Fallen of WWII Image
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Finding Data and Data Visualizations Online
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Data visualizations can help students better understand the social studies content you teach. This annotated list of websites may help you find the right data or data visualizations to support the content you're teaching. It also provides some links to lesson plans using the website resources.
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Data visualizations can help students better understand the social studies content you teach. This page contains multiple resources to help you identify data visualizations connected to social studies content. First, on the left is a link to another page with datasets that students can use to explore data and construct their own data visualizations. The bulk of the page is an annotated list of data-heavy websites may help you find the right data or data visualizations to support the content you're teaching. Below each website is a link to lesson plans using the website resources. Finally, at the bottom of the page are links to pages with Michigan social studies standards and connections to specific data visualization or data visualization sites that will help meet the standards.
AFTER BABYLON
The After Babylon project provides several different data visualizations, each providing unique insight into "living" human languages and their relationships. It would be particularly useful for teaching cultural diffusion and exchange in a world geography or history course. Features include:- A “Languages in the World” dot distribution map displays 2,678 living languages across the globe, indicating the origin of each language.
- A dot distribution map uses different colors to show the location and distribution of languages from the same family, providing insight into how language spreads and evolved among human societies.
- Additional data visualizations provide interesting information about how widely spoken different languages are, and how words have been exchanged among cultures.
CENTERS FOR DISEASE CONTROL AND PREVENTION (CDC)The mission of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) is to protect the health safety of the United States. Some areas they focus on are infectious diseases and conditions, healthy living, traveler’s health, and emergency preparedness. Probably most useful for teaching data literacy in social studies is the website's Data & Statistics page, which includes the following and can be used to support research projects or lessons on health and health disparities:- Datasets for public use on topics such as deaths and mortality, injuries and violence, and smoking and tobacco use.
- Links to continually updated interactive database systems.
- Data on birth rates and death rates for states and territories.
- Extensive information on different diseases and conditions, including disparities among races and ethnicities.
CENTER FOR INFORMATION & RESEARCH ON CIVIC LEARNING AND ENGAGEMENT (CIRCLE)The Center for Information & Research on Civic Learning and Engagement (CIRCLE) is a non-partisan, independent research organization focused on youth civic engagement in the United States. They conduct research on youth participation, and try to leverage their research to improve opportunities for all young people to acquire and use the skills and knowledge they need to meaningfully participate in civic life.The website features:- Three interactive tools that allow users to explore rates of youth civic and political engagement, young people's influence on elections, and the local conditions that influence youth participation and may serve as levers to increase and improve it.
- An election center with data, analysis, and commentary on current and past elections.
- And a CIRCLE in Action page with research and data about current topics.
CENTRE FOR GLOBAL ECONOMIC HISTORYThe Centre for Global Economic History, in Utrecht, Netherlands, researches long term evolution of the world economy, including institutions, economic growth, and inequality. The CGEH has viewable ongoing and completed projects, where you can explore their goals, hypotheses, data sets, conclusions, and virtually everything that is part of the project. Projects and site features of particular interest to social studies teachers are:- The Clio Infra project that is focused on understanding global inequality. Here, you can find data on early economies, urbanization, and population.
- The site's data page, which offers dozens of datasets that students can use to explore world historical questions and to create data visualizations with programs like Excel or Google Charts. For example, student's could use the Conflict Catalog to develop and explore questions about topics like war-related casualties over time or the number of wars occurring in the world from decade to decade.
CIA WORLD FACTBOOK
The CIA World Factbook provides information on the history, people and society, government, economy, energy, geography, communications, transportation, military, terrorism, and transnational issues. Useful features include:
• Dozens of world and regional maps, including a population distribution map of the African continent that teachers can use for development of map reading skills.
• Travel Facts, which provides country-specific data such as major languages, religions, and other cultural practices, which can be used to generate graphs or annotated maps. Additionally, there is a wealth of information on each country present, including a country map and a country map locater.
• One Page Summaries of every country, providing information on the Government, Geography, Economy, and People & Society.
• Country Comparisons pages allow one to compare countries based on the available data in areas such as geography, people and society, economy, energy, communications, transportation, military and secuirty. This is useful for creating comparative graphs and maps.
• Spy Kids, including an aerial analysis game that uses GIS images to encourage critical thinking and problem solving.
