Finding Data and Data Visualizations Online
World History & Geography
After BabylonCentre for Global Economic History
CIA World Factbook
The World Factbook “provides information on the history, people and society, government, economy, energy, geography, communications, transportation, military, and transnational issues…” This resource is helpful for teaching history because The World Factbook is a CIA program that has been collecting intelligence on Land, Water, People, Government, Economy, Communications, and Defense Forces. This resource has dozens of maps of countries, political, physical, transportation, and more. They have Travel Facts, which contain good information about a particular country, and information that should be known to travelers, like major languages, religions, US Travel Advisories, road driving side, and even cultural practices. This resource has One Page Summaries of nearly every country, providing information on the Government, Geography, Economy, and People & Society. While primarily focused on the international relations aspect of history, there is much that can be learned about every country that the CIA focuses on in the Factbook. Histories of many countries can be found in the Factbook, a hearty resource for anyone who wants to research specific countries in depth or simply wants an overview of its background. Even though the CIA is known for its discretion and secrecy, this is an open resource that engages and encourages users to learn about other countries and their international relationships, which heavily includes learning about history and why relations and other nations are the way they are today.
The Fallen of World War II
Gapminder
Gapminder is an online tool useful for teaching world history, including investigations of contemporary global issues. Students can use the website to help them begin the inquiry process by asking questions about world issues, and they can gather, analyze, interpret, and display evidence. The website has an abundance of resources, including data visualization tools, informational videos, and datasets. The homepage has a quiz that you can take to provide data for Gapminder’s Ignorance Project, which is intended to understand the degree to which people are ignorant about statistics and the world around them. If you click on "DOWNLOADS" in the homepage's top menu bar, you’ll find slides that have been used in public presentations, as well as TED talks that can be downloaded and modified for teacher use. There are also teaching resources under the menu item “TEACH,” including a link to their feature, "DOLLAR STREET," which allows students to explore how people from poorest to richest live in different parts of the world. The highlight of the website is probably the data visualization tool. The site provides a very useful and short video on how to use the tool, but it is probably best learned by playing around with it. The default graph type is a bubble chart, but you can visualize variables in other ways too, by selecting the visualization type from the boxes below the main display. For any visualization, you can change the x and y variables to explore the relationships between those variables. For example, if a student want to explore poverty and income inequality, they could explore how it has changed over time, or how it relates to other variables such as life expectancy or literacy. They can view data from only particular regions or countries as well. Something students would need to be aware of is that there is not complete data from every region for every country. Pointing this out is a great way for them to see the importance of questioning data and understanding its flaws.
Google Earth
Mapping Globalization
Metrocosm
Our World in Data
Pew Research Center
Population Education
Slave Voyages
TimeMaps
Trading Economics
UNdata
World-Historical Dataverse
World Bank
U.S. History & Geography
CIRCLEThe Center for Information and Research on Civic Learning & Engagement (CIRCLE) is an independent research organization that centers on youth civic engagement within the United States. The organization practices and conducts elaborate research containing youth participation (ages 18-29) in which they use to improve opportunities for young people to obtain skills and knowledge that will help them succeed in civic life. CIRCLE’s philosophy is to seek to understand and improve the contents and conditions that shape youth engagement with having an emphasis on K-12 civic education to help prepare youth in a democracy. CIRCLE’s research strives to drive substantial change-whether in the classroom, the county clerk’s office, or in a community organization- that promotes stronger youth development. The organization also believes in the importance of establishing diverse voices to support all different types of outcomes. CIRCLE features three interactive tools that allow users to uncover significant aspects. These three interactive tools essentially focus on the rates of youth civic and political engagement, youth’s significance and influence on elections, and local conditions that may affect youth participation and engagement which may serve as an indication where youth participation could be improved. These tools can be found on the “Explore Our Data” tab and by clicking on the “Learn More” button. These tools can be used to create your own data to show a classroom significant trends or patterns pertaining to youth civic engagement. Under the "Our Research” tab and then clicking on the “Broadening Youth Voting” tab also provides data tools and major reports that can show how young voters in different states may affect the 2020 elections. This simulation can be found by clicking on “Youth Electoral Significance Index (YESI)” and then selecting the red button named “Explore the 2020 rankings”. There are also many articles available regarding research that has been conducted in various areas on the website. The “Our Research” tab contains many, the “Circle in Action” tab and then the “Latest Research” has updated resources. “From the Archives” tab also offers many valuable documents and resources as well.
