Course Overview
We love maps. They tell us the “where” of the story in a glance. Maps are the most effective visual tool for communicating ideas, explaining complex concepts, illustrating relationships or for telling a story.
Data Mapping is a two-day, hands-on certificate workshop focused on communicating complex information with visually appealing maps. Participants will learn to create a clearer, more meaningful picture of complex information, understand the story in a map, and create effective and creative static and interactive maps.
Course Outcomes
You will learn:
- To employ best practices in graphic design techniques.
- To use maps to interview the data and find the story.
- The basic mapping concepts, including geocoding for identifying latitude and longitude, projections and how to choose them.
- To identify when and how to use each type of map to illustrate your data and your story, including choropleths, scaled points, heatmaps and other ways of aggregating point data, and cartograms.
- The basics of geographic data formats: KML, Shapefiles, CSV and how to find geo data.
- To create multilayered static and interactive maps, including exporting to print and web-friendly image formats.
- To use and apply mapping tools such as Mapbox, CartoDB and Google Fusion Tables for creating highly engaging data driven maps.
You’ll enjoy personalized small class instruction from expert instructors. This program is an applied learning experience for beginners in data mapping. You’ll work hands-on with the tools and create real examples of static and interactive maps. This assures that you will be ready to apply your new skill set immediately upon completion of the workshop and leave with concrete examples of highly effective illustrated stories with data visualizations.
Work Sample
Who Should Attend?
Ideal for career professionals interested in a rapid-paced, immersive experience in data visualization mapping tools & techniques, including marketing communicators, analysts, scientists, journalists, web editors, educators, and those interested in communicating data with clarity and originality.
Instructors & Facilitators
Instructors subject to change.
Peter Aldhous
Peter Aldhous is a science and data reporter based in San Francisco. He also teaches investigative reporting and data visualization in the Science Communication Program at the University of California, Santa Cruz. Peter got his start in journalism in 1989 as a reporter for Nature in London, fresh from a PhD in animal behavior. Later he worked as European correspondent for Science, news editor for New Scientist and chief news and features editor with Nature, before moving to California in 2005 to become New Scientist‘s San Francisco bureau chief. From 2015 to 2022 he worked on the science desk at BuzzFeed News. Peter’s maps of U.S. government surveillance flights were named data visualization of the year in the Global Editors Network’s 2016 Data Journalism Awards; that project also won gold for data journalism and the overall Most Beautiful prize in the 2016 Kantar Information is Beautiful Awards. A follow-up project, which used machine learning to identify further covert spy planes, won the JSK Fellowships award for innovation in GEN’s 2018 Data Journalism Awards. He was a finalist in the Online category of the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine 2019 Communication Awards for his data-driven coverage of wildfires.
Prerequisites
Requirements
- All participants must bring their own laptop for use during this workshop and it must be WiFi ready.
- The level of this workshop is beginning. No previous data visualization experience is required.
- Participants must be comfortable with technical subjects and learning in a fast-paced environment.
- Knowledge of Excel spreadsheets or Google drive is recommended. SPREADSHEET TUTORIAL
- A personal Google gmail account is required for this class. Please remember to bring your user login and password information with you.
- Proficiency in English.