CIA WORLD FACTBOOK ACTIVITY
CURRENT RESEARCH IN DIGITAL HISTORY (CRDH)Current Research in Digital History (CRDH) offers exemplary data-based historical arguments and interpretations for social studies teachers and students. CRDH an annual open-access, peer-reviewed publication of the Roy Rosenzweig Center for History and New Media at George Mason University with the primary purpose of encouraging and publishing scholarship in digital history. The platform for CRDH was chosen specifically to allow for publication of visualizations and graphics with accompanying narratives, as well as associated data or code. Teachers can use the scholarship from CRDH to demonstrate the role that data visualizations can play in historical inquiry and evidence-based arguments.
CURRENT RESEARCH IN DIGITAL HISTORY ACTIVITY
DATA USAData USA is a website designed to help users understand and visualize critical issues facing the United States in areas like jobs, skills, industry, and more. Data USA provides public U.S. Government data to help users conduct their own analyses and construct conclusions about the United States. There are numerous features on the website that can be helpful when teaching social studies.- The homepage provides a glimpse of the numerous topics addressed in the website. By clicking on one of the topics, you'll be provided with an overview of key data, as well as opportunities to dig more deeply into demographics and other numbers.
- 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 Viz Builder tool allows users to create and compare various types of graphs, and a map tool allows users to create data maps. In both features, you can save the data to a cart for a later download.
- A Stories section provides data-based arguments about various topics, and examples of the kinds of data-based arguments teachers can ask students to construct.
DIGITAL HARLEM
The Digital Harlem website is an interactive site that works to explain and showcase everyday life in the city of Harlem from 1915-1930. The website has a companion blog that includes a section on Teaching Digital Harlem. This essay provides some useful tips for navigating the website to reveal the complexity and richness of the area, and some ideas for student activities. The central feature of the website is a map of Harlem, which students can click on to explore changing boundaries of Black Harlem between 1920 and 1930. To the right of the map, students can select different map themes, each of which reveals an essay to provide background information. To the left of the map, students can select different events, places, or people to get a glimpse of daily life and culture. Below the map is a timeline slider that displays when an event occurred or when a location was used as a specific place. At the top of the page are buttons to explain how to use each of the features, as well as a link to the companion blog.
Digital Harlem Activity COMING SOON
DIGITAL PUBLIC LIBRARY OF AMERICA
The Digital Public Library of America contains a plethora of images, texts, videos and sounds from across U.S. libraries, archives and museums. It also contains a number of maps, graphs, and timelines. For example, many of the Primary Source Sets (which are accompanied by ideas for how to use the Primary Source Sets in classrooms), contain data visualizations. You can find maps in the section on the California Gold Rush, the Cotton Gin and Expansion of Slavery, or the Great Migration — just to name a few. The Online Exhibitions page can be used to investigate important stories about the United States through sources and accompanying narratives, and many of these also contain data visualizations. Examples include Two Hundred Years on the Erie Canal and Torn in Two: Mapping the American Civil War. Students can also advance their research skills by utilizing the search feature from where they can discover photographs, maps, speeches and texts from all periods of American history. Teachers who are looking for data visualizations to teach can simply use search terms like "map," "graph," or "timeline" to find a long list of potential instructional resources.
Digital Public Library of America Activity COMING SOON
EXPLORABLE EXPLANATIONS
Explorable Explanations is an interactive learning site that caters to many subjects. The most pertinent topic on the site to social science teachers is civics. Once you arrive at the homepage, scroll down until you see the title 'Play Explorable Explanations in specific subjects:' with colorful boxes below. Then, click on the yellow 'civics' button to see the interactive tools that explain how the nation's democratic processes work. The explanations are simple and concise, making concepts such as the voting system, electoral college and district representation easy to understand.
Explorable Explanations Activity COMING SOON
THE FALLEN OF WORLD WAR IIThe Fallen of World War II is an incredibly effective 18-minute "data documentary" that uses an animated data visualization and an interactive tool to demonstrate the extent of the casualties of World War II and the impact that the war had on the world. History teachers can use this visualization to help students grasp the devastation of the war, and to understand the realities of the statistics they might read in a textbook. In the video, students can view:- Aggregate and disaggregated data on military and civilian deaths during the war, woven with photographic images that humanize the disturbingly high number of deaths.
