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The study explores students production of interactive visualized stories with visual analytics (VA). The aim is to understand emerging interactions in classrooms of grades 7-9 students when visual storytelling methods are playing a part in producing social science content. The dual aspects of visual literacy, information retrievement paired with the creation of interactive visualized stories, are crucial. Video captures of students working in groups and of what happens on their screens are conducted. The results show that students can handle the technical aspects of a VA application, but interpretation of visualized statistics is challenging. The study suggests that VA has potential to strengthen students ability to handle huge amounts of data and increase the possibilities for young people to take part in society.

The aim of this paper is to understand emerging learning conditions, when a visual analytics is implemented and used in K 12 (education). To date, little attention has been paid to the role visual analytics (digital media and technology that highlight visual data communication in order to support analytical tasks) can play in education, and to the extent to which these tools can process actionable data for young students. This study was conducted in three public K 12 schools, in four social science classes with students aged 10 to 13 years, over a period of two to four weeks at each school. Empirical data were generated using video observations and analyzed with help of metaphors within Actor-network theory (ANT). The learning conditions are found to be distinguished by broad complexity, characterized by four dimensions. These emerge from the actors’ deeply intertwined relations in the activities. The paper argues in relation to the found dimensions that novel approaches to teaching and learning could benefit students’ knowledge building as they work with visual analytics, analyzing visualized data.

In a world of massively mediated information and communication, ordinary educational models might fail in both using those tools to improve education and to prepare the students for their future. Therefore this on-going research project investigates how a Visual Analytics (VA) and tools for Knowledge Visualization (KV) in school settings (within social science as school subject) could be combined to generate synergies in a learning process which not only aims at unveiling hidden facts but also to develop knowledge that includes all its accompanying facets such as experiences, attitudes, perspectives and opinions. The aim is to explain how VA together with KV interfere and can shape learning in social science classes in K 12 schools (from visualization on the screens to a growing body of personal knowledge). Another aim is to develop guidelines for didactic design and develop a web-based information visualization and visual analytics framework for educational purposes. The study is conducted in K 12 schools and empirical data is gathered through three case studies. The results will contribute to knowledge about visual literacy and its relations to different didactic designs. Researchers in the field of VA and KV can as well be supported in their questions to construct useful tools for these kind of analyse processes and different ways of knowledge formation.

The aim of this paper is to understand emerging learning conditions, when a visual analytics is implemented and used in K 12 (education). To date, little attention has been paid to the role visual analytics (digital media and technology that highlight visual data communication in order to support analytical tasks) can play in education, and to the extent to which these tools can process actionable data for young students. This study was conducted in three public K 12 schools, in four social science classes with students aged 10 to 13 years, over a period of two to four weeks at each school. Empirical data were generated using video observations and analyzed with help of metaphors by Latour. The learning conditions are found to be distinguished by broad complexity characterized by four dimensions. These emerge from the actors’ deeply intertwined relations in the activities. The paper argues in relation to the found dimensions that novel approaches to teaching and learning could benefit students’ knowledge building as they work with visual analytics, analyzing visualized data.

The aim of this compilation thesis is to understand how technology for visual storytelling can be shaped and used in relation to social science education in primary school, but also how social dimensions, technical and other matters create emerging learning conditions in such an educational setting. The visual storytelling technology introduced and used in the study is ‘the Statistics eXplorer platform, a geovisual analytics. The choice of theoretical perspectives to inform and guide the study is a socio-cultural view of human action, but also actor network theory is used to take account also of activities of technology and other matters. The study builds on three empirical materials that generate data from 16 social science teachers, and 126 students from five social science classrooms, in three Swedish primary schools. It contains field notes from the introduction of the technology; focusgroup interviews with teachers; think-aloud interviews with students and two kinds of video recordings from the classrooms (with an ordinary video camera and with software that capture activities at the computer screen, students’ activities and the audio as well). The analysis shows that the visual storytelling technology is shaped in relevant ways for social science teachers. The analysis also illustrates that the visual educational material are usable for primary school students in their social science education. They illustrate further how teachers, students, technology, information, tasks, data types, etc. together and in in close relation create highly complex learning conditions. The technology can therefore be seen as appropriate for the educational practice, but the complexity together with students’ apprehension of how to announce knowledge distribute severe problem spaces in the learning activities. The technology can therefore be assumed as a catalyst for educational change, but to achieve its potentials, reflections on didactic design and knowledge formation is request, Syftet i denna avhandling är, att förstå hur teknik för visual storytelling kan vara utformad och användas i relation till samhällsorienterande undervisning i grundskolan (årskurs 4 – 6), men också hur sociala dimensioner, tekniska och andra faktorer skapar villkor för lärande i ett sådant undervisningssammanhang. I studien introduceras datavisualiseringsteknik för visual storytelling: ‘the Statistics eXplorer platform’, ett geovisual analytics. Den teoretiska referensramen har sin grund i ett social konstruktionistiskt synsätt Ett socio-kulturellt perspektiv används för att analysera social aktivitet, men även aktörnätverks teori används för att analysera både sociala och materiella aktörer. Avhandlingen bygger på tre empiriska material som genereras med hjälp av 16 lärare i samhällsorienterande ämnen, och 126 elever tillhörande fem olika klassrum i tre olika svenska grundskolor. Materialet innehåller: fältanteckningar ifrån introduktion av tekniken, fokusgrupps-intervjuer med lärare, ‘tänka högt’-intervjuer med elever och två sorters videoinspelningar ifrån klassrum (dels med vanlig videokamera och dels med mjukvara som spelar in aktiviteter på datorskärmen och elevernas aktiviteter vid datorn, liksom ljudet). Analysen visar hur lärare, elever, teknik, information, uppgifter, data-typer, etc. tillsammans, i nära samarbete i de studerade klassrummen, skapar mycket komplexa villkor för lärande. De läraktiviteter som uppstår i klassrummen där teknik för visuell analys inkluderas, erbjuder elever support att: hantera stora datamängder, bli delaktiga i olika läraktiviteter och uppnå olika utbildningsmål, men även andra sorters elevrelaterade mål. Därför kan tekniken sägas vara relevant för denna sorts undervisning. Vidare visar analysen hur komplexiteten tillsammans med elevernas uppfattningar av hur kunskap skall visas, skapar påtagliga ‘problem spaces’ i läraktiviteterna. Lärandevillkoren kan därför förstås som en klassrumspraktik som inte fullt ut överensstämmer med

