Luke Walker
Data Analyst & Developer
About Me
Hello! My name is Luke Walker, and I am the Information Management Coordinator at the PEI Department of Education, Early Learning and Culture, where I manage the provincial student information system, and support the work of the department with data analysis and program evaluation.
For over 10 years, I worked in product-oriented roles for some great Toronto-based startups, like TakingITGlobal a youth-run civic action charitable startup, and Career Cruising. I spent over three years as a Product Manager at BiblioCommons, with a portfolio of products that included a summer reading application for libraries, the 'schools' version of BiblioCommons' catalog (used by over 1200 schools in NYC), and various social features built as part of a special partnership with the Seattle Public Library. I was also the product owner for our implementation of Mozilla's Open Badge standard.
Why did I build this site?In 2015, I decided to build up some programming skills. For about a year, I devoted my attention to coding, learning, practicing, building stuff, and taking in as much as I can. I completed The Odin Project's series of open-source web development courses, and earned Free Code Camp's Data Visualization, Front End & Back End Web Development Certifications (you can find my certificates here). This site is a showcase of the projects I created as part of that process.
For more details about me/my skills/my work experience, visit:My Work
As a Developer
I've created the apps and sites below while teaching myself to code using a variety of online sources, principally Free Code Camp and the Odin Project.
Free Code Camp
Data Visualization
I completed the Data Visualization certification in November 2016. This certifiaction focused on D3.js, React, and Sass.
Worldiwde Meteoriate Landings
Worldiwde Meteoriate Landings
Worldwide Meteorite Landings
National Contiguity
National Contiguity
Heat Map
Heat Map
Doping in Cycling
Doping in Cycling
American GDP
U.S. Gross Domestic Product
Hillary vs. The Donald
Hillary vs. The Donald
Game of Life
Game of Life
Recipe Box
Recipe Box
Camper Leaderboard
Camper Leaderboard
Markdown Previewer
Markdown Previewer
Back-End
I completed the Free Code Camp Back-End Web Development Certification in August. These are the projects I completed in the process of earning it:
Picterest
Picterest
Picterest
Book Trade
Book Trade
Stock Tracker
Stock Tracker
Nightlife Tracker
Nightlife Tracker
Voting App
Voting App
I have also completed a series of API projects, including a URL shortener and an image search abstraction layer.
Front-End
These are just a sample of the projects I created while earning my Free Code Camp's Front-End Web Development Certification. You can find all my projects on CodePen.
Simon
Simon
Simon
Pomodoro Clock
Pomodoro Clock
Current Weather App
Current Conditions for Your Current Location
TicTacToe 2
Tic Tact Toe: Play against the computer
The Odin Project
This is a small sampling of the projects I completed as I worked through The Odin Project ful stack web development curriculum:
Mint.com: Form Validation
Form validation (Mint.com)
Google Maps: AJAX/APIs
Google Maps API
Minesweeper: jQuery events
Minesweeper
TNW: Responsive/Media Queries
The Next Web
Apple: Backgrounds & Gradients
Apple Inc
New York Times: Positioning
New York Times
Flight Booker: Advanced Forms
Odin Flight Booker
Chess: Final Project, Ruby
Command-Line Chess
You can find the rest of my work for The Odin Project's courses in Ruby, Rails, HTML, CSS and JavaScript on GitHub (repos prefixed with "odin-"). I've also been honing my coding skills on CodeEval--check out my profile there.
As a Product Manager
At BiblioCommons, I was the product owner of the school/student-oriented products—BiblioSchools & Biblio Summer Sites, as well as library-sponsored portions of the Biblio Core Catalog, namely the social components funded by Seattle Public Library, and a major upgrade to the display of periodical publications for the New York Public Library.
Biblio Summer Sites
Biblio Summer Sites
Biblio Summer/Program Sites
Engaging Patrons in Reading Year-Round
Biblio Summer/Program Sites were originally designed to help children avoid the "summer slide".
Badges, Goals, Avatars & Social Activity
Summer & Program Sites help libraries across the US & Canada build communities of readers, from a few dozen to thousands.
Mobile-Responsive
In 2015, we redesigned the sites to be mobile-responsive, making each site's full feature set available to users on their phones.
Open Badge Implementation
Open Badge Implementation (Sponsor: Brooklyn Public, with funds from IMLS)
Motivating All Kinds of Engagement
Our Open Badge implementation included a variety of automatically-earned badges for on-site activity, as well as any custom badges libraries wished to set up and award.
New Default View
Superbadges allowed libraries to create a levelled/tiered badging system, rewarding users who went above and beyond.
Public Display of Achievement
Each user has a page displaying all the badges they've earned within a program.
Lifelong Learning
On the library's Core catalog, all badges from all programs are displayed, so that learners, parents and teachers can track progress over time. Users can also download badges for import to other Open Badge-compliant portfolios.
Patron Engagement Tools
Patron Engagement Tools (Sponsor: Seattle Public Library Foundation)
Staff/Patron Profiles
Previously, username link went directly to a user's shelves. Profiles better highlight all types of content/activity, making features like lists and badges more discoverable.
Activity Feed
The activity provides added a chronological feed or your own activity, as well as a combined timeline of your followers activity, to the platform.
Liking
The grant also funded the ability to "like" user content, starting with lists, and spreading to other aspects like comments and badges.
Lists: New Responsive View
The new view of user generated lists is responsive, prints nicely, and better presents pertinent information/tools to users.
Periodical Display Redesign
Periodical Redesign (Sponsor: The New York Public Library)
Original Layout
The original page featured a modal with a data dump.
New Default View
Subscription status/latest issue received by location
Simplified Volume/Issue Information
Simplified display of all available issues/volumes.
Filter-as-You-Type
Results are refined with each letter the user types, helping to refine searches/find specific volumes
I was also responsible for the BiblioSchools product, which provided the software connecting over 1200 school libraries and the three New York City public libraries, as part of a $5 million grant from Citi. The project involved the development of two new ILS connectors, as well as a union architecture, making it possible to browse multiple libraries at once. The goal of the project was to achieve a more efficient distribution of learning resources, enriching school libraries with supplemental resources delivered from the public libraries.
For an overview of my work at TakingITGlobal, Atmosphere Industries, and Career Cruising, check out this portfolio (PDF).
To read the chapter I co-authored for the MacArthur Foundatation series on Digital Media & Learning, visit MIT Press.
My Skills
- Front End
- HTML 5
- CSS3 3
- JavaScript
- jQuery
- Bootstrap / Foundation
- AngularJS
- ReactJS
- Sass
- D3.js
- Back End
- Ruby
- Rails 4
- Node, Express
- Postgres, MySQL
- MongoDB
- Other Technical
- Google Script
- Version control tools (git)
- Build automation (Gulp, Grunt)
- Issue/project tracking (Jira, Confluence, Basecamp)
- Sublime Text / Atom
- Various APIs (Google Maps, Youtube, OMDB, Moves, Open Badges, Bing, Quandl)
- Product Skills
- Agile processes/scrum
- Requirement gathering
- Grant writing
- Budget development & management
- User Testing
Contact
Email: luke (dot) walker (at) gmail (dot) com or message me on Linked In.