Workshop: Data visualisation as a gateway to programming

I was invited to run a workshop at THATCamp Feminisms West at Scripps College in Claremont, California, and thought 'Data visualisations as gateway to programming' would be a good way to provide a gentle introduction to 'computational thinking' by working through the effects different data structures have on potential visualisations in ManyEyes, the online visualisation tool. I also prepared some material on basic concepts in programming and put together a page of 'Inspiring women through history' mapped across time and space that contained heavily commented code that suggested various things to try to get a sense of how code (in this case, JavaScript, HTML, CSS) works. My slides are below, you can play with content prepared for ManyEyes, or 'view source' at the 'inspiring women' link above, save the file to your hard drive and have a play.

 

Resources for ‘Crowdsourcing in Libraries, Museums and Cultural Heritage Institutions’

A collection of links for further reading for the British Library's Digital Scholarship course on 'Crowdsourcing in Libraries, Museums and Cultural Heritage Institutions'. Last updated June 2016.

If you found this post useful, you might be interested in my book, Crowdsourcing Our Cultural Heritage. Continue reading "Resources for ‘Crowdsourcing in Libraries, Museums and Cultural Heritage Institutions’"

Resources for 'Data Visualisation for Analysis in Scholarly Research'

Woodcut of the statue described by the prophet Daniel, from Lorenz Faust’s Anatomia statuae Danielis (“An anatomy of Daniel’s statue”), 1585.
Woodcut, An anatomy of Daniel’s statue, 1585.

A collection of links for further reading for the British Library's Digital Scholarship course on 'Data Visualisation for Analysis in Scholarly Research'. I update this each time I teach the course, so please leave a comment if you know of any great sources I've missed. Slides and exercises for each version of the workshop are below. Many thanks to workshop participants for their feedback, as it directly helps make the next version more effective. And of course huge thanks to Nora McGregor and the British Library's Digital Scholarship team!

Last updated January 2018. Between course revisions I add interesting visualisations to my Scholarly Vision tumblr and pinboard.

Continue reading "Resources for 'Data Visualisation for Analysis in Scholarly Research'"

Links and slides for 'Learning to play like a programmer: Web mash-ups and scripting for beginners'

Workshop abstract: Learning to play like a programmer: web mash-ups and scripting for beginners.

Slides (pdf): Play Like A Programmer workshop DH2012

Links for the Digital Humanities pre-conference workshop 'Learning to play like a programmer: Web mash-ups and scripting for beginners'

My contact details

Twitter: @mia_out, blog openobjects.org.uk, homepage miaridge.com

Text editors

Online javascript console

Data to play with

Visualisation tools

Resources to keep learning

About learning to code

On hack days

Going further with debugging

Workshop: Learning to play like a programmer: web mash-ups and scripting for beginners

Half day tutorial for the pre-conference workshops for Digital Humanities 2012: Learning to play like a programmer: web mash-ups and scripting for beginners.

Abstract:

Have you ever wanted to be able to express your ideas for digital humanities data-based projects more clearly, or wanted to know more about hack days and coding but been too afraid to ask?

In this hands-on tutorial led by an experienced web programmer, attendees will learn how to use online tools to create visualisations to explore humanities data sets while learning how computer scripts interact with data in digital applications.

Attendees will learn the basic principles of programming by playing with small snippets of code in a fun and supportive environment. The instructor will use accessible analogies to help participants understand and remember technical concepts. Working in pairs, participants will undertake short exercises and put into practice the scripting concepts they are learning about. The tutorial structure encourages attendees to reflect on their experiences and consolidate what they have learned from the exercises with the goal of providing deeper insight into computational thinking.

The tutorial aims to help humanists without a technical background understand more about the creation and delivery of digital humanities data resources. In doing so, this tutorial is designed to support greater diversity in the ‘digital’ part of the digital humanities community.

This tutorial is aimed at people who want to learn enough to get started playing with simple code to manipulate data, or gain an insight into how programming works. No technical knowledge is assumed. Attendees are asked to bring their own laptops or net books.

The tutorial will include:

  • what a humanities data set is and how to access one
  • how web scripting languages work (using JavaScript as an example)
  • how to sketch out your ideas in pseudo-code
  • the value of visualisation tools in understanding the shape of a data set
  • prepared exercises: ‘hello world’, using script libraries for mash-ups, creating your first mash-up using a live cultural dataset (e.g. a timeline or map),
  • how to find further resources and keep learning

Related link: Links and slides for ‘Learning to play like a programmer: Web mash-ups and scripting for beginners’