Yet another example of how we can use visualization techniques to better understand relationships between complex data.
Diseasome maps genetic disorders to genes affected. You can zoom in or out and see the gene-disease links.
the interface is easy to use
Last week’s class was a lot of fun. It’s always fun, but we got to get into our little groups and brainstorm about Web 2.0 and education. Everyone designed their maps differently, and each one brought something different to the experience. While I am biased and thought my group’s was really great, I admit that none of us are confident artists — so it didn’t look cool.
I was really impressed with the Web 2.0 learning cycle map — the one that’s like the nitrogen or carbon cycle in biology books. The names they came up with and the ideas that they attached to the land, sea, and clouds was really fun and FUNNY. Lastly, I think Ty’s description that the information has to be filtered before being pumped to the individuals is like municipal water filtration was very thought provoking.
I really enjoyed our guest speaker’s presentation in the last class session. Dr. Ellen Wagner is an engaging, dynamic, and forward-thinking woman.
Two things she brought up, haptics and ubiquitous access (and subsequently smart buildings / products), are subjects that I have thought a lot about in relation to world- and community-changing technologies. I believe that these two things combined will have a significant impact on our future lives. it will change our assumptions and the assumptions of future generations. But we don’t have to feel that they are things that are coming down the pike. In fact, these concepts are not totally new or revolutionary. When I think of ubiquity of access to information, I try to remind myself of books, newspapers, and magazines — even while out in the woods camping, I still had my book to read if I wanted to. I try to think of how televisions and telephones saturated the market to the extent that some homes even had several of these items. Or of the thermostat keeping the temperature in a building within a certain range. Even of automatically opening doors.
While the concepts may not be revolutionary, their implementation certainly is. It allows us to do magic (or what would appear to be magic if we were time travelers from the past). Hmmm…
NEWSFLASH: My favorite blog, information aesthetics, just posted about Sixth Sense. Here’s a four-minute video. Imagine the implications! This is soooo cool, and it’s very much what Dr. Wagner was discussing in class about Web 3.o (3D).
Oh, speaking of automatically opening doors, I have to share something that happened to me once in Las Vegas. I learned that casinos are designed to always turn the customer back to the slot machines and tables. On this particular day I was determined to see the outdoors — to see sunlight. Somehow I couldn’t find my way out of the place (but it was so easy to come in!). Finally, I found the door! In my excitement, I raced to the door and was stopped by the glass. I backed up and went toward the door. Nothing happened. Obviously it was broken. So I went to the other door and it, too, was broken. Aaaargh! I couldn’t get out of the casino!
Just then, I saw some people heading into the casino. They walked up to the door and pushed it. It wasn’t broken; it was manual.
Finally, I’d like to share this link with you. It’s an interactive map of future forces affecting education: http://www.kwfdn.org/map/map.aspx. It’s really interesting and they invite participants to add to it.
Webucation 