Thanks to both Eric Langhorst and Beth Still for tweeting the link to this amazing footage from Vortex2 of the tornado this past week in Wyoming. The most remarkable part of this video for me was this section which showed a “tornado within a tornado.”
I remember many years ago talking about tornados with my former Troop 74 Scoutmaster, Ray Hightower, and he told me about his theory that many destructive tornados actually have smaller vortexes inside them which do much of the damage we see from these storms. I’ve never forgotten him telling me about that, but until today I’d never seen video footage which supports that theory. Amazing.
It was a great blessing, as far as I’ve heard, that this tornado was out in the middle of no where and did not affect any populated areas.
Today was, without a doubt, the most adrenaline-inspiring drive on an Interstate highway I’ve experienced to date in my life. It’s ironic today’s experiences driving west on I-40 from Oklahoma City to Amarillo came on the heels of last night’s post, “The lure of iReporter fame encourages dangerous tornado chasing.” I was thinking as we saw tornadic winds directly over us on the Interstate that we weren’t stormchasing or seeking these experiences– we were just trying to get to Amarillo!
About 80 miles west of Amarillo we sighted what I thought must be a fairly well defined wall cloud. My wife was driving at the time, so I was able to snap a few photos and take some video before she finally pulled over under a bridge and had me take the wheel.
Generally I think most of our midwestern storms tend to track from southwest to northeast, but that did not seem to be the case with this storm today. This past Wednesday in Oklahoma City, we had tornados reported in the southern part of the county which tracked south. This storm today appeared to track south as well. I thought we were going to be fine and just skirt the southern edge of it as we stayed on Interstate 40. (The old Route 66.) I thought wrong.
I had photographed the wall cloud off to the northwest, and was working on printing some equipment labels for next week’s Celebrate Oklahoma Voices workshop. My wife told me to put down the label printer and look at the clouds. To my amazement, low, whiter scud clouds were not only moving south across the Interstate, but as we looked up they also were starting to rotate. Yikes!
I took this first video as we started to notice the lower clouds moving south over the Interstate.
This second video shows some of the rotation we saw today, directly above us on I-40. (A few more are available in my Flickr set from today’s drive.) This video doesn’t do the experience justice. It was pretty scary stuff.
After switching drivers under a bridge shortly after I took these videos from the passenger’s seat, the rain and wind got very strong and made visibility poor. We were able to drive out of the storm, thankfully, and came to the Texas rest area about 60 miles east of Amarillo. I took several photos of the storm off to the northeast and east from the parking lot. I thought this first image of the clouds behind the rest area was particularly striking.
Eventually we were able to drive completely out of the storm, but we were still under some ominous, overhanging dark clouds for 10 miles or so.
In the rest area, I briefly visited with some other travelers who were eastbound. They reported they had just seen FIVE tornados just north of I-40, close to Groom, Texas. I’ve never heard of five tornados coming out of the same storm, at the same time. I’ve heard about the 1979 Wichita Falls tornado, which was actually a tornado that started as three different twisters which combined forces to create a devastating F5. I can’t be sure, but I suspect the wall cloud I photographed initially may have been responsible for those tornados north of Groom.
Wednesday night I posted “Webstreaming Storm Trackers” to the ISTEconnects blog, and noted how webstreaming technologies along with more pervasive cell tower connectivity is empowering a new generation of storm trackers / storm chasers to broadcast “live” from the field as severe weather hits local communities. Actual storm spotters, in contrast to amateur storm chasers, perform a vital role during severe thunderstorms in providing on-site reporting about suspected tornados which have a characteristic, tornadic radar signature. According to NOAA’s official “Introduction to Storm Observation and Reporting” webpage:
Even with all the technology used by the National Weather Service to prepare severe weather warnings, storm spotters still give us the most complete picture of what’s really happening in and around severe storms. Radar simply cannot tell us everything we need to know. Storm spotters are the eyes and ears in the field.
