Data Visualization PD

What? Learn about data visualization, a beautiful intersection of math, computing, and art, and how you can connect this to your computer science classroom.

Who? Zan Armstrong is a freelance data visualization engineer and designer. She creates static and interactive visualizations (charts, graphs, and more) that help people make discoveries with data. Her clients have included Google, Yale, Scientific American, and Stamen Design, and one of her pieces is currently exhibited at SF MOMA in the Designed in California exhibit. She is also a former high school math teacher, the daughter of two teachers, and is passionate about teaching & learning. Combining teaching & data viz in some informal ways, she has taught a 45-min intro-to-data viz course in her teaching friends' classrooms and recently started a blog collecting data viz and online interactives related to various themes (like racism/segregation/urban spaces, renewable energy).

Why? Zan thinks data visualization has the potential to be a super interesting area for students, which they might not know exists. It's a wonderful intersection of creating/building (cs/engineering/art), asking questions and making discoveries (analysis), telling a story (design/communication), and making something people want to engage with (design/art). Nobody is an expert at all of it, so everybody has something they can contribute and something they can learn from others.