Who: Jeff Byers, Professor of Chemistry and Biochemistry

Technologies used: Hardware: GPS watch, digital camera.  Software:  Google Earth, WordPress, Garmin software (allows seamless connection to Google Earth). When posting an altitude profile, Jeff does a screen shot off of the Garmin software and pastes it into MS Word.  Then he uses a shareware program called “Doc to Jpeg Converter” and crops it with Microsoft Office Picture Manager.

Assistance received: Not much was needed!  Jeff figured this out by himself, while watching the Red Sox on summer evenings.   He has had conversations with Joe Antonioli (Manager of Web & Interactive Digital Media Technologies), and Carrie Macfarlane (LIS liaison) about getting an analytics tool installed (technical issues are still being resolved).  The Addison Independent rebroadcasts the blog from their newspaper web site.

Reason for using the technology: Personal interest

Description: Jeff created the Middlebury Trailrunner blog as a community resource for like-minded runners.  Jeff and other runners felt there was a need for a local guide; he often found himself describing his routes to his friends.  He also thought it would be fun to create the blog–he is a self-described “map geek.”

The blog tracks Jeff’s trail-running adventures in and around Addison County.  For each run, Jeff posts a map of his route, a chart showing the altitudes he reached, photos and a written narrative.

Running is just a hobby for Jeff, but these technologies have potential curricular applications, from biology and environmental studies, to writing, to art (see for example The Big Draw of the GPS Run!).

Technologies Used: ArcGIS; Stata (Statistical Analysis Software)
Course: Economics 1008 Deconstructing Discrimination (Winter Term 2009)
Number of Students: 20
Assistance: Jack Cuneo, a tutor in the media lab (ArcGIS help)
Anticipated Learning Outcomes: Experience with  collecting data and performing empirical analysis, familiarity with the  capabilities of ArcGIS software, ability to use  Stata software.

Summary: “My winter term class “Deconstructing Discrimination” carried out an empirical research project to examine whether retail gasoline prices are correlated with the racial and income characteristics of neighborhoods.  The project required obtaining, manipulating, and combining data from a variety of sources.  We purchased gasoline price data from Oil Price International (OPIS), used ArcGIS to identify the census tract for each station, and then obtained neighborhood characteristics from the 2000 Decennial Census using Geolytics software.  Finally, the students also conducted telephone surveys of the stations to collect information on station characteristics.  We used Stata software to combine all of these data sets and to perform the analysis.”

Learning Outcomes: “The students, many of whom were early in their college careers, experienced  the challenges of conducting original research and gained an overview of data  sets, several types of software, and statistical analysis techniques.   The resulting paper “Retail Redlining: Are Gasoline Prices Higher in Poor and  Minority Neighborhoods” will be coauthored with four students and submitted to  a scholarly journal for potential  publication.”

Recommendation to Colleagues: “Although this was a winter term class and did not  have formal “labs,” I found it to be helpful to hold class in the computer lab often so that we could all work together.  The students also worked in groups, and I made certain that each group had a similar distribution of  backgrounds and at least one member who had extensive prior experience with  Stata.