Category: Tech Camp

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The second session of Tech Camp is underway

Tech Camp is back from hiatus, and the next six weeks will be packed with digital storytelling adventures. (And maybe those microwave s’mores I promised back in May.) We’ll revisit a few tools we covered last month and add some new ones to the mix. This afternoon, we’ll focus on  Infogr.am, something I suspect resembles the layout software of the future.

We’re starting here for several reasons. Infogr.am is less buggy than many of the other tools on the agenda, and it’s fairly simple to use. It also allows for a nice mix of data and visuals — two of the major elements shaping digital storytelling. To see what I mean, check out this little project I thew together a few weeks ago.

You can, of course, bring your own data and visuals to camp, or use some of the numbers here or here. If neither of those topics is appealing, do a bit of  Google research to compare the number of seats in Fenway with the number of seats in Yankee Stadium. To find visuals, use the Creative Commons search interface, and be sure to credit the author somewhere in your project. When you’re done, post a link to your Infogr.am in the comment section.

 

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Meograph is a little bit of everything

A typical Meograph frame combines an image, a map, text and audio.
A typical Meograph frame combines an image, a map, text and audio.

It’s been a busy summer so far for tech campers. We’ve played with mapping, turned flat photos into interactive presentations and built timelines. This week’s tool allows us to combined these techniques on a single platform. It’s called Meograph, and it has the potential to produce results like these.

Users build presentations using photos, videos, narration, dates and locations. Unlike some of the other tools we’ve looked at this summer, many files can be uploaded — or, in the case of audio, recorded — directly into Meograph. As you can see from this video, it takes just a few minutes to assemble a basic presentation:

Meograph is still in beta, so it doesn’t always behave exactly as you might expect. That said, the support team is responsive to questions and open to suggestions. To reach the team, use the little chat box in lower right corner of the Meograph website.

Here’s a quick little production tracking my cat’s weekend road trip to upstate New York. (Does that mean it’s a Meow-graph?) It’s rough in a few places, but we’re going to smooth it out together at today’s tech camp.

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Tech Camp: Tomorrow’s layout software today

I made this with Infogr.am. Click for the interactive version.
I made this with Infogr.am. Click for the interactive version.

I love finding new ways to tell stories online, but sometimes the results feel a little unpolished — especially with projects that require combining different kinds of visual elements. That’s one reason why I was so excited to discover Infogr.am, a web-based program that allows users to create simple interactive graphics and arrange them in templates with photos, video and text.

This tool is pretty close to how I imagine layout software of the future: Content is content, and it’s up to users to decide how to use it best. The templates are lovely and the logic behind them is sophisticated enough to manipulate simple datasets into something meaningful. Color pallets have never been my strength, but it seems like Infogr.am has enough options to work with pretty much any design.

Here’s a mashup I put together last week that looks at how American food prices have changed in the last 100 years. I use Google’s data search interface to find the numbers and this Creative Commons search hub to pick a photo. (The topic, by the way, was inspired by The World’s What’s for Lunch project.)

There are at least two other similar tools out there: Easel.ly and Visua.ly, although the latter is pretty locked down in its free form.  This type of platform could be useful to journalists of all kinds, but I see it as a tool that would be especially powerful on social media. Awesome print graphics often lose something when they’re cropped for the web, and can look even less exciting on Facebook. Tools like Infogr.am mean social media editors can rebuild those graphics in a digitally native environment made to draw readers into the larger story.

If you’d like to test drive Infogr.am, try building a presentation that allows users to see average annual rainfall across Massachusetts.  Use this spreadsheet, which is from the NOAA National Climatic Data Center. For photos and video, use the Creative Commons search hub listed above. When you’re done, paste a link to your work in the comments section below this post.