For more than 60 years, storm spotters have been the Nation’s first line of defense against deadly storms. Working with their local communities and with the local National Weather Service office, spotters provide invaluable assistance and critical information to decision makers when hazardous weather threatens. Countless lives have been saved because of this unique partnership between volunteer storm spotters, emergency management and the National Weather Service.
For better or for worse, advances in mobile webstreaming and webcasting technologies have ushered in a day when increasing numbers of people are putting themselves in harms way and broadcasting the results, most likely hoping for publicity and a moment of fame for their shared video footage. While increased connectivity and video sharing can be used in positive, constructive ways, it also is and can be used in harmful ways which can encourage people to take foolish risks. The following story is a case in point.
This evening I watched the CNN iReport and subsequent interview over the phone with Missouri resident Michael Ambrosia, who rather recklessly got within about 50 feet of a tornado this past Wednesday in the video sequence he shared on the iReport website.
In his CNN interview, Michael reveals that a few minutes later after his iReport footage stopped, he drove further but stopped his car. The same tornado actually passed over his location, and he caught that moment on video. Michael posted that longer length video to his account on YouTube.
As humans, many of us seem to be psychologically wired to be interested and intrigued by video sequences like this. Clearly CNN producers know this, and although the CNN interviewer makes a statement at the end about viewers not endangering themselves to get footage for iReports, the implicit message here is, “This is exactly what we are looking for when it comes to citizen-produced media and journalism.” In some respects, I think it is unfortunate CNN chose to broadcast and amplify these moments of foolishness and poor judgement by Michael Ambrosia, since the rebroadcast of his video will likely encourage more people (probably young folks) to go out and attempt similar videography near tornados. This is a grim prediction, but I strongly suspect it is only a matter of time before we hear a news report about a tornado chaser with a flash-based camcorder who gets killed because s/he got too close to the storm. I hope that will not be the case, but it seems we’re on that sort of trajectory.
Michael Ambrosia: I’m glad you were not injured or killed as you took this footage on Wednesday of the tornado in Novinger, Missouri. I commend you for not using profanity in those moments of stress as the tornado actually passed over your location. I noticed you titled your re-posted video “My Tornado Encounter 13MAY09, lessons to learn” but you did not indicate in the video that you’d learned any lessons, or that any were there to learn. I suspect the lesson many people may learn from your experience is, “Hey, I need to get my own flash-based camcorder and get in my car next time there are tornados around, so I can get interviewed on CNN like Michael did.” While I think it can be a very positive thing to encourage people to become citizen journalists, I think it is also imperative that we emphasize ethics and good decision making in multiple contexts. I think you have a window of opportunity here to encourage others to use better judgement than you did on Wednesday, and be specific about what people should do. I would suggest this include:
1. Do not chase tornados unless you are traveling with others who are knowledgeable, experienced storm chasers and storm trackers using radios, radar, and other equipment to carefully monitor storm situations at all times.
2. Do not put your own life at risk to simply try and capture some video footage which may be memorable. Being an iReporter can be both fun and valuable for others, but it is not worth it to recklessly risk your life for video of a tornado. Life is precious, and no one’s life should be sacrificed for storm footage no matter how enthralling or exciting it might be.
— end of message for Michael —
Professional stormchasers are now trying (through June 14th) to capture better data than ever before about tornados and severe storms here in the midwest. See the CNN article from Thursday, “Scientists chasing killer tornadoes across Midwest” for more information about VORTEX2. According to the VORTEX2 website:
VORTEX2 is by far the largest and most ambitious effort ever made to understand tornadoes. We expect over 100 scientists and crew in up to 40 science and support vehicles to participate in this unique, fully nomadic, field program in May/June 2009-2010. The National Science Foundation (NSF) foundation and the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Adminstration (NOAA) together are contributing over $10 million towards this effort. Participants will be drawn from several universities, and several government and private organizations, and will be international including members from Italy, Netherlands, United Kingdom, Canada and Australia.
The basic questions are simple to ask, but hard to answer.
- How, when, and why do tornadoes form? Why some are violent and long lasting while others are weak and short lived?
