Author: Kristin Bott

Translating research from question to query

Earlier this term, I heard from students in Noelwah Netusil’s natural resources economics class. They were hoping I could help them identify how many homes are within the Johnson Creek floodplain.

This is certainly a spatial problem, so using some spatial system — in this case, a GIS* — is a good first step. Another important challenge as researcher is to translate your question into something your analytical tool can understand. Continue reading “Translating research from question to query”

Curricular guidance from social media: #gistribe in action

For the past two years, I have presented a GIS/mapping workshop as part of Paideia — in 60-ish minutes, aiming to give the Reed community an introduction into the concepts of spatial analysis, basic cartography and critical map reading, and how they might start approaching analytical and/or spatial projects of their own.

This year I decided to split this into two sessions — one focused on GIS as a tool, another focused more on mapmaking and less on data and/or analysis. Continue reading “Curricular guidance from social media: #gistribe in action”

A few of my favorite (mapping) things

Fall break is here, and I expect Portland fall weather to set in any minute now. In anticipation of hunker-down-and-curl-up weather, here’s a handful of geospatial delights that might pair well with a hot mug of something and grey skies: open source geodata in action, some great work from colleagues in Seattle, and a beautiful compilation of imagery of the Oregon coast. Continue reading “A few of my favorite (mapping) things”

729 Miles : collaborations in educational technology across the Pacific Northwest

Educational technology is by nature a collaborative effort, with faculty, students, and staff working together to build an effective learning environment within and beyond the classroom. In order to foster relationship across campuses, in May 2015, Reed and Lewis & Clark co-hosted the first collaborative instructional technology event sponsored by the Northwest Five Consortium* (NW5C). We dubbed the conference “729 Miles of Technology”, a name taken from the distance of one route connecting the five campuses. (You can view the full program and other conference details at the project website.) 

Continue reading “729 Miles : collaborations in educational technology across the Pacific Northwest”

Getting on the map (workshop)

On May 29th/30th, Reed is co-hosting the inaugural instructional technology conference of the Northwest Five Consortium (NW5C). I am leading a workshop on maps, mapping, spatial analysis, and spatial thinking; materials below.

Additional links:

Digital humanities and information visualization

This is a guest post from Kelly Holob, class of 2014

At Reed, I was a Classics/Religion major (’14), maybe not the sort of person you’d expect to see on a technology blog. But I worked with computers a lot — and not just because I was a T-Watcher. My field’s been developing tools like the TLG, which can search nearly the entire corpus of Greek texts, since the 1970s, and almost anyone who’s taken a class in Latin or Greek knows about Perseus, a easy-to-search collection of public domain classical texts and translations, including lexicons. There’s also Logeion, another lexical tool, which my current school, the University of Chicago, is still developing. Digital Humanities tools have been useful for exploring new ways to learn, interpret, and discover information about everyone from Plato to Plotinus for a long time. Continue reading “Digital humanities and information visualization”

Workshop: Analysis using Stata : Psych Edition (Paideia)

stata_workshopFrom 1pm-2pm on Friday, 1/23/2015 I’ll be leading an Introduction to Stata in ETC 211. Come join in!

Materials for the workshop are here. (PSYCH_stata_workshop)

Download the zipped file to your desktop, unzip it, and change your working directory to that file to follow along during the workshop. (Within Stata, File > Change Working Directory)