https://blog.databasic.io About Our Tools and Activities for Learning to Work with Data Wed, 06 Jun 2018 20:44:56 +0000 en-US hourly 1 https://wordpress.org/?v=5.4.1 https://blog.databasic.io/2018/01/24/databasic-io-2017%e2%80%8a-%e2%80%8ayear-in-review/ Wed, 24 Jan 2018 20:44:34 +0000 http://databasic2.wordpress.brownbag.me/?p=199 Continue reading →]]> https://blog.databasic.io/2017/02/24/databasic-at-harvard-laws-systemic-justice-project/ Fri, 24 Feb 2017 19:43:24 +0000 http://databasic2.wordpress.brownbag.me/?p=192 Rahul was invited again this year to join Professor Jon Hanson’s System Justice course at Harvard, to introduce law students to how to include data within their arguments. The DataBasic activities provided a perfect way to explore asking questions (with WTFcsv) and sketching stories (with WordCounter). The students also got a chance to practice tailoring data-driven arguments to different audiences, using a new participatory activity that we’re still workshopping. Here are the slides: From Data to Argument from rahulbot … Continue reading →]]> https://blog.databasic.io/2017/02/08/new-databasic-tool-lets-you-connect-the-dots-in-data/ Wed, 08 Feb 2017 22:36:14 +0000 http://databasic2.wordpress.brownbag.me/?p=186 Catherine and I have launched a new DataBasic tool and activity, Connect the Dots, aimed at helping students and educators see how their data is connected with a visual network diagram. By showing the relationships between things, networks are useful for finding answers that aren’t readily apparent through spreadsheet data alone. To that end, we’ve built Connect the Dots to help teach how analyzing the connections between the “dots” in data is a fundamentally different approach … Continue reading →]]> https://blog.databasic.io/2016/12/29/designing-tools-for-learners-not-users/ Thu, 29 Dec 2016 18:24:03 +0000 http://databasic.wordpress.brownbag.me/?p=174 We (Catherine and Rahul) just co-authored an article in the Journal of Community Informatics called Design Principles, Tools and Activities for Data Literacy Learners. In it, we make the case that most tools that help people work with data prioritize flashy visualizations and outputs rather than helping to scaffold a learning process. This ends up making the process of data analysis like a black box (especially for people from non-technical backgrounds). We pose the question – what … Continue reading →]]> https://blog.databasic.io/2016/09/29/workshopping-a-new-tool/ Thu, 29 Sep 2016 15:45:54 +0000 http://databasic.wordpress.brownbag.me/?p=169 DataBasic is constantly developing, driven by the needs we see in the communities around us; and our ability to get funding to support development and testing.  Over the summer we’ve been designing and developing a new tool we’re calling “Connect the Dots“.  The goal is to help introduce the language and approach of network analysis, and how it can let you ask different kinds of questions. Since we don’t build new tools in isolation, we brought … Continue reading →]]> https://blog.databasic.io/2016/09/28/workshop-at-the-data-literacy-conference/ Wed, 28 Sep 2016 19:24:46 +0000 http://databasic.wordpress.brownbag.me/?p=165 We hosted a “Making Data Fun with an Arts-Based Approach” workshop for attendees at the Data Literacy Conference on making data fun using an arts-based approach. Participants used WTFcsv and WordCounter to learn how to ask questions and sketch out a story.  The audience included government agencies, journalists, educators, and others.  This diversity generated a really good conversation about how the could use these tools and approaches in their own work. One of the groups made a fun image … Continue reading →]]> https://blog.databasic.io/2016/07/12/big-data-and-development-at-mit-media-lab/ Tue, 12 Jul 2016 15:34:44 +0000 http://databasic.wordpress.brownbag.me/?p=152 We conducted a workshop as part of the Data-Pop Alliance’s Global Professional Training Program on Big Data and Development at the MIT Media Lab. Data-Pop’s program focuses on building capacity for working with data for global professionals who are involved in development work and policymaking. You can read more about their approach here. In attendance were around 30 folks from universities, the civil sector, and government from a variety of countries, including Colombia, Senegal, France … Continue reading →]]> https://blog.databasic.io/2016/06/23/databasic-at-boston-civic-media/ Fri, 24 Jun 2016 01:40:14 +0000 http://databasic.wordpress.brownbag.me/?p=146 Rahul recently led a short workshop on DataBasic at the Boston Civic Media annual meeting.  The 1 hour hands-on session focused on how to use the arts to tell your civic data story. Curious about how to use the arts to tell your civic data story? Wondering how to use the arts to help learn how to work with data?  We will introduce DataBasic.io: a suite of free easy-to-use web tools for beginners that introduce how … Continue reading →]]> https://blog.databasic.io/2016/05/04/our-round-up-of-databasic-workshops-and-demos-from-spring-2016/ Wed, 04 May 2016 21:27:09 +0000 http://databasic.wordpress.brownbag.me/?p=129 This has been an eventful spring for Databasic! After launching in January to great success we have been traveling to classes, conferences and workshops to help different groups of people learn about working with data. Catherine led four workshops for graduate and undergraduate Journalism students at Emerson College. Journalism students learned how to work with qualitative and quantitative datasets from open data portals and start telling stories. Rahul led a workshop for his Data Storytelling Studio … Continue reading →]]> https://blog.databasic.io/2016/03/02/v1-2-0-new-features-and-bug-fixes/ Wed, 02 Mar 2016 17:34:07 +0000 http://databasic.wordpress.brownbag.me/?p=125 Continue reading →]]>