- What is the structure of tornadoes? How strong are the winds near the ground? How exactly do they do damage?
- How can we learn to forecast tornadoes better? Current warnings have an only 13 minute average lead time and a 70% false alarm rate. Can we make warnings more accurate? Can we warn 30, 45, 60 minutes ahead?
It is great scientists are embarking on this study to better understand tornados, so more accurate predications as well as storm tracking can take place to protect and save lives. For those of us living in the midwest, I think it is an important “safety topic” to discuss how we should leave the tornado chasing and videography to the professionals, even though CNN likely wants more iReports like Michael’s.
I think this situation can provide a good case study / teachable moment for participants in our StoryChaser digital storytelling workshops / Celebrate Oklahoma Voices workshops. There are some very important safety lessons to learn here.
During the tornado warning, we were in a local Target store and had to take shelter inside the building with other customers as well as staff. I used my iPhone and the free Weather Channel application to monitor the local weather radar.
I was able to read the complete National Weather Service warnings and watches from the application as well. You can see the number “5″ on the screen indicates a lot of new NWS announcements had been made. Nights like tonight, it is unfortunately necessary to just turn off the weather radio because it seems like it goes off almost every 15 minutes. This basically defeats the idea of having a weather radio, but it becomes pretty annoying when it goes off so frequently for storms that are not coming our way directly. Such is life in the midwestern United States during the spring months.
Here are a few COV storm stories which have been created in the past year by Oklahoma teachers.
The Woodward Tornado by Andrew Boatman tells the story of the deadliest tornado in Oklahoma history. Andrew did a masterful job integrating historical images with his script, which includes personal, family anecdotes as well as “the facts” of the tornado. (2 min, 8 sec)
“Through the Lens of Human Compassion” by Vickie Hull brings out the wonderful ways members of the Cordell community came out in 2001 to support neighbors and friends after a catastrophic tornado. (3 min, 12 sec)
I’m sure these won’t be the last storm stories we share on Celebrate Oklahoma Voices. It can be unnerving to live in tornado alley this time of year, but at least we have better warning systems than ever to try and prevent the loss of life caused by natural disasters. It is wonderful to live in a community which can be so supportive and helpful in a time of crisis. I’ve found midwestern friendliness to be a trademark of both Texas and Oklahoma, as well as Kansas where I grew up. When people comment about the friendliness of midwesterners they aren’t kidding. Not only can midwesterners be friendly, we can also be big-hearted, especially when tragedy strikes a family or an entire community. It is great to be able to help teachers document and share these stories with our state and world.
I’ve created a new presentation and workshop I’m calling, “Geo-StoryChasing.” I’ve listed a variety of mobile audio, video, and photo sharing options (many supporting geolocation) on the wiki curriculum page I started. If you know of others I should include, please let me know by commenting here. This is the short description for this session:
Lots of stories are connected to places. Sometimes we can recount and share a story better when we are in a specific location, on-site. This session presents tools and projects focused on creating and sharing digital stories connected to specific places. Most of these can be used with cell phones and are ideal for student field trips or other travel opportunities.
I may rename my breakout session at PodStock in a few weeks and present this session.
While linking up tools for the workshop/presentation wiki, I learned GabCast has added two new features: Users can limit the maximum time for phone calls, and also remove the “feature” which tells callers to a channel how many minutes remain in the channel:
One of the highlights of my day yesterday in Rotorua, New Zealand, was visiting Te Puia and seeing the mud pools as well as geyser basin. This was an introductory “welcome” video I recorded in the morning from my hotel balcony, overlooking part of the crater lake of Rotorua.
I am now COMPLETELY sold on the value and utility of flash-based camcorders. I took 24 video clips (1.5 minutes long and less) at Te Puia, but have not had the time and bandwidth to upload all of them to Flickr yet. I have, however, uploaded my photos from yesterday at Te Puia.