Bokens kapitel handlar om hur barn lär sig språk och kommunikation, naturvetenskap och teknik, samt estetik i förskolan. Alla kapitel är baserade på olika empiriska och praktiknära studier från förskolans värld.Bokens inledande kapitel problematiserar barndom, lärande och ämnesdidaktik i dagens Sverige och belyser frågor kring barndom och förskola i förändring och förskolan som utvecklings- och läromiljö. I bokens avslutande och sammanfattande kapitel diskuterar bokens redaktörer det som undersökts i de olika studierna i relation till dagens krav på en mer kunskapsorienterad förskola.

This paper presents an ongoing research project of use and learning with geographic information visualization and Visual Storytelling (geovisual analytics) in education. The fully developed study will be applied in school settings in order to 1) customize the application for educational purpose, 2) improve the teaching in social science and 3) study teachers and students experiences and learning. - The application "Open Statistics eXplorer" will be used to improve the students knowledge and understanding of sophisticated statistical relations, - Teachers will be able to, individually and together, develop a dynamic teaching material through storytelling, through the web, - Students will be able to, with help of powerful geographical statistics, explore statistical relations on their own. A better understanding of how educators and their students can elicit deeper user understanding and participation by exploiting dynamic web-enabled statistics visualization is of importance. Results from an usability study in this project are promising. Together with the associated science of perception in learning in relation to the use of multidimensional spatio-temporal statistical data this research will contribute to the research fields of geovisual analytics as well as educational science.

It is vital to understand what kind of processes for learning that Geovisual Analytics creates, as certain activities and conditions are produced when employing Geovisual Anlytic tools in education. To understand learning processes created by Geovisual Analytics, first requires an understanding of the interactions between the technology, the workplace where the learning takes place, and learners’ specific knowledge formation. When studying these types of interaction it demands a most critical consideration from theoretical perspectives on research design and methods. This paper first discusses common, and then a more uncommon, theoretical approach used within the fields of learning with multimedia environments and Geovisual Analytics, the socio-cultural theoretical perspective. The paper next advocates this constructivist theoretical and empirical perspective when studying learning with multiple representational Geovisual Analytic tools. To illustrate, an outline of a study made within this theoretical tradition is offered. The study is conducted in an educational setting where the Open Statistics eXplorer platform is used. Discussion of our study results shows that the socio-cultural perspective has much to offer in terms of what kind of understanding can be reached in conducting this kind of studies. Therefore, we argue that empirical research to analyze how specific communities use various Geovisual Analytics to evaluate information is best positioned in a socio-cultural theoretical perspective.(This article belongs to the Special Issue Geovisual Analytics)

Official statistics are used as a more or less important background for decisions especially in public planning and policy making. However, in education, official statistics are much less recognized and used than they could be and among the informed public they are even less used. Web-enabled Geovisual Analytics is a technique that can help illustrating spatio-temporal statistical data which for the eye are hard to uncover or even are not possible to perceive or interpret. We introduce novel “storytelling” means for the educator to 1) select any spatio-temporal and multidimensional national or sub-national statistical data, 2) explore and discern trends and patterns, 3) then orchestrate and describe metadata, 4) collaborate with colleagues to confirm and 5) finally publish essential gained insight and knowledge embedded as dynamic visualization “Vislet” in blogs or wikis with associate metadata. The educator can guide the reader in the directions of both context and discovery while at the same time follow the analyst’s way of logical reasoning. This emerging technology could in many ways change the terms and structures for learning, especially for the young generation. A better understanding of how educators and students can exploit visualization and its associated science of perception and learning is the focus of this paper in relation to the use of official statistical data. The results show that the geovisual analytics can be effective for students and it is easy for them to understand and control the interactive tools. It is sufficient for supporting the apprehension of connections between different kinds of statistical data. The user satisfaction and learning possibilities are extensive.