Jer Thorp does a TED talk on what he does, which is take data and turn it into a graphical “narrative” for the NYTimes, and others. He finds a way to help us see the meaning, and the human story, in data.
Jer Thorp’s work focuses on adding meaning and narrative to huge amounts of data as a way to help people take control of the information that surrounds them.
Something all DLE wants to be good at, both for presentation of facts, but also in “telling a story” using adaptive learning data that can involve the learner ever more deeply in his/her own learning process.
I liked this TED talk a lot because it helps to explain why we have such a hard time saying what PSA is trying to do….we don’t have Jer Thorp creating a live data narrative graphic that shows all the connections and trails we are making… as we “go along”. Hansel and Gretel wouldn’t have needed bread crumbs.. but as we know, “bread crumbs” is an often cited phrase these days.
On a technical matter, the audio on this talk has some glitches which I found distracting sometimes. I’m guessing he’s hitting the mike cord, or his mustache is brushing against the mike itself. We want to avoid every glitch we can avoid in our own media production, and that involves a lot of trial and error to figure out all that can and will go wrong. Even with a TED talk.