Some daring kids were actually swimming in the pool just below this geyser as it erupted yesterday. We considered joining them, but in the end decided not to. This is certainly a scene we wouldn’t see at Yellowstone National Park. The kids were having a GREAT time. What an exciting place to swim!
Here are two videos of the geyser eruption as well as the mud pools at Te Puia.
In addition to seeing geothermal features at Te Puia, we also learned a great deal about Maori culture from our tour guide, including information about Maori traditional woodcarving and weaving.
I hadn’t realized the Maoris were cannibals. I found the history of the Moa in New Zealand particularly interesting this trip. Like the Dodo, the Moa is now an extinct bird. The Maoris ate the moa until it was extinct, however, whereas European visitors were the scourge of the Dodo on Mauritius.
Today was another marvelous day in New Zealand. Thanks to the generosity and kindness of friends, I had an opportunity to realize a dream: I saw and stood near the actual landscape setting for “Edoras” in the film trilogy “The Lord of the Rings.” Mount Sunday is located near Mt Potts Sheep Station in the Rangitata Valley of New Zealand’s south island. It is surrounded by mountains in a broad river valley which must be between two and three kilometers across. The weather was rainy down on the Canterbury plains, but thankfully there were some breaks once we got up nearer to the mountains. The mountain peaks were still obscured, but we were able to see Mt Sunday as well as the broader Rangitata Valley. It was amazing to see this spectacular valley in person.
We drove up a highway which eventually become an unimproved (gravel) mountain road and took us to Mt Potts Sheep Station near Mt Sunday. Before hiking closer to the site of Edoras, we drove further up the road to Erewhon Sheep station. Erewhon was named by Samuel Butler, who published a book titled “Erewhon” anonymously in 1872. According to our guide today, Butler was the first white man to settle at the sheep station in the Rangitata Valley now known as “Mesopotamia,” and gave the sheep station “Erewhon” further up the valley its name.
Erewhon sheep station is just about a two hour drive from Geraldine, but it is EXCEPTIONALLY remote! The geography here is absolutely stunning. I wish we could have had clearer views of the continental divide and surrounding mountains today, but given that it COULD have been much worse with more rain I’m delighted we were able to see everything we did. Our guide drives further up the actual river bed above Erewhon in his four wheel drive with friends and then hikes from there to the continental divide. THAT is some amazing off road driving!
I posted about 130 photos of this area to a Flickr set I titled “Edoras and Erewhon,” along with about 80 photos in and around Geraldine. Although the cattle industry is booming here now, there are still a LOT of sheep in New Zealand!
This is a photo of cattle with Mt Sunday (Edoras) in the background. This wasn’t a scene you saw in “The Lord of the Rings!”
After around a 12 hour flight from Los Angeles, I arrived safely in Auckland, New Zealand, on Monday morning (today) around 6 am. My flight from Auckland to Christchurch was uneventful, and I spent most of the day exploring Christchurch with my host mum (AFS 1987) Shirley. I recorded a two minute Qik video (with Shirley’s help) this evening over her DSL connection in Geraldine, summarizing the day’s events. The Google Map feature of Qik did NOT work for this video, however, since I’m not turning my “phone” on in New Zealand for fear of high roaming charges.
Flying from Auckland to Christchurch, I was impressed with the views of both the Cook Strait (which separates the North and South Islands of New Zealand) as well as views of the Canterbury Plains as we approached Christchurch.
This photo is of north Canterbury. I was surprised to learn that in south Canterbury, near Geraldine, much of the farmland is now being used to raise diary cows instead of sheep. Large corporate farms are buying out individual farmers, in a scenario which reminds me of farming trends in the U.S. heartland. There are pivots (irrigation sprinklers) all over, reminiscent of the farmland around Lubbock, Texas. In addition to being surprised by the cows (which have replaced sheep in many fields) the weather is also unexpected! It feels more like winter than summer here. Interestingly, the weather back home in Oklahoma looks to be more like late spring than winter. Have our seasons flipped?!