- Comparisons between the casualties in WWII and those of other wars in history, including more recent ones like Iraq.
- An interactive feature that allows them to dig more deeply into the data.
FEDERAL RESERVE BANK OF ST. LOUIS The website for the Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis offers a treasure trove of economic education resources, many of which incorporate economic data and data visualizations. In fact, a filtering tool allows teachers to select resources specifically for social studies and/or data literacy, as well as the grade level and concept they're teaching. The site also offers:- Ten simple 10-minute activities that equip users to find and graph economic data.
- A Tools for Teaching with FRED section that offers tutorials, instructional guides, lesson plans and activities to use with FRED, the St. Louis Fed's "Federal Reserve Economic Data" website.
- Econ Lowdown, which is a free platform with courses and and videos for K-12 classrooms.
FiveThirtyEight focuses on opinion poll analyses in politics, science, economics, popular culture, and sports. The website was originally created by Nate Silver and is the property of ABC News. It features blogs and articles that change according to popular topics in the news, and often incorporate data visualizations, offering an opportunity for students to study how people incorporate data into arguments about contemporary political topics. The right side of the homepage includes interactive data visualizations for users and there is an entire section with regularly updated polling data for students to analyze and evaluate.
FIVE·THIRTY·EIGHT
FiveThirtyEight Activity COMING SOON
FLOWINGDATA
FlowingData is centered on using data visulizations to explore and analyze current news topics. The 'Projects' page on the site hosts a plethora of interactive graphics ranging from charts and graphs to maps and timelines. Teachers will find the data visulizations present on the site relevant to U.S. history and civics topics. The 'Tutorials' page includes presentations with explanations on how to create, analyze and understand different data visulizations. This is a great resource for teaching students how to create their own data visualizations as it has an easy-to-follow format. It should be noted that to access most of the tutorials, the site requires a paid membership subscription. Step-by-step self-guided courses are also available through membership only.
FlowingData Activity COMING SOON
GAPMINDERGapminder 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- An interactive data visualization tool, which students can manipulate and use to explore different variables and different visualization styles.
- A variety of engaging informational videos.
- Datasets that students can explore and download.
- A quiz that provides data for Gapminder’s Ignorance Project, which is intended to explore the degree to which people are ignorant about statistics and the world around them.
- Slides that have been used in public presentations, as well as TED talks that can be downloaded and modified for teacher use.
- A library of teaching resources.
- A feature called DOLLAR STREET, which allows students to explore how people from poorest to richest live in different parts of the world.
THE GILDER LEHRMAN INSTITUTE OF AMERICAN HISTORY
Gilder Lehrman is an institutional archive of American history. The site contains a wide range of historical artifacts that range from 1493 to the end of the twentieth century. Most pertinent to social science teachers are their history resources. Teachers can create a free account to access all features present on the site. When you log onto the homepage, you will see a tab right under the site's banner titled 'History Resources'. Once you have navigated to this page, you will notice that you can browse resources based on historical time period or topics in American history. As you scroll down the page, you will see the types of resources available. The 'Spotlight On: Primary Source' provides many data visulizations students can use to better understand the assigned topic at hand. Additionally, the 'Teaching Resource' box contains infographics that teachers can use to explain historical concepts in their classrooms.
Gilder Lehrman Activity COMING SOON
GOOGLE EARTHGoogle Earth is a computer program that renders a 3D representation of Earth using primarily satellite imagery. It maps the Earth by superimposing satellite images, aerial photography, and GIS data onto a 3D globe, allowing users to see cities and landscapes from various angles. Google Earth is an amazing tool for social studies teachers that allows students to literally and figuratively expand their worldviews. Not only can students explore the planet from space and learn about physical and political geography, but they can also use the street view feature to see places at ground level. Useful features include:- Voyager, which has dozens of spatially-driven stories, including topics like the Underground Railroad, Congressional Redistricting, and Explorers.
- Google Earth Engine's timelapse feature allows students to see how the Earth's surface or specific places have changed over the past 35 years.
- Engine also has case studies of changes in the Earth's surface water and forest land, or human malaria risks -- great resources for investigations of contemporary global issues.
