Course outline

This outline is subject to change but should give a rough idea of how the course will move along and what we’ll cover:

Intro

Week 1: Aug 27 and 29

  • What is data journalism?
  • Examples of data-driven stories
  • See! You can code

Data

Week 2: Sep 3 and 5

  • Finding data
  • Data sources

Week 3: Sep 10 and 12 (substitute on the 12th)

  • Public records

Week 4: Sep 17 and 19

  • Finding the story in the data

Visual

Week 5: Sep 24 and 26

  • Visual design principles
  • Examples of visualization-driven stories

Week 6: Oct 1 and 3

  • Creating visualizations by hand
  • Creating visualizations with existing tools

Coding

Week 7: Oct 8 and 10

  • Intro to web programming
  • JavaScript, HTML, and CSS

Week 8: Oct 15 and 17

  • Making your own portfolio site

Week 9: Oct 22 and 24

  • Making your first interactive visualization

Week 10: Oct 29 and 31

  • Intro to web scraping
  • Python

Week 11: Nov 5 and 7 (substitute on the 5th)

  • Scraping your first website

Outro

Week 12: Nov 12 and 14

  • How to learn to code yourself
  • How to search Google effectively

Week 13: Nov 19 and 21

  • Work on final projects
  • Miscellaneous topics

🦃🦃🦃

Week 14: Dec 3 and 5

  • Artificial intelligence
  • Discussion: ethics and big data