This New York Times interactive graph provides mapped visualizations of ethnicity/race, income, education, and housing that can be articulated to the block level. Please note it may take awhile for map to load.
Type of Material:
Presentation.
Recommended Uses:
Homework assignments could be designed around comparing areas, especially quantitative comparisons. The maps could be used by the instructor in a smart classroom during lectures on topics such as demography, ethnicity/race, and housing, and to give the regional context for current events, such as the Black Lives Matter movement.
The resource could be used for an in-class map project in a computer lab where each student has their own terminal.
Technical Requirements:
Fast internet is mandatory.
Identify Major Learning Goals:
The interactive map uses US Census data to visualize demographic changes. Students can zoom in to the census track level and see their own neighborhood, and zoom out to the County, State and the US. Also, at any scale, the student can simultaneously switch between 13 maps: change in population density, racial/ethnic distribution 2010, largest racial/ethnic groups 2010, largest racial/ethnic groups 2000, White population, Black population, Hispanic population, Asian population, occupied and vacant housing units in 2010, vacant housing units in 2010, change in vacant housing units since 2000, households with only one occupant.
Target Student Population:
Advanced high school/college. The maps would be especially useful to students of political science, sociology, ethnic studies, and urban planning.
Prerequisite Knowledge or Skills:
Knowledge of how to interpret percentages.
Content Quality
Rating:
Strengths:
The interactivity of the map is amazing. Being able to see national, regional, and local population changes is informative. It makes you want to zoom in on your local area! The application is very flexible in the the way it allows for both self-paced exploration and a wide variety of instructor-guided research.
Concerns:
This is based on 2010 census data. I hope it will be updated after the next census. It would be neat to track population changes further back than 2000-2010.
Potential Effectiveness as a Teaching Tool
Rating:
Strengths:
The map's interactivity will engage students allowing them to explore all areas of the USA.
Concerns:
In the same way that it allows self-paced exploration, many of the features of the maps could be lost on students without close supervision by the instructor. A guided assignment would be most appropriate -- What areas saw the most change? Why?
Ease of Use for Both Students and Faculty
Rating:
Strengths:
There are no distractions from the data, no introduction or conclusions.
No instructions are provided, and none are needed; like game-based learning, the student jumps in and starts exploring.
Concerns:
Without a fast internet connection to redraw the maps quickly, the exploration component will fail.
Creative Commons:
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