map Faire has a simple and student friendly interface and is very easy to use.
- If It Were My Home A Google Map tool that allows you to compare the size of the BP Oil Spill to your community. If It Were My HomeIf It Were My Home will also show you a size comparison of a selected country centered over your hometown. now offers a feature for quickly comparing ten key statistics about life in different countries. To view the comparisons just select two countries from the lists and click compare.
- ChartsBin create mapped data visualizations. It's also a place to find data visualizations created and shared by others. The gallery of data visualizations include categories for education data, environmental data, and lots of economic data. All of the visualizations in ChartsBin can be embedded into blog posts and webpages. To create your own visualizations on ChartsBin you do have to provide your own data sets. You can upload data sets that you have stored on your computer. Once your data is uploaded you can customize the visualization of your data. The video offers a short overview of the process (the video does not have sound).
- Animaps Animaps extends the My Maps feature of Google Maps by letting you create maps with markers that move, images and text that pop up on cue, and lines and shapes that change over time.
- Target Map is a new service that allows anyone to create mapped displays of data sets. Users of Target Map can importa and map their own data sets, use data sets from other users, use data sets found online, or manually input data onto a map.
- Better World Flux allows users to create animated visualizations of development data. To use Better World Flux
(no registration required) all you have to do is select a data set from
the menu provided and select a country or countries from the menu
provided. From there Better World Flux creates an animated data
visualization for you. The visualization will change as the years on the
timeline at the bottom of the visualization change. This way users can
see growth and recession of a statistic over time.
Social Explorer provides easy access to census demographics about the United States from 1940 to 2000. The free public edition offers a collection of interactive demographic maps of census data that can be viewed, queried, and manipulated. Students can visually analyze and understand the demography of the U.S., their regions, and their neighborhoods, creating their own queries and parameters.
Tools include zoom-in capability, selection of variables, the option to create a slideshow enabling comparative dataset mapping, and printing.- Storify It is an application that allows users to create engaging stories out of tweets . You can also create stories using social media and turn what people post on social media into compelling stories .
- Map a List is a free
tool that you can use to turn Google Spreadsheet information into Google
Maps placemarks. To create a map from your spreadsheets you need to
register for a Map a List account and give it access to your Google Docs account. Map a List then
walks you through each step of selecting a spreadsheet, defining the
parameters for your map, and choosing placemarks. Within Google
Spreadsheets there are many "Gadgets" that can be used to create
visualizations of data. To explore the gadgets that will work with your
data, go to the "insert" drop-down menu then select "gadgets."
- The UN Stat Planet Map allows
you to create useful mapped displays of UN development indicators data.
There are ten data categories from which you can choose. Within each
category there are further refinements possible. You can customize the
map to present sharper contrasts between the data indicators, change the
indicator symbols, and alter the map legend. To visual the change in
data over time, use the time slider at the bottom of the map. Your maps
and the data that they represent can be downloaded as PNG and JPEG files
for printing.
- GeoCommons provides
excellent tools for creating and sharing map-based data visualizations.
Users can select a from twelve base maps to build upon. After choosing a
base map users can select from more than 49,000 public data sets or
upload their own data sets. Map creators can add more than one data set
to their maps.
- Visual Ranking Tool by Intel The Visual Ranking Tool makes
the process of ranking items and comparing lists easy. With a simple
click and drag, students move items to any position in a list. Working
in teams, they collaborate and negotiate their reasoning. The comment
feature of the tool gives them a place to record this rationale.
- Seeing Reason Tool by Intel With the Seeing Reason Tool students create visual maps of the factors and relationships in a cause-and-effect investigation.
-
City Data is a free directory of statistics about US Cities. The type of data sets that you will find on City Data includes all the typical information you'd expect to find like housing prices, demographic data, and job data. City Data also provides information about things like cell phone coverage, quality and availability of public transportation, and air quality. The data is arranged in list form, in graph, and chart form. Beyond the statistics available on City Data, all of which you could find on other websites, there is a great discussion board.
- Exhibit 2.0 Exhibit lets you easily create web pages with advanced text search and
filtering functionalities, with interactive maps, timelines, and other
visualizations. No need for complex database and server-side
technologies.
- Showing Evidence Tool by Intel The
tool provides a visual framework to make claims, identify evidence,
evaluate the quality of that evidence, explain how the evidence supports
or weakens claims, and reach conclusions based on the evidence.
- GeoCommons Maker! "Professional cartography is now in your hands. Maker! was designed by cartographers with an eye for detail. Style your map with shaded thematics, proportional symbols, and more. Maker! makes the tough statistical and cartographic decisions for you. Anyone can build complex, data-rich maps."