GOOGLE EARTH ACTIVITY FOR WORLD HISTORY
GOOGLE EARTH ACTIVITY FOR U.S. HISTORY
INDIAN OCEAN IN WORLD HISTORYIndian Ocean in World History is intended for use by middle and high school teachers and students in connection with the surveys of world history, geography and cultures that are required by nearly every state's academic standards in social studies. The site contains a series of interactive maps that address major eras in world history and allow students to explore documents, trade goods, artifacts, and travelers exchanged across the Indian Ocean, distinguishing the region as a critical hub of activity and cultural exchange throughout world history.
Indian Ocean in World History Activity COMING SOON
INTERACTIVE WWI TIMELINE
The Interactive WWI Timeline is an interactive website that showcases the events that preceded, occurred during and after WWI. The timeline displays the event's name, start and end dates as well as a short annotation on the event. Each description includes an image, video, artifact, quote or other useful visuals to further understand the event. One can click the arrow button to the right to move forward or the arrow buttom to the left to move back in the timeline. Right below the event display is a timeline ruler that pinpoints the exact date of events. One can scroll through this slider to locate and access specific events.
Interactive WWI Timeline Activity COMING SOON
MAPPING AMERICAN SOCIAL MOVEMENTSMapping American Social Movements produces and displays free interactive maps showing the historical geography of dozens of social movements that have influenced American life and politics since the late 19th century, including radical movements, civil rights movements, labor movements, women's movements, and more. Using the links on the lefthand side of the homepage, teachers and students can access stories, maps, and other data visualizations from several categories: 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. Each project contained on the website not only provides useful information for social studies teachers to use in the inquiry process, but also a vision of projects students can create individually or collaboratively.
Mapping American Social Movements Activity COMING SOON
MAPPING HISTORY
The Mapping History website is an interactive site that explains and displays graphical images of historical events in America, Europe, Latin America and Africa.- When you enter the homepage, you will see a list of key events under each country or continent's history. Click on the event that is of interest to you.
- Once you click on an event, you will be directed to its Introduction page. At the end of the introduction, there is a 'Next' button that will take you to the event's data visualization page. You can also access this by clicking the title below the 'Introduction' in the top left. Some events may have more graphical displays than others. In general, other than the Introduction and Summary page, the pages consist of visual data displays.
METROCOSMMetrocosm is a collection of maps and data visualization projects, created and run by Max Galka, whose goal is to make data more accessible and understandable, and “to make sense of the world through numbers.” The website includes a variety of useful resources for social studies, including:- Data visualizations and accompanying analyses, ranging from "Mapping the Flow of International Trade," to "Visualizing America’s Middle Class Squeeze," to "Annual Peak Temperatures Across the World."
- A Get the Data section with all of the data from each data visualization available for download and to promote full transparency and access.
- Good resources for helping students understand maps and map distortion such as "Ever sat on a beach and wondered what's across the ocean? It may not be what you think?," and "Your World Map is Hiding Something."
- A Most Popular Today feature that changes according to the most visited data visualizations on any given day.
NEW YORK TIMES LEARNING NETWORKThe New York Times Learning Network offers abundance of teaching resources including several that are relevant to data literacy instruction in social studies. It's worth taking some time to scour all of their resources, but highlights include:- A series called "What's Going on this Graph?" with over 60 NYT graphs maps and charts for students to analyze.
- A lesson called Dangerous Numbers? that uses coronavirus data and statistics to teach students about reading the news critically.
- A Teaching with Infographics section focused on infographics for social studies, history, and economics.
- An article with suggestions for teaching data visualizations and infographics called Data Visualized.
OUR WORLD IN DATAOur World in Data is an online resource that provides free access to 3529 charts across 297 topics. Their mission is to provide “research and data to make progress against the world’s largest problems.” Features include:- A variety of articles that can be accessed by using a dropdown menu at the top of the homepage or by scrolling through the homepage. They cover a broad range of topics, from “Health” to “Food and Agriculture,” and “Human Rights and Democracy” to “Violence and War,” and are all based on data and data visualizations housed in the website.
- An index of all the data visualizations on the website, organized alphabetically by topic. Data visualizations are interactive, downloadable, and accompanied by the data source.
- A Sustainable Goals Development Tracker that measures global progress toward the The United Nations Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), adopted in September 2015, set to be achieved by 2030. All countries of the world have agreed to work towards achieving these goals.
