About
We believe that government information should be accessible and easily understandable. Since the passage of NYC’s open data law, we have worked with a number of partners to make tutorials, tools, and classes. In partnership with Manhattan Borough President Gale A. Brewer, the author of NYC’s open data law, our Civic Innovation Lab and Fellows Program has 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, Manhattan Borough President Gale A. Brewer, Queens Public Library, 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 on a quarterly basis via our Meetup at https://meetup.com/betanyc.
New Commissions or Partnerships
If you are interested in partnering with us to develop new curriculum, contact us at oda@beta.nyc for more information.
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:
- Companion document – http://bit.ly/opendata_offline
- Companion Slides – http://bit.ly/2iotbQ9
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
- Companion Slides – http://bit.ly/betanyc_datajourney
- Companion document – https://bit.ly/journey_worksheet_v2
Virtual teaching materials
Due to COVID-19, we broke down our materials into shorter stories and presentations.
- Virtual Classes Data journeys – https://www.beta.nyc/nyc-opendata-journeys/
- Virtual teaching slides – https://bit.ly/odtv102-slides
- Virtual data activity – https://bit.ly/odtv102-craft
- Companion Data Journey Document – http://bit.ly/boardstat_worksheet_v1
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.
- Companion document is http://bit.ly/BetaNYC_Class_103
- Companion slides are available at http://bit.ly/BetaNYC_Slides_103
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!
- Companion document is http://bit.ly/BetaNYC_104_outline_v2
- Companion slides are available at http://bit.ly/BetaNYC_Slides_104
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).
- BetaNYC Slide deck: http://bit.ly/DataCounts_Slides_QNS
- DataCounts_Template: bit.ly/DataCounts_Slides_QNS_Template
- DataCounts_Handout (kinda like the how-to): http://bit.ly/DataCounts_Handout