New ways of looking at and interacting with datasets
A mashup is a web application that combines data from more than one source via a single, unified tool. Mashups are often about data visualization, but they can also be creative products of other kinds — indeed, the term "mashup" originates from the music industry — such as assorted film and music clips assembled into parodies of well-known productions, for instance. The 2008 Horizon Report lists data mashups as one of six emerging technologies likely to have a large impact
on teaching, learning, or creative expression within
higher education over the next five years.
Data mashups are powerful tools for navigating and visualizing datasets; understanding connections between different dimensions such as time, distance, and location; juxtaposing data from different sources to reveal new relationships; and other purposes. Tools like Google's Mashup Editor and Yahoo! Pipes make it possible to create applications that grab online data, organize it, and display it the way the author wants. For example, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) has created a mashup that generates maps of the U.S. displaying air quality based on the amount and kind of pollutants emitted by businesses.
Geotagging, the practice of adding geographical metadata like latitude, longitude, altitude, and/or placenames to images, websites, or other media, has already ushered in compelling forms of data mashups that illustrate the potential of this practice for education. Mashups that make use of geotagged data let us plot information against the landscape of the real world to visualize phenomena and datasets in ways that make spatial and temporal relationships transparent and obvious. Professor Rob Sternberg, Earth and Environment, has created a mashup combining Google Maps and Flickr to record and map field trip sites around south central Pennsylvannia, which he shares with his students by creating an announcement on his Blackboard course page.
Here are a few more examples:
• The London Profiler: enables users to build up a picture of the geo-demographics of Greater London from data on population attributes such as cultural/ethnicity, deprivation and crime etc.
• Der Spiegel German News Map: maps current stories from the German news magazine, Der Spiegel, to the places where the stories occur
• Havaria Information Services Alert Map: an interactive map displaying data relating to severe weather conditions, epidemic alerts, and seismic incidents around the world
• Cassini Map of 18th Century France: the famous César-François Cassini 18th century map of France overlayed with the Google map of present-day France allowing individuals to view the oldest map of France on a topographic scale using Google Map's zoom and navigation tools.
In the summer of 2007, Van Gosse, Assistant Professor of History at Franklin & Marshall, started his "analog to digital" project in which he began converting printed maps and other analog visuals into digital instructional materials. Though a completely electronic digital experience might not be ideal for all his courses, Professor Gosse is in search of a compromise. He believes that the traditional and digital classroom can co-exist in a sort of symbiotic state. "There is a virtue to a more interactive classroom." More...
2008 Horizon Report
Emerging technologies likely to have a large impact on teaching, learning, or creative expression within higher education
The
2008 Horizon Report "seeks to identify and describe
emerging technologies likely to have a large impact
on teaching, learning, or creative expression within
higher education." Some critical challenges that the report
calls attention to include:
· Significant shifts in scholarship, research, creative expression, and learning have created a need for innovation and leadership at all levels of the academy.
· Higher education is facing a growing expectation to deliver services, content and media to mobile and personal devices.
· The renewed emphasis on collaborative learning is pushing the educational community to develop new forms of interaction and assessment.
· The academy is faced with a need to provide formal instruction in information, visual, and technological literacy as well as in how to create meaningful content with today's tools.
Time-to-adoption Horizon: One Year or Less
Grassroots video
Collaboration webs
Time-to-adoption Horizon: Two to Three Years
Mobile broadband
Data mashups
Time-to-adoption Horizon: Four to Five Years
Collective intelligence
Social operating systems
It began as a brainstorming exercise between Professor Michael Wesch and students enrolled in his Introduction to Cultural Anthropology at Kansas State University in the Spring of 2007. The basic idea was to create a short video highlighting the most important characteristics of students today - how they learn, what they need to learn, their goals, hopes, dreams, what their lives will be like, and what kinds of changes they will experience in their lifetime.
Since this grassroots video was posted on YouTube in October, 2007, it has been viewed over 1.5 million times. More information...
Around the Web
A snapshot of what's going on around
the World Wide Web
KPMG Faculty Portal
KPMG, the tax and audit consulting firm, recently launched its Faculty Portal online. The site is free for anyone whose e-mail address ends in ".edu." Once registered, individuals can get news on accounting practices that they can incorporate into their classroom talks as well access to the "Ethical Compass," a tool with scenarios for students that can help illustrate what is good and what is bad. KPMG, Inc.