- Ushahidi is a nonprofit, open-source software company that develops a
Web platform that makes it easy for people in any part of the world to
disseminate and collect information about a crisis. Users can submit
reports by text message, e-mail, or Web postings, and the software
aggregates and organizes the data into a map or timeline. In addition to
its crisis-mapping software, the company has also launched a product
called Swift River that uses machine-learning algorithms to extract and
organize accurate information from the flood of e-mails, text messages,
blog posts, and tweets that can seem overwhelming in the first days of a
crisis.
- Visual Schedules - best for younger students.
- Inkscape is a free vector graphic software available for many platforms. This is the ideal free option for the creation of your overall infographic. Simple and intuitive, you should have no problems importing your visualizations and combining them with other visuals to create your masterpiece.
- aiSee reads a textual graph specification and automatically calculates a customizable graph layout. This layout is then displayed, and can be interactively explored, printed and exported to various graphic formats.
- See concept map page
"Infographic thinking" doesn’t let designers to interpret a narrative
visually; it lets them invite the viewer [to] join in the process of
interpretation, too. It’s what makes infographic design a language, not a
formula or a fad.
Francesco Franchi
Resources of infographics to explore and analyze
Think - Pair - Share activity for exploring infographics
- McCandless Web Site "Information is Beautiful" well designed infographics that are both simple and engaging
- eLearning Infographics is an excellent site
for finding educational infographics. Not only can a user search for
infographics in a wide range of topics a person can submit their
infographics as well. Once a user finds their infographic, they can
print it out, share it w/ others, or even embed it into their site/blog.
- The Pudding Unique infographics
- 25 best real life infographics
- History of Toys
- Cost of Owning a Pet
- USA Today Snaphsots
- The Best Sources For Interactive Infographics.
- Statisca https://www.statista.com/chartoftheday/ Current topics
- Visual.ly is a website that catalogs infographics from across the web. Visual.ly has more than 5,000 infographics arranged in twenty-one categories. One thing to keep in mind, I probably wouldn't send students to site on
their own because there are some infographics that are not appropriate
for public school settings. And if you find an infographic that you want
to embed into your blog or website, try using Zoom.it to make it fit correctly in your display area.
- Visualizing.org is a community site for sharing data visualizations (infographics). Anyone can upload their data visualizations to the public gallery. The public gallery is divided into four categories; economy, environment, health, and energy. Visualizations in the gallery can be downloaded, printed, and or embedded into your blog or website.
- NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory website contains a large library of infographics that
you can download and print for free. The library contains infographics
about spacecraft, exploration missions, planets, moons, the solar
system, and comets.
If printed in color, these infographics could make a nice addition to your classroom walls. More importantly these infographics could provide a model for your students to follow as they create their own infographics about topics in space science. NASA JPL not only provides a library of infographics, it provides tools for students to make their own infographics. - LiveBinders Create Visualizations & Infographics | Infographics for Librarians, Educators and Other Cool Geeks
- Infographic Showcase searchable database for educational infographics
- Cool Infographics is a blog. The author of Cool Infographics started putting all of the infographics that he writes about onto a Cool Infographics Pinterest page. . Included in the page are some infographic videos
- Hamburger economics
- Google Images - Do a search on Google Images for a topic, e.g., "pollution infographic"
- Google Data Explorer The Google Public Data Explorer makes large datasets easy to explore, visualize and communicate.
As the charts and maps animate over time, the changes in the world become easier to understand.
You don't have to be a data expert to navigate between different views, make your own
comparisons, and share your findings.
- Information is Beautiful - good simple examples of infographics from McCandless’s Blog (TED Video)
- Tax dollars in 2013
- Top Educational Infographics for Teachers
- History of Video Games Good Infographics small collection but nice simple examples that you can zoom in on
- JuiceLabs Visuallizations We Like good starting point to see a variety of high quality infofgraphics
- ShowWorld - a new global perspective compare populations, energy, products, technology and more... watch the globe change
- If the world were a village of 100 people...
- Interactive Infographics wide variety of resources - more below
- Mapping America: Every City, Every Block which presents United States Census data from 2005 to 2009.
- Mapping the nation’s well being
- ScoopIt infographics in education
- Infographics Archive
- The American Family Through Time is an infographic produced by Archives.com The infographic laid out in a board game style. Every set of U.S. census data is available on the board. Click on any of the years to pop-up some highlights from that census.
