Hey ya’ll (I’m from Kentucky), I’m Kevin Flora, the owner of EdMatics. I am a doctoral student at the University of Kentucky in the Interdisciplinary program of Educational Studies. Essentially, I am less than two years away from being out of school and permanently in a career.
Rad Resource – EdMatics: The EdMatics blog is focused on data visualization and informatics issues within the field of education. The scope is beginning to broaden as my interests, skills, and knowledge base grows. The content may focus on evaluating visualization one day and displaying best practices the next. The blog is also host to my portfolio (as small as it is), along with current research projects that I am involved in right now. If you would like to be a guest contributor to EdMatics, please contact me and express your interest. Again, I am looking to broaden the scope of the blog, so I would love to hear about your possible contributions!
Hot Tips – favorite posts: The blog is still young, but the interest level is increasing on a daily basis. Visualization and Informatics has not been explored heavily in the field of education, making for a “carve-my-own-trail” kind of experience. Here are 3 of my favorite posts to date:
- 11/29/2012 – Smart Tagging: My newest project focuses on helping the field of education conduct quicker searches for content related to specific needs. The post discusses more details pertaining to this project and will follow with a research agenda and implementation.
- 10/26/2012 – Infographics: Fad of Our Times?: I’ve remained skeptical of infographics from day one, but I’ve started asking the tough questions… am I wrong, or are infographics a fad of our times?
- 5/17/2011 – Enriched Environments for Students: This post looks at the future of enriched environments for students and the intersection with data visualization.
Lessons Learned – why I blog: EdMatics is a blog that is essentially a professional journal of ideas, thoughts, research, and projects. Information is added to the blogosphere in order to attract deep thinking, build collaboration, and shift mindsets into a new area within education. The audience ranges from current K-12 educators to world-renown visualization specialists. I blog because I love to share and hear other’s ideas. I love generating new thoughts around an area of interest. Blogging is a bridge in which I meet new people, acquire consulting work, and keep in touch with my peers through content and knowledge sharing.
Lessons Learned – what I’ve learned: The success of a blog entry should not be based on the number of readers, subscribers, or comments. The success is based off of the development of one idea, or one new relationship, one thought that has a bigger impact than on myself.
This winter, we’re continuing our series highlighting evaluators who blog. Do you have questions, concerns, kudos, or content to extend this aea365 contribution? Please add them in the comments section for this post on the aea365 webpage so that we may enrich our community of practice. Would you like to submit an aea365 Tip? Please send a note of interest to aea365@eval.org. aea365 is sponsored by the American Evaluation Association and provides a Tip-a-Day by and for evaluators.