I have a serious crush on visualizations. I love the way they merge math, critical thinking, design, and whatever subject matter is being visualized. Obviously, to do these well requires a lot of practice, skill, and the right tools. Oh yeah, you also need the data.
And here's where things get interesting. Last year, I first read about mashups using Yahoo Pipes in a mindblowing post from OUseful.Info: Data Scraping Wikipedia with Google Spreadsheets. The post describes how to pull table data from Wikipedia and then use that data to visualize the population data in Yahoo maps (I see that later Google Maps was added). My next experience was with the late Popfly. On Popfly, you were able to mashup data by linking together user created blocks. Unfortunately, Popfly is no longer available (Pipes is still going strong though). And now there is a (relatively) new kid on the block.
Earlier this week, I read about Google's mashup tool: Fusion Tables. Fusion Tables lets you share and import data in order to merge and visualize the data. Additionally, you're able to collaboratively comment on data. Finally, once you've created your visualization, you can get some code to directly embed that visualization into your class blog, website, or (new to DyKnow 5.3) your DyKnow notebook.
You've always been able to embed webpages into DyKnow which really aids sharing of resources, but the web is increasingly becoming more than just a series of webpages. If you have a YouTube video you're wanting to share with your class, you're probably wanting to send them just the video and not the video + comments + related videos + ads. Now all you have to do is find the embed tag for the video and paste it in where you normally would paste in the webpage address. With visualizations in Fusion Tables, it's the same thing. Find the embed code, paste it in, and students will be able to explore the visualization well beyond the capabilities of a screenshot. For example, intensity maps let you mouse over and see the actual statistics. Embed it in only half the panel, and you can use the other half of the panel to discuss the visualization in small groups. Start the discussion off with an embedded poll, and end with groups submitting their arguments to be shared with the rest of the class.
As happens sometimes with bleeding edge Google Labs projects, when you first see the visualization, it will warn you there's a javascript error, but rest assured that you can click ignore and everything else works fine. So happy embedding!
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