What's your favorite color? (Exploring GIS with kids while home)

[Kylie]

Like many of you, I'm currently working at home assisted by my children (7 and 4 years old). My oldest has had some GIS days in her classroom, but my little guy hasn't. So I was thinking of mapping things to do with them and approachable ways to even start talking about GIS. The result was some fun exploration of favorite color, and also wanting to see your favorite colors! So read our story map and add your favorite color to the map: 

ArcGIS StoryMaps > Mapping Favorite Color  

(Note: this might not be working well on all iPads right now... I'm looking into it)

When my kids first saw this story map, I had the favorites of some friends and family shown. My daughter's first observation was that so many people like blue. Ok, really that was second - first she wanted to know why I didn't include teal as a choice, and how, because of that, she wanted to pick two colors. So if you have two favorite colors, fill the survey out twice! And you can put your dot at your city, or state - don't feel you need to use your exact location - it's up to you exactly where you put your dot on the map.

As you read our story map, you'll find that we didn't just put our favorite colors on the map and look at colors other people like. We also did some analysis - first using a dashboard to see counts of the different colors, and how many people have added a color. And then we used hotspots to learn a bit more about the data (my son might have wondered off by that point, but my daughter wanted to play with the filters and see different datasets). 

I hope you enjoy our story map, and we'll check back to see what color is in the lead once you've added yours.

[CPoynter]

Hi Kylie,

Great application. Wondering how you were able to have the hover information over the bar chart columns. Is that something in-built in the application or some coding required?

Craig

[Kylie]

Hi Craig Poynter‌ - That is just automatic functionality out of the box! I took a look, and it looks like you can turn it off, but I don't see a way to change what it shows. So you get a count, or you can have it off.

[SarahBremer]

Your kids might enjoy knowing that this map just became part of a remote learning assignment for 70 high school students in California.

[Kylie]

sarah bremer‌ that is awesome! They are still checking it regularly to see the new colors appear. I'm also really glad you found it useful for your class

[Kylie]

Oh my son is thrilled! He just got to see blue hit 100.

[SarahBremer]

Oh good! He will see more tomorrow since I only had one of my three classes

today.