Three Ways to Quickly Map Spreadsheet Data

I recently came across an older Towards Data Science article about ten ways to represent data on maps. Reading the article reminded me of something that I've tried to share with social studies teachers and students over the years. That thing is that a great data set can tell you a lot. A great map can tell you a lot. Putting them together can tell you even more. To that end, here are three ways to quickly create a map of data contained in a spreadsheet. 

Google's My Maps tool lets you import a Google Sheet and have the data from that sheet displayed as placemarks on an interactive map. Watch this video that I created to learn how you can create a map based on data in a Google Sheet.

Felt is a relatively new multimedia mapping tool. In your Felt account you can upload a CSV or Excel file and have the data within the spreadsheet distributed as placemarks and or polygons on a map. After the data is initially loaded you can then customize the design of your map by altering the color, size, and shape of the placemarks and polygons. You can also customize the size and color of the labels on your map after the spreadsheet data has been imported onto your map. Watch my video below to learn how to display your spreadsheet data on a Felt map. 

Heat Map Tool is a tool for easily creating heat maps or incident maps from a CSV file. To create a heat map all you need to do is upload a CSV file then specify your desired display attributes like scale, colors, and opacity. You can edit the display attributes of your map whenever you like. If you're wondering how to create a CSV file you can do so by exporting from a spreadsheet in Google Documents or exporting from an Excel file. Click here for directions on exporting from Excel. The free version of Heat Map Tool allows you to have up to 100 data points on your map and up to 500 hits per day on your map.

How to Map Spreadsheet Data on Felt

Felt is a multimedia mapping tool that I started using late last year and it has quickly become one of my favorite mapping tools. With Felt you can create everything some simple directions maps to maps that have historic overlays to maps of animal migrations and much more. The latest update to Felt makes it easy to quickly create a map from a spreadsheet. 

In your Felt account you can upload a CSV or Excel file and have the data within the spreadsheet distributed as placemarks and or polygons on a map. After the data is initially loaded you can then customize the design of your map by altering the color, size, and shape of the placemarks and polygons. You can also customize the size and color of the labels on your map after the spreadsheet data has been imported onto your map. Watch my video below to learn how to display your spreadsheet data on a Felt map. 

Video - How to Map Spreadsheet Data on Felt

Applications for Education

Mapping spreadsheet data is a great way for students to see the distribution of people, animals, and plants in a state, province, country, or region. A tool like Google's Dataset Search is a good place to find spreadsheets that students can then import into Felt to create a map. 

Felt - A New Way to Create Multimedia Maps

About a week ago Larry Ferlazzo mentioned a new mapping tool in one of his blog posts. That tool is called Felt. I tried it a few days ago and I have to say that I like it a lot. Felt offers a lot of easy-to-use tools for creating custom maps. Some of the features that immediately stood out to me included the ability to draw and type on maps, highlighting on the map, and adding multimedia placemarks to your map. But in my initial testing of Felt I found the best feature to be the library of data layers that you can overlay onto your map. 

To use Felt to create a custom map you do have to register for a free account. Once you've registered there is a helpful tutorial that walks you through ten things that you can do with Felt. The tutorial is displayed on an interactive map that reminds me a bit of gameboard like you might find in The Game of Life or Candy Land. 

The easiest way to customize a map on Felt is to use the drawing, typing, and highlighting tools. Those tools and all of the other Felt tools are displayed at the bottom of any map that you view. To draw on the map simply click the marker icon then draw on the map. You can choose different marker colors and marker stroke thicknesses to meet your needs. Highlighting is just as easy as drawing on the map and is done in the same manner. Typing on the map simply requires you to click on the type icon then click wherever you want your text to appear. And, of course, you can use all three tools together on the map. 

As previously mentioned, Felt offers a library of data layers that you can apply to your custom map. That library contains dozens of datasets divided into five categories. Those categories are Boundaries, Climate, Infrastructure, Nature & Exploration, and Science. All that you need to do to display a data layer on your map is click on it once in the library while working on your map. You can display multiple layers at the same time. For example, in the demonstration video that is embedded below I displayed both county borders and time zones. 

Applications for Education
My initial impression of Felt is that it is easy to use to create a custom map. In fact, I think it's probably easier to use for the first time than Google's My Maps or Google Earth is to use for the first time. And if you don't have a Google account, you can still use Felt to create a custom map (you do need to have a valid email address). That said, Felt doesn't have as many data layers as Google Earth so if you're looking to have students to dive into making detailed, mapped data displays, Google Earth is still going to be your better option.