200 Years that Changed the World - Gapminder for Teachers

Anyone reading this blog regularly will know I'm a Hans Rosling fan. His Gapminder website and accompanying desktop version are powerful tools for making sense of world data.

His latest newsletter highlights Gapminder for Teachers.

Two things struck me about the information on the teachers' page - the first was that there is a very cool 3 minute look at the 200 years that changed the world - a look at how the world has changed in terms of per capita income and life expectancy. This video shows just how powerful the software is. You can watch the video here.



The second thing that struck me was that there are now teacher guides for using this data with students.

So, again, if you are a teacher looking for some inspirational material to help get students thinking about some of the important issues facing the planet - you could do a lot worse than head over to Gapminder and use the wonderful tools that Rosling has contributed.

Gapminder Releases Desktop Version

Hans Rosling's awesome visual statistics on the Gapminder site just got more accessible for everyone. The most requested feature on their web site was a desktop version for those times when you don't have the web or can't rely on it - like in a classroom, or for a presentation. Well, they've just released a desktop version which is just brilliant - probably even easier to use than the web version.

Here's a quick map looking at CO2 emissions since 1820 - interesting graph to track by the way.

The easy to use help file looks like this

If you haven't seen Gapminder, you should. It is a great discussion starter for mathematics, statistics, philosophy, geography, social sciences, science ...

And if you haven't seen Hans' TED talks - they too are just incredible. Here's his 2007 talk I've referred to before ..