Current Research in Digital History
Current Research in Digital History (CRDH) is a peer-reviewed publication of the Roy Rosenzweig Center for History and New Media at George Mason University. It’s main focus is publishing works that offer discipline-specific arguments and interpretations. Short essays are featured which establish the opportunity to make arguments obtaining research in larger scale projects. All representable essays in CRDH are first presented at an annual conference at George Mason University and go through rounds of peer view with the ultimate decision of publication. A majority of the publications on CRDH include the following features: visualizations, graphics, and narratives, associating data or code in a research compendium, and external content if necessary. The website provides two different volumes of digital history, volume 1 from 2018 and volume 2 from 2019 which can be found Under the “All Volumes” tab. Under each of the volumes contains a list of the selected essays and publications that were accepted for public publication for that year. Some of the examples of publications on the website include Geo-Locating Census Micro-Data on Segregation, Clustering, and Residential Behaviors (volume 1), Revealing Political Bias (volume 1), and Networks of Piety and Slavery amoung Late Eighteenth-Century (voulme 2). All publications have either graphs or maps included, with some being interactive for the user. Every essay also starts with an abstract and continues with their argument and interpretation on the particular topic. When teaching social studies, this website may be helpful to show data visualizations pertaining to a particular event in history listed on the website.
Data USA is a website designed to help users understand and visualize critical issues facing the United States in areas regarding jobs, skills, education, and much more. The information and data provided is a good tool to use to inform and gain valuable knowledge as a US citizen. Created by Deloitte, Datawheel, and Cesar Hidalgo, the information and data on Data USA is composed by economists, data scientists, designers, researchers, and business executives. Data USA provides public US Government data to help users conduct their own analyses and conclusions about the United States with the ultimate goal of individuals learning and understanding their country. There are numerous features on the website that can be helpful when teaching social studies. By clicking the menu option in the upper left hand corner and selecting the tab “Explore”, users can pick from a list of locations, industries, occupation, degrees, universities, and products & services. A majority of the data visualizations provided on the website gives the user the convenient option above to view the data, save the image, or to share or embed it. The Viz Builder tool on Data USA is phenomenal for creating and comparing various data visualizations. This tool gives users the option to create their own visualizations, which can be helpful when wanting to discuss a particular topic in the classroom. There are also sample Viz Builder data visualizations to choose from as well if the user would rather not create their own. To create a data visualization, simply go to the “Viz Builder” tab and select “Go directly to interface”. In addition, users can also create their own maps by clicking on the “Map” tab. The website also has a special feature on data pertaining to COVID-19 in the United States as well.
Federal Reserve Economic Data (FRED)
Federal Reserve Economic Data (FRED) is an online tool and website that offers many different data visualizations, explicitly specializing in economic data and graphs. Produced by the Federal Resource Bank of St. Louis, the website is remotely user friendly and easy to manage. Most of the content listed here pertains to economic data, which may be more suited for upper middle school or high school social studies students. FRED provides many tools for its users including looking at graphs at different time frames and creating or manipulating your own graphs. The website also lets the user download, graph, and track 708,000 US and international time series from 91 sources. The search bar can also be used to look for particular graphs or data visualizations on the website. Some of the graphs featured in the “At a Glance” tab are unemployment rate, real gross domestic product, U.S./ Euro foreign exchange rate, industrial production index, and 10-year treasury constant maturity. There are also tabs for popular graphs and data and latest releases. Under the tools tab, there is an option called “My Data Lists” where you can save information and graphs. At the top, there is also a tab called “Information Services” where other sources of information can be found. The “Publications” tab is where published works can be found. The “Working Papers” tab refers to preliminary materials circulated to stimulate discussion and critical comment. Finally, the “Economists” tab shows real economists, information about them, and what they have published.
