Mapping a Network

Mapping a Network

Recently, I asked all of you a question, “What would you do as a Director of Blended Learning?

Immediately after the first response came in, I realized that I would need some way to aggregate all of the answers. I didn’t want a list and I didn’t want to simply copy them all into a spreadsheet. These responses were coming in from all over, and I wanted a way to show just how vast a passionate learning network can become. So, I decided to figure out a way of mapping them. This post serves as both a way to see all of the responses and as a tutorial to visualize responses for other projects.

Step 1: Create a New Fusion table in Google Drive (Scroll down to where it says fusion table)

Step 2: Start adding all of the columns you will need. These are the ones I used:

  • Name
  • Job Title
  • Quotation
  • Location
  • Avatar
  • Profile Link
  • Conversation Link
  • Video Response

Step 3: Choose the field types from the drop down next to each column name (or from the add column menu). These are the modifications I made:

  • Location should be a Location type
  • Avatar should be an Eight Line Image within the Text Type
  • Profile and Conversation Links should be a Link type within the Text Type
  • Video Response should be Youtube, Vimeo, or Google Map type within the Text Type

Step 4: Start Aggregating all of the responses. If you want some help with this, just share the Fusion Table like you would any other Google Doc and get others to populate it.

 

Step 5: Style your HTML for the mapped locations from the “Map of Location” tab. Here is the format I made:

<div class=’googft-info-window’ style=’font-family: sans-serif; height: 12em; overflow-y: auto’>
<table border=”0″ cellspacing=”10″>
<tr>
<td><img src='{Avatar}’ height=’90’ style=’vertical-align: top’/><br><br>
<b><a href='{Profile Link}’ target=’_blank’>{Name}</a><br><br></b>
<i>{Job Title}<br><br></i>
{Location}<br>
<td>
{Quotation}{Video Response}
<a href='{Conversation Link}’ target=’_blank’>Continue the conversation.</a>
</td>
</tr>
</table>

</div>

Step 6: Publish your Fusion Table

You can view the raw data here, or you can simply look at and explore the map below:

If you would like to see your response on this map, please go to this YouTube video and answer the question, “What would you do as a Director of Blended Learning?”

Leave a Reply