Open Data/Open Minds
First of all, welcome! And thanks so much for stopping by our project!! Open Data/Open Minds (ODOM) is a program that supports people to tell local environmental and community stories through data investigations, science notebooking and civic engagement. And we are hoping you can help!
Problem Statement
How might we use paper, low-cost hardware, and the web to: 1) serve and display ambient live data and 2) support learning about science and data through curated and personal data collection?
What are we doing?
Open Data/Open Minds (ODOM) supports communities to tell the stories of their local environmental and civic concerns using science journaling, crafted visualization, and data investigation.
The program is composed of a series of data investigation activities that start as extremely basic and work up to more complex data investigations. Here's what the paper activity pages look like and you can find pdfs of these and other worksheets in this directory:
The activities are enabled by a set of hardware data collection and visualization tools, still in protytpe form. Here's what they look like and you can find full sized images in this directory:
We've run professional developments for teachers with these materials in the spring of 2017 and are refining the materials now so that we can do more of them in the summer.
Who are we?
The primary ODOM team is Elisabeth Sylvan, David Cole and Natalie Freed. Elisabeth and David work at the nonprofit Nexmap and are Fellows at Manylabs, an open science hacker space in San Francisco. Natalie is a computational artist and high school teacher who develops the user interaction and hardware. Additional engineering support is by Jie Qi and the UK firm Artists and Engineers in partnership with industrial designer, Roland Ellis.
ODOM has received support and funding by the Gordon and Betty Moore Foundation, the National Writing Project, and several individual funders.
What do we need?
Over the summer we will be developing our prototypes more and doing grant writing to fund the next version of the project. And we need your help getting the technology, curriculum and research in better shape!
We need data lovers, statistics gurus, learners, educators, evaluation researchers, to help with the following
- reviewing and editing ODOM's curriculum and other educational materials
- reviewing and writing the program's research evaluation plan and tools
- evaluating and making suggestions for the technology and science behind our planned statistics and graphics generator
- suggesting and helping us think through architectural and technical issues
Get involved
First for more detail about the project, check out materials in this Google Drive folder. You might want to start with the Project Vision and Goals and the Technology Objectives.
Next join our Slack channel by asking Elisabeth either via email (lisard at gmail) or Twitter. Consider following our nonprofit, Nexmap, on Twitter and joining our 21st Century Notebooking Google+ group.
Most of all, check out our issues page for specific ways you can contribute! Each issue explains where and how to make a particular contribution. Generally we ask you add comments to the issue or work on a linked Google Doc. If you don't understand what we are asking for or you want to help in other ways, get in touch with Elisabeth or open a new issue.
If you want to work with us in person, our workspace in San Francisco, Manylabs, is a host for the Global Sprint. Sign up here!
Please note that it's very important to us that we maintain a positive and supportive environment for everyone who wants to participate. When you join us we ask that you follow our code of conduct in all interactions both on and offline.
Thank you! Thank you!