http://www.chartle.net

The basics

Chartle attempts to empower the web via data visualisations: “Over 1 billion charts, maps, plots and diagrams are found in print publications each year – but only 40 million online. This huge discrepancy is a reflection of the complexity to create & publish charts online.Chartle.net tears down the complexity of online visualizations – offers simplicity, ubiquity and interactivity instead.”

It is an easy-to-use system which, when you put data into it, allows the production of many kinds of graphs, charts and even geographic maps with data points. Each type of chart has an example provided, meaning the system is very easy to learn as well. The results can be saved, published or embedded.

Here is an example of the chart creation screen:

One of the graphs - note that it is dynamic

Knowledge networking

Chartle, on its own, does some very useful things which in most cases could be performed by desktop software. However, Chartle demonstrates the real heart of the Internet for knowledge networking – the application creates excellent graphics which are then, with just 1-2 clicks, easily transferred into a blog or wiki or webpage (even into a learning management system). Moreover, chartle’s charts have a degree of interactivity (mousing over sections can reveal data). Thus, knowlede networking involves the use of multiple applications and services which, via code, interlink.

An example is the way that a participant in the knowledge network learning blogshop produced a review of Chartle, including an example in her blogpost.

What is great

Simply the range of charts, including ones that are interactive when clicked or moused-over. Plus it works without fuss. The concentration on graphic production means that students can easily try different kinds of display options having first collected (or even been given) the data.

Pedagogic Challenge

One of the most powerful teaching techniques we have is for students to be asked to ‘act as the teacher’, producing a small exercise that can then be completed by other students. Using Chartle, linked to a blog or even back into a learning management system, the challenge is to get students to create a chart, based on data either provided or generated by students, which then has a question attached: students work in pairs, creating a chart/question and then providing it to their colleague to complete. So, using Chartle (and indeed many such applications) challenges us to think again about the flow of information and the organisation of activities when sharing and creating work in a digital networked environment is so much easier than with pens and paper.

One scenario for using this tool

Making sense of data

Students in a small, advanced level chemistry unit conduct experiments to generate data; each student is responsible for  (note: while it is perfectly possible for students to complete this task using the applications for graphing built into spreadsheet and other software, the purpose of doing it online, using Chartle, is to more naturally link the work to online knowledge networking via embedding the result in a blog. The lecturer monitors all the blogs via an RSS feed, comments on the results and encourages discussion.

Chartle:

• creates digital artefacts that can then be embedded;
• is usable and efficient; and
• provides students with significant array of choice as to format.

Alternatives

Gliffy is a useful flow-chart creation tool; Onlinechart is good for data plots and graphs; Statplanet helps with geo-mapping data. To some extent, Chartle will cover all of these options and is strongest because of its range of tools and applications. Of course, there are many more: 32 applications are listed at the web design blog, 1st webdesigner.

Further discussion and concepts

Andrienko, N. and Andrienko, G. 2001. Intelligent Support for Geographic Data Analysis and Decision Making in the Web. Journal of Geographic Information and Decision Analysis
2001, 5.2: 115-128.

France, L. et al. 2006. Monitoring Virtual Classroom: Visualization Techniques to Observe Student Activities in an e-Learning System. 6th International Conference on Advanced Learning Technologies.

Shuyska, J. and Davies, C. 2008. ThinkSpace: the collaborative process of designing new technologies for the classroom. WikiSym ’08 Proceedings of the 4th International Symposium on Wikis