Cephalopodcast

How not to overwhelm with Charts and Graphs

Over on the 43Folders blog, Matt Turk is asking how he can improve his academic presentation style.

I am in a fairly quantitative science…Unfortunately, what most people in my field do is to simply overwhelm the audience with lots of facts and charts and bullet points. Obviously this is a bad idea — but on the other hand, if you don’t give enough ’serious-looking’ plots, you run the risk of being dismissed by the majority of the people in the audience.

So how do I strike a balance? How do I keep my presentations in the manner of a good narrative, with appropriate display methods, when constrained by an audience that could liberally describe as ‘hostile’?

There are obligatory recommendations of Tufte, but also to The Craft of Research by Booth, Colomb, and Williams.

If you have any ideas about effectively communicating science information, head on over to 43Folders and chime in.

The Exploratorium is a museum in San Francisco, CA and was founded in 1969 by noted physicist and educator Dr. Frank Oppenheimer. They have an extensive website with many, many pages exploring hundreds of different topics. They also have competition called the Iron Science Teacher which is webcast live. The next event is on August 11, 2006 at 12:00pm PST/3:00pm EST/7:00pm GMT.

Parodying the cult Japanese TV program, Iron Chef, the Exploratorium’s Iron Science Teacher competition showcases Bay Area science teachers as they devise demonstrations around a particular ingredient—an everyday item such as a plastic bag, a milk carton, or a nail. In a fast-paced atmosphere where showmanship and creativity reign, science teachers are given ten minutes to concoct a science activity that can be used in the classroom.

Unfortunately, you need RealPlayer in order to see the webcast.

• Iron Science Teacher competition
• Iron Science Teacher competitions are archived here according to where their secret ingredient was found. After watching the Webcasts, cook up some activities of your own.
• See also: The Exploratorium eclipse exhibit in Second Life

There are a lot of good reasons to start a blog. Mine is not necessarily one of them. I started on the ‘Net back in the old Prodigy era (circa 1993). I was initially loath to communicate authentically online, taking pains to preserve my anonymity. But nowadays I realize that Google and other spiderbots are inexorably gathering information about us anyway. It’s an illusion to think there aren’t already little pieces of us scattered across sundry servers. So rather than let chance or my minor participation in conferences or listservs determine how I was indexed, I decided to start staking a claim to my own unreal estate and start blogging.

The nice thing about coming out of this shell is that I get to participate in the participatory Web and produce the Cephalopodcast podcast. It also has allowed me to (virtually) meet some very fine folks. In particular, I’ve been hanging around the educators and webcasters at Worldbridges.net. Some of them have also been venturing into the MMO¹ world of Second Life. Naturally enough, they have been webcasting and podcasting these explorations. And you can now see the latest adventures at Virtualbridges.net.

The first entry is a Second Life Tour of the Spaceflight Museum that I particpated in recently.

The International Spaceflight Museum is a museum in the virtual world of Second Life. It hosts exhibits and events about spacecraft, rockets, and space travel. The museum is located on the island sim Spaceport Alpha.

The organization that manages and develops the museum is the Spaceflight Museum Planning Group, a group of Second Life residents from around the world who share an interest in spaceflight.

So if you want to see practical examples of the educational potential of MMOs, check out the videos at Virtualbridges.net.

UPDATE: I’ve been made a manager at Virtualbridges.net, so I will be helping out with the posting there. The next jaunt into Second Life will be this Sunday, July 9, 5:30pmPDT/8:30pmEDT/12:30amGMT. Feel free to join us as we take a tour of Second Life’s Public Library and the Info Island sim.

• Details: Virtualbridges.net Tour of SL Info Island
• SLURL: Second Life’s Public Library and the Info Island sim