Polaroid Closing Instant Film Factories
Polaroid Corp. is dropping the technology it pioneered long before digital photography rendered instant film obsolete to all but a few nostalgia buffs. ABC News
YouTube's You Choose '08 - Presidential Candidates
People running for President have their own YouTube channel, now helpfully grouped by the service under the banner You Choose '08. The candidates work, to varying degrees, to feed their public's appetite for stump speeches, talk-show interviews and TV ads, and more casual video-moments. Time
Spreading the love of physics. On iTunes.
Walter H. G. Lewin, 71, a physics professor, has long had a cult following at M.I.T. And he has now emerged as an international Internet guru, thanks to the global classroom the institute created to spread knowledge through cyberspace. Professor Lewin's videotaped physics lectures, free online on the OpenCourseWare of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, have won him devotees across the country and beyond who stuff his e-mail in-box with praise. You can download free video podcasts of his lectures on iTunes. The New York Times
Minds on Fire: Open Education, the Long Tail, and Learning 2.0
Authors John Seely Brown and Richard P. Adler argue that the building blocks provided by the Open Educational Resources movement, along with e-Science and e-Humanities and the resources of the Web 2.0, are creating the conditions for the emergence of new kinds of open participatory learning ecosystems that will support active, passion-based learning: Learning 2.0. EDUCAUSE Review
Who is using the internet to look for information on Wikipedia?
More than a third of American adult internet users (36%) consult the citizen-generated online encyclopedia Wikipedia, according to a nationwide survey by the Pew Internet & American Life Project. And on a typical day in the winter of 2007, 8% of online Americans consulted Wikipedia.
A Profile of Wikipedia Users
Do you ever use the internet to look for information on Wikipedia?
% of adult internet users who say "yes"
Age 18-29
44%
Age 30-49
38%
Age 50-64
31%
Age 65+
26%
High school
22%
Some college
36%
College grad +
50%
There has been ongoing controversy about the reliability of articles on Wikipedia. Still, the Pew Internet Project survey shows that Wikipedia is far more popular among the well-educated than it is among those with lower levels of education.
All told, the use of Wikipedia is more popular on a typical day than some of the more prominent activities tracked by the Pew Internet & American Life Project, including online purchasing, visiting dating websites, making travel reservations, using chat rooms, and participating in online auctions.
SMART Board Interactive Whiteboard — The Basics
The SMART Board Interactive Whiteboard is a interactive surface on which you can annotate over top of any application and save those annotations for further use. This QuickStart will get you started.
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QuickStarts are designed to provide short, concise instructions
for using hardware, software, and facilities managed by IET.
Want to brush up on your Japanese? Always wanted to learn to speak Russian? Now you can practice your Hebrew in the car or at the gym. Free podcasts for practicing languages.
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Data Mashup
In technology, a mashup is a web application that combines data from more than one source into a single integrated tool; an example is the use of cartographic data from Google Maps to add location information to real-estate data from Craigslist, thereby creating a new and distinct web service that was not originally provided by either source.
Mashup originally referred to the practice in pop music (notably hip-hop) of producing a new song by mixing two or more existing pieces.
Technology Demonstrations March 7
Informal technology demonstrations centered around broad instructional technology topics
Third Thursday Brown Bags March 20, April 17
Informal lunchtime conversations about using technology to support teaching and learning
TLT Discussion April 8
Lunchtime discussions about the ways in which faculty are using technology to enhance teaching and learning.- lunch provided
More information about upcoming IET
Events is available online.
Mapping mashups use online mapping services, such as those offered by Google or Yahoo, to display customized, clickable markers showing points of interest and related information. In the classroom, they can place lessons in a rich geographical context and increase interactivity. They can be useful for spatial display of research data or for enhancing information on campus Web sites.
The
2008 Horizon Report "seeks to identify and describe
emerging technologies likely to have a large impact
on teaching, learning, or creative expression within
higher education." Some critical challenges that the report
calls attention to include:
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