One of the highlights of the day was certainly touring the cathedral in downtown Christchurch. (Those photos are still uploading to Flickr so I can’t link any of them yet.) In all took about 250 photos today on my iPhone and Sony GSC-1 Flash camera, including photos at the International Antarctic Centre in Christchurch. We saw blue penguins, which are native to New Zealand, as well as learned a great deal about the international scientific work continuing in Antarctica. All flights bound for the international research center in Antarctica leave from this center in Christchurch.
I absolutely LOVE mountains. As a “flatlander” growing up in Kansas and spending most of my adult life living the midwest in Texas and Oklahoma, I don’t get a chance to see scenes like this one which I photographed yesterday with my iPhone out the window of our Southwest Airlines flight, on the descent into the Portland airport.
I’ve submitted this photo and several others to the Southwest Airlines Flickr Group. As you can see, newly submitted photos have to be approved by individuals moderating the group. This is further proof of why I love Southwest Airlines: They are an innovative and cutting edge company.
Is this a beautiful sight to see or what? According to WikiPedia, “Mount Hood’s snow-covered peak rises 11,249 feet (3,429 m) and is home to twelve glaciers.” I wish I had time for a closer look on this trip, but I don’t think it’s going to happen.
As we continued on our descent into Portland, we flew directly by and over the Columbia River, which was used by Lewis and Clark on their famous expedition west to reach the Pacific by land. This image shows the Columbia near Portland. Again according to WikiPedia, “The river is 1,243 miles (2,000 km) long, and its drainage basin is 258,000 square miles (670,000 km2). Measured by the volume of its flow, the Columbia is the largest river flowing into the Pacific from North America and is the fourth-largest river in the U.S.” We don’t have any rivers this size in Oklahoma!
I was seated on the left side of the plane, so as we turned east (towards Mt Hood) I was able to catch a glimpse of cloud-shrouded Mount St Helens to the north. Awesome!
Portland is a beautiful place! According to the hotel travel guide, the USGS rates the chances of Mt Hood (a “dormant” volcano) erupting as “a 3 to 7 percent chance within the next 30 years.” I think the Cascade range is one of most beautiful and breathtaking mountain ranges I’ve ever seen. Some day I hope to hike and climb in the Cascades with my family.
This podcast is a bit of an ecclectic mix of ideas, song snippets, and educational project ideas. Foundationally, these relate to the idea that we’re going to have an enduring need to help younger students as well as older learners use digital tools in powerful, appropriate, and constructive ways. Whether we use the words citizen journalist, digital witness, storychaser, or ethical digital citizen, the ideas of responsibly using media to publish at will on the global stage of the Internet are included. The prospect of the Heartland Flyer Amtrak train being extended from Oklahoma City to Kansas City in less than two years will open up some exciting possibilities for a summer digital media travel experience for teachers and students in Missouri, Kansas, Oklahoma and Texas. The Storychaser’s Peace Train would begin in Saint Louis and end in Fort Worth, providing opportunities for student-teacher teams to develop and refine their own storychasing skills alongside others from around our nation. Stopping in small, rural communities along the way to learn local history and interview community members, to videoconference “live” back to home communities via satellite-based videoconferencing units, and “sharing the journey” with others via photo sharing, video sharing, and blogging would all be part of the Storychaser’s Peace Train experience. Who knows where these dreams and our digital connections will take us in the months and years ahead? Perhaps the Storychaser’s Peace Train will be passing through a small town near you soon.
I love these types of mashups involving storychasing (citizen journalism and digital storytelling) with geographic maps. Geotagged content offers great opportunities for exploratory learning.
This is a GREAT piece of news for our family, and possibly for yours if like us you LOVE TRAINS and travel in the midwestern United States. We’re getting closer to restored passenger rail service between Oklahoma City and Kansas City!
This past Saturday afternoon, we had the pleasure of taking a driving trolley tour in Guthrie, Oklahoma, which is about 20 minutes north of where we live in Edmond. Our driver had recently taken the Heartland Flyer Amtrak train from Oklahoma City to Fort Worth and then on to San Antonio, and he gave us an update on a proposed extension of Amtrak train service.
