How close do you live to a Superfund site? [Interactive Map]

This National Geographic site allows you to view Superfund sites on a map.
http://www.nationalgeographic.com/superfund/

You can type in your location and the map will zoom to the zip code and give you a sense of where the nearest Superfund sites are. You can also click on the sites for more information about them.



This map is a good starting point for talking about the Sociology of the Environment.   You can ask students to talk about how these sites came to be and about whether the responsibility to clean them up falls on citizens, business, and/or governments.

Additionally, you can use this map to start testing ideas about Environmental Racism.  Does it seem like the nicer areas have less of these sites? If so, why might that be?

Immigrants in the US - Where do they live? [Interactive Map]

A while back, I posted a link to an interactive dot map that visualized where certain ethnic and racial groups live. This map is similar, except it displays immigrant populations using Census data (see the below example that examines the NY Metro Area).

My students have really enjoyed interacting with the Racial Dot Map, and I hope they will learn a lot from this one as well. Find the map here: http://personal.tcu.edu/kylewalker/immigrant-america/

Sports Migration [Interactive Map]

Sports Migration is a very interesting concept and useful for getting students to talk about global inequality, global capitalism, and the global economy.  Students may not realize how many athletes are migrants. What countries send players? What countries receive them?

There are many great examples of sports migration in the major professional leagues of baseball, basketball, and hockey but these pale in comparison to soccer.

Slate put together this cool interactive map - and it is great way to visualize what is happening with sport migration. You can select a certain country and then see if that country is sending players out or receiving them. You can also watch a time lapse video to see how the trend has changed over time. Have fun teaching globalization with soccer!

Interactive Soccer Migration Map

Check out this example map:

Are Young People Politically Challenged? [Video + Data + Map ]

Student at Texas Tech interviewed other students about their knowledge of political and historical topics.  They recorded and published the results here:



In the past I have designed a 'quiz' with similar questions but this video may be easier for you to put together.  I use the quiz or video to launch into a sociological discussion about youth and  political action. When talking about the political and power processes that influence youth engagement, I like to draw upon data and resources from  The Center for Information and Research on Civic Learning and Engagement [CIVIC] Check out their website here: http://www.civicyouth.org/

They recently published an interactive map that allows you to look at youth voting rates by state and over time. You can also make graphs.  The maps and graphs have a lot of functionality but the side effect is that the site can feel overwhelming and isn't the most user-friendly so I would not use it for the  first time in class.   However, once you get a feel for it, I think you will see that this is a great way to show students data.Link to Interactive Map: http://www.civicyouth.org/maps/elections/

Terrorism [Interactive Map]

This interactive map was published by the data  visualization folks at Periscopic.  This map uses information from the global terrorism database to look at terrorism events from 1970-2013.




If you click on a terrorist organization, the map will focus on the geographic regions where the incidents  occurred. You can also use the slider bars to look at certain years. This would be useful to talk about the scope and reach of terrorism - and to link that discussion to one on global inequality.

There is A LOT of information here and it can feel overwhelming but it is a useful resource for looking at the number of events as well as how many people were killed or wounded.  I would recommend spending some time with this before you used it in a classroom setting.

Poverty by Race, 1980-2010 [Interactive Map]

The Urban Institute's Metro Trends produced a map that allows students to see how the racial makeup of citizens in poverty has changed over time.



Click Here to View the Map

The map uses different color dots to represent ethnic groups. Moving the slider bar across the map allows you to see how the diversity of an area and the poverty rates have changed over time.

Student Loan Debt by State [Interactive Map + Data]

If you are looking to start a conversation on student loan debt, The Institute for College Access and Success is a great place to find data.

The link to the website below will bring you to an interactive map, where you can look at state by state data on student loan debt.
http://www.projectonstudentdebt.org/state_by_state-data.php

Clicking on a state will bring you to a page that includes information on most schools within that state. An interesting exercise would be to have students look up your university and compare it to other types of university.  You can also download the data from the site.

Exploring Gender Inequality with Maps and Tables [Interactive Maps]

The Gender Equality Explorer was created by the Women's Foundation of Minnesota and  the University of Minnesota's Center on Women and Public Policy.  

 Link to the Explorer Here

The tools are based on American Community Survey Data. You can generate tables and maps based on different geographic areas and variables.

