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Classes – Fundamentals of New York Open Data & Community Mapping

About

We believe that information about the public realm should be accessible and easily understandable. Since the passage of NYC’s open data law, we have collaborated with several partners to develop tutorials, tools, and classes. Stemming from a partnership with then Manhattan Borough President Gale A. Brewer, also the author of NYC’s open data law, our Civic Innovation Lab and Fellow Programs have developed a number of interlocking workshops and tools to demystify data and turn it into action.

THIS IS OUR DATA. THIS IS HOW YOU USE IT.

Below, you will find links to our teaching materials, presentation slides, speaker notes, and tools.

Supporters

Many thanks to the generous support of the NYC Mayor’s Office of Data Analytics, Alfred P. Sloan Foundation, Siegel Family Endowment, Rockefeller Brothers Fund, Manhattan Borough President Mark Levine, Councilmember Gale A. Brewer, Councilmember Jen Gutierrez, Councilmember Lincoln Restler, Hon. Assemblymember Emily Gallagher, Hon. Senator Kristen Gonzalez, OpenStreetMap US, Mapillary, CUNY PIT Lab, Borough of Manhattan Community College, Queens College, Queens Public Library, Fordham University, North Brooklyn Parks Alliance, NYC 311, Microsoft, Socrata, and Carto in helping create these classes.

Copyright

All content is copyright BetaNYC, a project partner of the Fund for the City of New York, and is licensed under Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 International (CC BY-SA 4.0).

Attend our Classes

If you are interested in attending these classes, we offer them. Visit our events page.

New Commissions or Partnerships

If you are interested in partnering with us to develop new curricula, contact us at cif@beta.nyc for more information.

Current Classes

Introduction to New York Open Data

Equipment needed: a laptop and a power adapter.
Class time: 90 mins

Our Introduction to New York Open Data workshop introduces you to the basic definition of New York open data (with examples), a brief history of government open data in New York City and State, as well as a variety of open data resources and tools. Also included are ways to engage with open data through one of BetaNYC’s many other public-facing tools, classes and events!

Link to teaching materials:

Mapping for Equity Field Mapping Workshop


This workshop brings you to one of New York City’s open spaces to learn about open spatial data and mapping tools in practice, as part of BetaNYC’s Mapping for Equity (M4E) initiative! Join us outdoors to survey a local park and map public amenities to be added to OpenStreetMap, creating free information about our public realm. 

Attend an upcoming field workshop!

Mapping for Equity Data Entry Workshop

Equipment needed: a laptop and power adapter.

This workshop invites you to our office to learn about open data and mapping the public realm on OpenStreetMap (OSM), as part of BetaNYC’s Mapping for Equity (M4E) initiative! Join us to add information about public amenities collected at one of our field mapping workshops in parks across the city to OSM, and create free, public data about our open spaces. 

Attend an upcoming data-entry workshop!

Mapping for Equity Toolkit


BetaNYC’s Mapping for Equity (M4E) toolkit is a one-stop shop for everything M4E! It includes curricular material introducing OpenStreetMap (OSM, a freely editable online map), in-person field mapping and data entry classes, as well as information you can use to host your own Mapping for Equity event. 

Explore our toolkit: Click here!

2023-2025 Civic Innovation Fellowship Curriculum 


BetaNYC’s Civic Innovation Fellowship (CIF) curriculum equips emerging leaders with the skills and knowledge to thrive at the intersection of technology, data, and civic life. Through workshops on professional development, NYC’s history and government, open data and mapping tools, event planning, community building, and public interest AI, fellows gain hands-on experience to drive equitable civic innovation and become active participants in shaping their city.

Explore the curriculum overview: Click here!

Discover the full lineup of workshops on the fellowship page: Click here!

Older Classes

Class 101: Introduction to NYC’s open data

NO COMPUTER NEEDED!
Class time: 90 mins

Note – this class requires a card deck we have printed out and we’re in process of reworking this deck. In the meantime, you might want to move on to 102.

Our introduction to open data workshop will introduce you to the fundamental terms and processes needed to understand NYC’s open data. Then, we will move to an interactive game that helps orient you to NYC’s 311 data and how to ask questions from NYC’s open data portal. This workshop will focus on the NYC 311 dataset and a few key municipal tools.

Link to teaching materials:

Class 102: Unlocking Open Data with BoardStat and Data Journeys

Equipment needed: a laptop and power adapter.
Class time: 90 mins

This class was developed in conjunction with the Manhattan Borough President Gale Brewer and NYC Civic Innovation Fellows.

BetaNYC has designed tools and customized trainings specifically intended to help Community Boards and civic organizations access, analyze, map and use data to inform decision-making.  This workshop will introduce you to BoardStat < https://www.beta.nyc/boardstat >, an easy-to-use tool to query 311-requests and explore trends in health, safety and quality of life concerns. Additional municipal tools will be introduced. Come ready to learn and get right into datasets and graphs.

In-person teaching materials

Virtual teaching materials

Due to COVID-19, we broke down our materials into shorter stories and presentations.

Class 103: Diving into NYC’s open data portal, spreadsheets, and the Pivot Table

STATUS: beta 

Equipment needed: a laptop and power adapter.
Class time: 90 mins

This workshop will teach you how to navigate the NYC open data portal to find your desired datasets, and implement fundamental data analytics in Socrata and spreadsheets. Believe it or not, you will leave this workshop completely confident in your ability to create useful data summaries using the Roll-up in Socrata and Pivot table in Google Sheets.  Be prepared to work on and off the computer, as mid-way through we join together for a tactile, hands-on data exercise.

Class 104: Mapping & analyzing NYC’s census and open data

STATUS: beta 

Equipment needed: a laptop and power adapter.
Class time: 90-120 mins

This workshop will extend your understanding of data into the spatial dimension, teaching you to make maps using Carto, a web-based mapping platform. Specifically you will learn how to map NYC open data, import a boundary shape-file into a map, and join a boundary file with Census information in order to map socio-demographics of NYC communities. Come ready to take your understanding of data into the spatial realm!

STATUS: beta! 

Class 201: Data Counts — an NYC Open Data Ambassadors train-the-trainer open data curriculum

STATUS: Active 

Equipment needed: a laptop, power adapter, projector, and printer to print handouts..
Class time: 90-120 mins

This workshop was commissioned by the Mayor’s Office of Data Analytics and Queens Public Library.  This 90-120 min course teaches you the core elements on how to teach NYC’s open data history and tools. This course is a overview of our existing 10X material and introduces new tools and tactics to pass along insights.

  • Intro to NYC government and open data
  • Human Pivot Table Activity
  • Tools: BoardStat, NYC Open Data Platform (a.k.a. Socrata), Google Sheets, Department of City Planning’s Census FactFinder
  • Data Journeys
  • Teaching materials 

This course’s copyright is shared across The City of New York, Queens Public Library, and BetaNYC, a project partner of the Fund for the City of New York, Original content within this course is licensed under Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 International (CC BY-SA 4.0).