FEMA
FiveThirtyEight
FiveThirtyEight is a website that focuses on opinion poll analysis within politics, science, economics, popular culture, and sports by blogging and by written articles. The website was originally created by Nate Silver and is property of ABC News. The published articles on the website typically create or analyze statistical information or give opinions. The homepage contains the latest and most recent articles that contain relevant news. On the right side of the homepage includes interactive data visualizations for the user. Some of the current ones on there are “How Popular or Unpopular is Donald Trump?”, “How many Americans are ‘Very’ Worried About COVID-19?” and “Who is Winning The Generic Congressional Ballot?”. These visualizations will update according to what is popular on the news at the time. Depending on the type of post, the data visualizations can vary from graphs, charts, maps, and timelines. There are also podcasts and videos that the user can listen to and watch as well. This website could be helpful and could develop good conversation with students because most of the information on this website is very current and relevant to the students. One thing to be aware about when teaching to students, is that some of the articles are opinionated and may have bias towards them. It’s important to address this and have a conversation with this in class. However, the interactive data visualizations are a great tool to use!
Google Earth
Mapping American Social Movements
Mapping American Social Movements is a website that contains a project that produces and displays free interactive maps that show the historical geography of numerous social movements that have impacted and influenced American life and politics. Some of these movements include radical movements, civil rights movements, labor movements, and women’s movements. The project allows others to understand and identify patterns of influence and endurance among these movements. Detailed geographic data is created and developed for each movement, with more than 120 interactive maps, charts, and data tables included for users on the website. On the left hand side of the website presents many tabs on the different types of maps. The main selections highlighted in the color white include maps from the 1870’s-1930’s, Black Freedom Movements, Chicanx/ Latinx Movements, Women’s Movements, 1960’s-70’s Movements, Labor and Radical Press, and Recent Movements. Once the user has selected one of these choices, a brief description will be at the top explaining what was selected. Under the description will be interactive maps that the user can pick from to study and interact with. Each map will be slightly different, but will be in the same category that the user first selected. On some of the interactive data visualizations, there will be other versions of the data besides a map such as charts or graphs. To see the different data visualizations, the user will need to click on the blue boxes above the data visualization. A majority of them will also let the user manipulate what year is shown to get a better representation of the particular movements and their outcomes. These data visualizations could be very helpful to use in the social studies classroom when discussing powerful movements that have happened and to show how they affected the United States.
Metrocosm
New York Times Teaching with Infographics
New York Times Teaching with Infographics is a page on the New York Times website that gives suggestions on how to find infographics to correlate with and complement curriculum when teaching social studies, history, or economics. They give suggestions based on what is offered on the New York Times website. The website recommends when looking for a specific curricular element to try the multimedia archive, or relevant blogs such as Economix. For learning about infographics in general, the website proposes to look at Teaching With Infographics: Places to Start. There are also suggestions on where to find current events and politics regarding certain topics. Some of these topics include government budgets and economic policies, same-sex marriage, breaking news, wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. There are also many resources on immigration, U.S. presidential elections and presidents, gender gap, unemployment, consumer spending, and so much more. Under each category, it gives a few ideas on where to find infographics on the New York Times website. By simply clicking on the blue underlined text, it will bring the user straight to the resource linked. One thing to keep in mind is that in order to see some of the data visualizations, the latest version of the flash player must be downloaded on to the viewing device. This website can be essential to the classroom because it can give great resources for current events so teachers don’t have to spend their entire lunch period trying to find them.
Pew Research Center
Population Education
Slave Voyages
Trading Economics
United States Census Bureau
USA Facts
US Department of Transportation Map Gallery
Visualizing Economics