Social Explorer and the University of Illinois at Chicago have been awarded a $500,000 collaborative grant from the National Science Foundation for a project to try and improve undergraduates’ science skills using Social Explorer.

“We’re trying to train better social scientists — sociologists, historians, demographers, urban planners and criminologists,” said Josh Randinsky, assistant professor of the learning sciences in the UIC College of Education.

This project is called “Creating and Disseminating Tools to Teach with Demographic Data Maps and Materials.”  The grant will enable a research team to review and revise Social Explorer, develop new online curriculum modules for easier accessibility, train undergraduate faculty to teach new research techniques using the mapping technology, and integrate the tool into undergraduate social science classrooms.  Due to this and other funding we are able to keep Social Explorer
subscription prices for institutions relatively low.

Social Explorer is already in use in classrooms around the country and in conjunction with several social science textbooks published by Pearson Publishing.  To view Social Explorer’s example teaching modules, please visit the help page. We are interested in contacting those who use or would be willing to use Social Explorer in teaching to work with us on this project. Send a note to instructors@socialexplorer.com if you are interested.

Social Explorer was cited by the New York Times on a graphic piece that appeared on the front page of The New York Times website today.

To view Visit: http://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2009/03/10/us/20090310-immigration-explorer.html?hp

Another important update! Map version 12.6 release displays missing values with cross hatched lines and features that are not populated enough to compute a statistically significant outcome (our rule is less than 100 population count) are colored light gray.

Fig. 1 – Census tracts 1950, % Black Population. Notice New Jersey has missing data so it is crossed out, and some tracts in NY are grayed out because not enough people live there.

Over the weekend we updated maps to version 12.6. A few minor tweaks and additions, but they will make your map viewing more pleasant. We updated the streets layer to blend into the map a bit more and we are now using a single color for all streets so it is easier to distinguish them from other map features. I won’t bore you with details but take a look at the difference between version 12.5 and 12.6.

ver. 12.5

ver. 12.6