This past summer, our family took the Heartland Flyer from Oklahoma City to Fort Worth to visit Six Flags and loved it. Riding a train (as the person who normally does most of the driving in our family) was a WONDERFUL experience! We had more leg and chair room than you typically have in “coach class” on an airplane, there was the snack bar on the first level of our car, and we could do whatever we wanted: talk, listen, day dream, sleep, look out the window, read a book, listen to music, or watch a movie on an iPod. As a bonus, no one had to wear a seat belt!
Our driver in Guthrie Saturday told us that when he was in San Antonio, Amtrak folks he talked to said the Oklahoma City to Kansas City extension of the Heartland Flyer Amtrak run is “a done deal.” This hearsay is supported (although less definitively) by the December 4, 2008, Edmond Sun article “Edmond on list for Amtrak study” which reported:
Edmond is one step closer to being included in a proposed 606-mile passenger rail route from Fort Worth to Oklahoma City to Kansas City. The Kansas Department of Transportation and Amtrak have agreed on the scope of an Amtrak expansion feasibility study, officials said Thursday. Intermediate Oklahoma cities identified for the study are: Ponca City, Perry, Guthrie, Edmond, Oklahoma City, Norman, Purcell, Pauls Valley, Davis and Ardmore. Amtrak officials said being in the study is not a commitment by the city or the states for the cities to host a station.
This is GREAT news! It would be particularly great if Amtrak would put in a station in Strong City, Kansas, just north of Cottonwood Falls.
Proposed stops in Kansas include Lawrence, Topeka, and Newton as top contenders. Other new stations suggested include Emporia, Strong City, Wichita, and either Winfield or Arkansas City.
A Strong City Amtrak station would be about a half-hour from my hometown of Manhattan, Kansas, where my parents live. It would be SO COOL (as well as relaxing) to be able to head “to grandmother’s house” for the holidays BY TRAIN in a year or so!
My fingers are crossed! Go Amtrak! Make the Oklahoma City to Kansas City passenger train connection! This is something I think I’ll write our state legislators about, since it will apparently be up to them after this feasibility study is completed in 2009.
If and when this OKC to KC Amtrak line is active, I’m going to book a face-to-face field trip to see Eric Langhorst and his 8th grade US History class in Liberty, Missouri! My sister and family are moving to Kansas City next summer too, so this railway line could be a GREAT physical connector for our family and theirs! I also think this rail line could be of great potential benefit to the StoryChasers project.
“The 21 Steps” by Charles Cumming is a wonderful example of a multi-part, text-based digital story related as a Google Maps mashup. More background information about this story is available on Charles’ blog. Unfortunately the story does not appear to be embeddable, so you’ll have to click the story link itself to view it.
This story is part of the “We Tell Stories” site, which according to the project’s about page is the:
most ambitious digital writing project to date [of Penguin UK involving] top authors to create new forms of story - designed specially for the internet.
This past week I used my Garmin GPS unit in the air on my flight back from Boston and MASSCUE to Oklahoma City, as well as on a drive today from OKC up to Kansas for Ron Prince’s final football game as head coach at Kansas State. This was the first time I’ve used the GPS unit in the air. This photo shows our altitude at 25,958 feet above sea level on our descent into the Oklahoma City area:
One of my classmates from the Air Force Academy used to fly U-2s at Beale AFB in California, and flew T-38s for proficiency. He told me back in the late 1990s (I think it was around 1998) that his handheld Garmin GPS unit was far superior to the antiquated guidance avionics in the T-38, so he actually used his GPS unit for navigational purposes. I found that amazing.
