Hello colleagues,
Perhaps you have seen heat maps but didn't know they were called that. They are becoming quite common in the news. Have some of your students seen them too? Do they wonder what they are and how to use them? It may be time to teach students about heat maps, how to use them to answer questions, where the data come from upon which they are based, and how valid the data may be. Seeing and using heat maps may also be fun for some students, and, if you teach virtually and in real time, this is easy to use; assuming you have launched a real-time class videoconferencing session (e.g. Zoom, GotoMeeting, etc.) you can have the heat map site ready on your desktop when you share it with your students. Of course, bandwidth issues for you -- and/or for your students -- could be a problem, and if students are accessing the class via smartphone, there could be additional challenges for them. Nevertheless, it might be worth trying. If you do try using them, let us know what the experience was like for you, and for your students.
Here are two heat map examples, one on climate change, another on adult literacy that you could use to develop lesson plans. If you do, please share your lesson plans with us here!
1) A New York Times Opinion piece, "Everywhere Has Its Own Climate Risk. What Is It Where You Live?" by Stuart A. Thompson and Yaryna SerkezSept. 18, 2020. You'll see a "mouse-able," "clickable" heat map in the article itself, as well as a box where you can type in your county. Your students may also be interested in the West Coast "climate fires" in California and Oregon. Some might find the data alarming, of course. Some might wonder if this article has a bias (it does of course, and you could point out that it is an "Opinion Piece" not a news article. There's lots here to consider from a media literacy point of view.
2) There are two amazing adult literacy heat maps, a PIAAC Skills map developed by the National Center for Educational Statistics of the U.S. Department of Education and a Literacy Gap Map developed for the Barbara Bush Family Literacy Foundation, also based on synthetic state and county data from the 2012 international PIAAC study in which the U.S. participated. The heat maps are quite similar and both allow drilling down to states and counties.The Literasy Gap Map also allows getting data for major U.S. urban metropolitan areas (i.e. "cities"). You can also compare state or county adult literacy data with American Community Service (ACS) data, for example on poverty, health, and other national and local data.
I would love to see student research projects using maps like these in which a student develops a question, for example, "What is the relationship of low literacy (PIAAC levels 1 or 2) and health outcomes in our county?" and where student small groups then develop a short slide presentation of their findings using a heat map. If you do this, please share links to your student presentations with us.
Try using these heat maps. Post questions here about them and we'll try to get good answers to your questions. Let us know if you have found other engaging heat maps that your students like. Tell us good ways you have found to use heat maps with your students.
David J. Rosen, Moderator
LINCS CoP Integrating Technology group