- Economy Map is an interactive visualization of the environmental impact of the U.S. economy. The visualization offers a series of graphs and charts that represent the impact of economic activities in terms of global warming, ozone depletion, human toxicity, aquatic ecotoxicity, acidification, and other environmental impact measurements. video overview
- Tracking American Poverty
is an informative infographic that I found on Cool Infographics. The infographic has six screens that you can move through to find poverty statistics divided by race, gender, education, age, and family type. Each screen allows you to drill-down to more refined statistics. You can look at statistics by year from 1967 through 2010.
- StatSilk Search for interactive maps that compare economic, social and human development and create your own maps
- Examples of Journalism- News Infographics
- InfoGraphic-a-Day David Warlick’s site which archives infographics by type
- Surging Seas is an interactive map of the potential impact on the United States of rising sea levels. The map allows you to click along coastal areas on the east coast and west coast to see how high the sea level could rise. The Surging Seas maps also project the number of people, homes, and land area that could be affected if the projections are correct.
- Visual Economics
is a provider of articles and infographics about various
economics-related topics. Yesterday, I came across an infographic they
produced titled How Wealthy Countries Tax Their Citizens.
The infographic depicts how the world's 29 wealthiest countries tax
their citizens and how that money is spent. Some of the other
infographics from Visual Economics are Timeline of the New Healthcare Bill, US Trade Bans Across the Globe, and A Detailed Look at TARP.
- ShowWorld - a new global perspective compare populations, energy, products, technology and more... watch the globe change
- Infographic App over 50 infographics
- Cool Infographics is a blog. The author of Cool Infographics started putting all of the infographics that he writes about onto a Pinterest page. Included in the page are some infographic videos
- Flowing Data infographics and demo examples how to create ones
- UN Environmental Fact Sheets, Posters, and Infographics series of free posters based on data from the UNEP's Geo Data Portal. These posters visually and graphically display information about environmental data. Some of the topics covered in these posters include electricity production and consumption, CO2 emissions, ecosystems management, and hazardous materials. Each fact sheet, poster, and infographic is available as a PDF that you can download and print.
- Mapped visualizations of data sets. Some of the more interesting maps illustrate correlations between climate zone and population density. All of the maps can be downloaded and printed for free use in your classroom. The data sets behind the maps are also freely available for classroom use.
- Visual Complexity searchable database
- The Scale of the Universe 2 features a huge selection of objects in the universe that are arranged according to size and scale. You can zoom-in on the image to objects as small as neutrinos and quarks or as large as planets, constellations, and galaxies. When you click on an object in The Scale of the Universe 2 a small window of information about that object pops up.
- Magnifying the Universe. Magnifying the Universe allows you to see the size of atoms, animals, buildings, mountains, planets, stars, and galaxies in relation to other objects in the universe. Try it out as embedded below.
- Geblogs Examples incorporating a slideshow format
-
Newsmap Newsmap is an application that visually reflects the constantly changing landscape of the Google News news aggregator.
- The Psychology of Color is an infographic from Painters of Louisville. This simple infographic explain the feelings that people have in response to certain colors. The infographic also gives some examples of colors used in the marketing efforts of well-known brands and why those colors are used.
- American History Demographic Chart Book
is a website featuring dozens of graphics about US demographics from
1790 through 2010. The site is divided into seventeen chapters each
containing multiple dynamic graphics. The chapters are labeled according
to demographic categories such as age, marital status, education, and
birthplace. for
- Sensable City Lab @ MIT High end dynamic real-time info graphic work and more See video section
- INFOGRAPHIC : Always Connected - A Day In The Digital Life Whether we like to admit it or not, we're addicted to our gadgets and to the Internet. This cool infographic show just how.
- INFOGRAPHIC : Software Piracy - The Untold Tales For every person who buys something legally, there are probably 10 who are taking the risk of stealing it. The story behind illegal downloads.
- How Animals See the World is a nice infographic published by Mezzmer (a retailer of eyewear). The infographic offers some simple explanations of how sharks, insects, lobsters, horses, mice, and common household pets see the world.
Collections of Visualizations on Geoscience Topics
- 11 Infographics for Teaching Economics
- 40 Insightful Infographics examples
- Alltop Collection of Infographics Sites examples
- Infographics at GOOD Magazine – site gives good ideas for infographic topics
- Infografia | Infographics and Info Graphics – pools of images on Flickr
Videos
Introduction to Infographics
Little Red Ridinghood told with infographics
Making Information Beautiful
Gapminder: Hans Rosling's new insights on poverty
<-- MIT SENSEable City Lab, which explores the "real-time city" by studying
the way sensors and electronics relate to the built environment. Watch some examples of dynamic infographics controlled by live sensors.