That was probably the second time I’d heard about using a handheld GPS in the air for flight navigation. When I lived and studied in Mexico City during 1992-93, I flew up to San Antonio at one point with a state department official who was also assigned to the U.S. embassy in Mexico City. He was a co-owner of a private plane, and we were joined by a former Air America pilot who was in private business in Mexico. I remember two main things about our flight:
The former Air America pilot had loaded a bunch of large, ceramic pots into the back of our small aircraft. The state department pilot was concerned the weight limit for our aircraft might be exceeded by this additional cargo. (Density altitude should be a concern of every pilot, of course.) I remember the Air America pilot telling the state department official, “Don’t worry, it looks fine. We’ll be good.” And with that evaluation, we went ahead and took off… We didn’t have any problems on the flight to San Antonio… thankfully! It was a bit hair raising to fly in a small plane with a pilot taking advice which amounted to “kick the tires and light the fires” — It certainly made for a memorable trip!
I also remember that the state department official used a handheld GPS unit to navigate us from the airport near of Mexico City into San Antonio. Those were the days when “selective availability” for GPS was still enabled, which was “intentional, slowly changing random errors of up to a hundred meters (328 ft) in the publicly available navigation signals.” Knowing we were using a civilian GPS receiver, I was a little concerned we were relying exclusively on GPS for navigation and not even using an alternative like VOR navigation as a backup. Thankfully, everything turned out just fine for our flight.
Traveling with a GPS unit can be enlightening. The GPS unit calculates your live groundspeed, and it’s a lot more impressive to watch speed statistics in a commercial airliner than in a private automobile. This photo shows our groundspeed was 516 miles per hour on our descent into Oklahoma City!
Last summer, when we were driving as a family to camp in New Mexico, my son was using our GPS unit and one point and was monitoring our speed. It was a different experience to hear him ask from the back seat, “Dad, what is the speed limit here?” That question was followed up by him informing me of my current groundspeed, according to the GPS unit. A new type of family accountability on a road trip!
I thought of my GPS unit when I was flying from Minneapolis down to Oklahoma City Wednesday night this week, and I looked out the window to see the lights of a large city. My GPS unit shows cities in close proximity to my current location, and I was able to figure out I was looking down at the lights of Wichita, Kansas. Very cool.
Today as I drove up to Manhattan, Kansas, I pulled out my GPS unit again and compared the calculated groundspeed to the speed shown on my speedometer. My GPS unit indicated that my speedometer is about 4 mph slow.
My geocaching experiences with my GPS unit have been pretty limited to date. (1 - 2 - 3) The power of GPS is stunning, however. I hope in the years to come as my kids go further in Boy and Girl Scouting we’ll use GPS together more. When we’re on vacation together, hopefully we can make time to do more geocaching!
ClustrMaps and feedjit.com continue to be my two favorite tools for tracking website visitors. Feedjit provides real-time visitor tracking showing not only the countries associated with web visitors’ IP addresses, but also the web browser, computer operating system, and search site the visitor used (if any) to link to your website. If a search query was used, that is also shown.
ClustrMaps shows a graphical geographic distribution of website visitors, which (since I pay for a “plus” account) is clickable to enlarge each continent individually. ClustrMaps (which I’ve snapped to Flickr fairly often in the past few years) never cease to amaze and humble me.
Tonight I noticed ClustrMaps has added a new feature: textual lists of “Current Country Totals” for a particular website. This is a different presentation of geographic web visitor data from that previously presented by either Feedjit or ClustrMaps.