Table Tools - The table tool is straightforward; however, there are 116 different variables choices. This can feel a little overwhelming.  The generated tables are neat and easy to read (To some people, these tables might be easier to generate and read that the ones that come from American Fact Finder); however, be careful when you run a query for multiple geographies. For example, if you want to look at household type by county in Connecticut, the default is for the data for each county to be displayed on a separate page. You have to click through all of the pages OR change the default setting on the number of geography items per page.  Depending on your tables and geographies, these tables can become unwieldy.  The nice thing that is you can download the data into Excel (Click on the EXPORT tab). This allows you a little more control over how you present the data.

Maps: The mapping feature takes a bit longer to load (be patient) and opens up to a default map. When you get there, click on the "Change Data" button to make a different map. [This button is on the upperleft hand corner of your screen]. Once you finish making your map, you can export it to an image or to a power point.

While I really like this site, keep in mind that you are limited to census/ACS variables.  So you can look at education and poverty by sex category, but you can't look at other important indicators if they aren't ACS questions (such as the number of male and female politicians). With that said, this tool is a easier to use than American Fact Finder because it limits you to sex/gender variables.

Diversity Data Kids [Interactive Maps]

This site is great because it allows users to generate custom maps based on certain variables of interest. One can generate the maps based on a number of geographic areas (states, counties, school districts, metro areas)

The majority of the indicators are related to children's outcomes in some way; however, keep in mind that not all variables are available at all of the location types. Some of the variables can be broken down further by race or poverty level.

• Population Demographics and Diversity
• Early Childhood Care and Education
• Education
• Health
• Parental Employment
• Policy
• Income and Poverty

Here is an example of a map that I generated.  

I really like that these maps are so easy to generate and the program generally seems to run quickly; however, one of the reasons is because the options are limited.  The lack of choices makes things pretty user friendly - but it also means that you don't get too much complexity here. In addition, I have not  found out any way to download the data that are generated.   Despite this drawback, the tool is a nice way to make a quick map of a variable of interest.

Mapping US Mass Shootings [Interactive Map]

This interactive map from Mother Jones is a good tool to use if you want to talk about mass shootings in your class room. If you hover above the shooting location, you can see important details about the shooter including the shooter demographics and information about the guns that were used.

Click here to link to Mother Jones Guide to Mass Shootings

Mapping Poverty in the US [Interactive Map]

This interactive map from the New York Times uses Census data to show where the poor live. You can the number of people living in poverty or the percentage living in poverty. You can also hover your mouse over each county to see the numbers for that county. When you zoom in,  you can also get the data for smaller geographies like Census tracts.  If you click on several of the big cities on the bottom ribbon, the map will zoom right in to that area.

Click to View Interactive Poverty Map

This map can be a useful starting point for talking about how and why poverty is distributed the way it is. You can use local counties and then ask students to speculate on why there are so many discrepancies between them.  I also think it can be useful to show this map alongside a map of racial/ethnic dispersion to help students see the intersection between race and social class

Mapping Racial Segregation [Interactive Map]

This interactive map is very useful for visualizing what racial/ethnic segregation looks like in the US. There is a large amount of data here, all taken from the Census, and so the map can be slow to load.  In addition, sparsely populated rural areas can be hard to find.

-Once you open up the map, I recommend clicking on "Add Map Labels" to help you navigate your way around.

Click Here for Explanation and Methodology of the Map

Click here for the Interactive Racial Dot Map

Here is an example from the map -looking at Minneapolis-St Paul.


FYI - If you are teaching in a large city and just looking for a map of that city  it might help you to use these screen shots that Wired Magazine took.  [This is where I originally saw the link]
Wired Magazine

Exploring Differences in the Number of Adults With College Degrees [Interactive Map]

This interactive map, published by the Chronicle of Higher Education, allows the user to examine trends in higher education.  Users can compare the the percentage of adults with college degree from 1940 to 2009. Users can also look at differences by county or by demographics such as gender or race. One final cool feature is that you can isolate certain types of counties, such as wealthy counties or heavily Hispanic counties. The Census is the primary source of Data.

Click here for Link to Interactive Map

The only downside to this one is that users mus have a Chronicle password. Because of that, this would probably work better as an in class demo rather than as a student assignment.  This would be a great starting point for a conversation about rising levels of higher education or about stratification by demographics.