Watching this video was very interesting to me particularly after coming from ISSOTL. During ISSOTL, we have teachers discussing how to use data visualizations and other forms of technology to engage with their students. We had some engaging conversations about technology’s place in the classroom. In this video we have journalist talking about how data visualizations and infographics can engage their readers.
Many of the people discussing data visualizations did discuss how they have positively impacted how their readers engage with the data but they also talked about how there was a difficulty in innovating how these visualization are presented without losing the message. I think this a valid point. I think that this concern is major one. As much as I enjoy cool and interactive visualizations the goal of me reading an article is gain some information. Now that we are considered the creators of this content, we have to find a way to curb our desire for the latest and greatest or our desire to show our amazing design skills with flash, photoshop or illustrator and think about the data being the main concern.
The other thing I think about watching this video was how it is important to understand how to interpret data effectively. With our current assignment, I’m sure many of us will have a considerable amount of information that we could put into our infographic but we will have to decide whether all of it is necessary to the main message we are trying to convey. I think that is one of the biggest things I took away from the video. Data should come first and the visualizations second.
Visualizations are also becoming something that people want to utilize on their own and there are many sites allowing people to create them easily. I think back to ISSOTL, when myself and my classmates did presentations on a few sites that allowed for this to happen in a classroom setting. The accessibility to these sites now mean that anyone with data that they need to present or they would like to explain to someone easily can compacted into graphs, charts or word clouds. I think this trend to data visualization means that eventually things that are immensely dense and difficult to sort through will eventually become easy to digest and less daunting.
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