United States (US) 10,704
Canada (CA) 765
United Kingdom (GB) 661
Australia (AU) 366
India (IN) 161
Germany (DE) 128
New Zealand (NZ) 104
Philippines (PH) 98
Netherlands (NL) 92
Singapore (SG) 83
China (CN) 69
France (FR) 69
Italy (IT) 67
Spain (ES) 64
Brazil (BR) 58
Thailand (TH) 57
Norway (NO) 53
Malaysia (MY) 51
Sweden (SE) 50
Mexico (MX) 50
Turkey (TR) 48
Ireland (IE) 42
Poland (PL) 41
Indonesia (ID) 40
Korea, Republic of (KR) 37
Denmark (DK) 34
Hong Kong (HK) 34
Belgium (BE) 34
Japan (JP) 32
Switzerland (CH) 32
Greece (GR) 31
Romania (RO) 30
United Arab Emirates (AE) 30
Taiwan (TW) 28
Pakistan (PK) 28
South Africa (ZA) 25
Portugal (PT) 25
Israel (IL) 21
Russian Federation (RU) 20
Czech Republic (CZ) 20
Saudi Arabia (SA) 20
Finland (FI) 20
Egypt (EG) 18
Europe (EU) 17
Bulgaria (BG) 17
Colombia (CO) 16
Austria (AT) 16
Hungary (HU) 14
Argentina (AR) 13
Slovakia (SK) 13
Vietnam (VN) 13
Iran, Islamic Republic of (IR) 13
Puerto Rico (PR) 12
Slovenia (SI) 11
Trinidad and Tobago (TT) 11
Qatar (QA) 10
Venezuela (VE) 10
Jamaica (JM) 10
Chile (CL) 9
Ecuador (EC) 9
Morocco (MA) 9
Lithuania (LT) 8
Serbia (RS) 7
Cyprus (CY) 7
Peru (PE) 6
Kuwait (KW) 6
Bahrain (BH) 6
Oman (OM) 6
Latvia (LV) 6
Croatia (HR) 6
Kenya (KE) 5
Costa Rica (CR) 5
Estonia (EE) 5
Ukraine (UA) 4
Sudan (SD) 4
Bangladesh (BD) 4
Iceland (IS) 4
El Salvador (SV) 3
Panama (PA) 3
Guam (GU) 3
Azerbaijan (AZ) 3
Bosnia and Herzegovina (BA) 3
Honduras (HN) 3
Virgin Islands, U.S. (VI) 3
Nigeria (NG) 3
Brunei Darussalam (BN) 3
Belarus (BY) 3
Barbados (BB) 3
Uruguay (UY) 2
Tanzania, United Republic of (TZ) 2
Swaziland (SZ) 2
Sri Lanka (LK) 2
Moldova, Republic of (MD) 2
Macedonia (MK) 2
Syrian Arab Republic (SY) 2
Dominica (DM) 2
Palestinian Territory (PS) 2
Tunisia (TN) 2
Lebanon (LB) 2
Saint Vincent and the Grenadines (VC) 2
Georgia (GE) 2
Jordan (JO) 1
Zimbabwe (ZW) 1
Libyan Arab Jamahiriya (LY) 1
Macau (MO) 1
Namibia (NA) 1
Dominican Republic (DO) 1
Faroe Islands (FO) 1
Turks and Caicos Islands (TC) 1
Cuba (CU) 1
Cayman Islands (KY) 1
Haiti (HT) 1
Antigua and Barbuda (AG) 1
Rwanda (RW) 1
Algeria (DZ) 1
Guyana (GY) 1
Turkmenistan (TM) 1
Senegal (SN) 1
Ethiopia (ET) 1
Guatemala (GT) 1
Malta (MT) 1
Grenada (GD) 1
Luxembourg (LU) 1
Afghanistan (AF) 1
Asia/Pacific Region (AP) 1
Suriname (SR) 1
Monaco (MC) 1
This data pastes nicely and directly into Excel, which can readily generate a pie chart like the following:
Again, this represents a visually different way of viewing visitor data which can be more insightful and meaningful than simply viewing tabular data. Data visualization is VERY important in lots of contexts. Visual literacy is important to understand, and I think we need to spend more time helping and encouraging students to cultivate their own skills of expression and communication with visual media.
If you are not already, consider using ClustrMaps and Feedjit on your classroom website, wiki, or blog page to track visitors. Periodically challenge students to visually represent and explain the data included in these sites in a variety of ways. Using these sites can not only potentially foster greater interest and excitement in web publishing, it can also provide good teachable moments for geography, graphing, and data visualization strategies important for 21st century learners to understand both as content consumers as well as media creators.
Wesley Fryer is the author of Moving at the Speed of Creativity. DISCLAIMER: The opinions expressed herein are my own and not necessarily those of my employer(s). See my disclosure policy for more info. I am wfryer on Diigo.
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