- A Teaching Hub with resources for teaching about global development. The hub contains slides, notes, and relevant data visualizations.
PEOPLE MOVIN
The People Movin website is an interactive site that showcases migration patterns for countries around the world.- In the middle of the site's homepage, there is a list of facts about migrants, top imigrant destinations, top emmigration countries, refugees and asylum seekers as well as data sources.
- When you click on one of the colored boxs, the site displays a graph of the pattern of immigration or emmigration for that country. It lists the current population of the country and the top locations for emmigrants or top countries for immigrants.
PEW RESEARCH CENTERPew Research Center is a nonpartisan resource that conducts public opinion polling, media content analysis, demographic research, and other social science research. Their mission is to inform the public about issues, attitudes, and trends in a transparent, non-biased way. The website is focused on politics and polls in the United States, containing sections on U.S. Politics, Media & News, Social Trends, Religion, Internet & Tech, Science, Hispanics, Global, and Methods. While mostly pertaining to current events, articles can be found from the past, and many of the Pew studies use historical data and polls as comparisons to today. Notable features include:- By clicking on topics in their menu bar, you can find datasets, interactives, and other resources to support data literacy.
- Fact Tank: News in the Numbers articles provide nonpartisan data-based information on current events such as climate change, gun policy, environment and energy, immigration, poverty, race and ethnicity, and much more.
- The Global Indicators Database displays data from their Global Attitudes Project, which is made up of data from nearly 600,000 interviews in 64 countries. In this database, users are able to access information on the opinions of people in other countries.
- On its datasets page Pew makes data available to the public for secondary analysis after a period of time.
POPULATION EDUCATIONPopulation Education is a national program that develops curriculum for students to help them understand human population trends and the impacts that these trends have on the environment. They integrate population information into natural and social science subjects, providing many classroom resources.- Under the Classroom Resources tab, there are hundreds of free lesson plans, readings, videos, and tools to demonstrate population and effects. Resources can be sorted by grade level, subject, topic, or resource type, for easy utilization by teachers. These are filled with many data visualizations for students to think critically about.
- A sister site linked on their homepage, World Population History, has an interactive spatiotemporal visualization to show changes in population over space and time. The dropdown menu has options for additional videos, readings, and tools, as well as additional lesson plans.
- Another sister site World of 7 Billion has yet additional teacher resources, this time more focused on taking action and informing others.
SLAVE VOYAGESSlave Voyages is a digital memorial that allows users to explore the dispersal of enslaved Africans across the Atlantic world and raises questions about the largest slave trades in history, offering access to the documentation available to answer them.- From the homepage, users can access a Trans-Atlantic Slave Trade Database, Intra-American Slave Trade Database, and African Names Database, all available to view and download. Complementing the databases are a variety of essays, maps, and other data visualizations.
- Special features include introductory maps of the slave trade, viewing of a slave ship in a 3D video, timelines of estimates of the number of captives embarked and disembarked, and a timelapse of movement of slave ships across the Atlantic.
- Other resources on the website are an image gallery of photographs and documents, lesson plans, and links to other websites, including In Motion and Understanding Slavery, both of which provide access to additional maps and timelines.
SOCIAL EXPLORER
Social Explorer is a fantastic website that allows users to visualize and interact with data, and create maps, charts, reports and downloads. There are hundreds of thousands of built-in data indicators related to demography, economy, health, politics, environment, crime and more. Full use of the site requires a paid subscription, but there are plenty of great features with the basic version. These features include a Maps section with data maps on elections, crime, health and more, and a Tables section that allows users to select variables from the U.S. Census and generate tables for exploration and analysis. There is also a Teach and Learn section with several cool features, include Lecture Launchers, a collection of data-based activities to launch inquiry and discussion around topics like gerrymandering and slavery, and Data Snacks, which has dozens of data maps on topics like work commutes and Native America population.
Social Explorer Activity COMING SOON
TABLEAU PUBLICTableau Public is a free resource version of Tableau that allows users to build their own interactive data visualizations and includes a Gallery that gives users the option to explore other users’ data visualizations. Many of these data visualizations could be useful for social studies instruction, and can be browsed easily by using the dropdown menu to filter according to topics like maps, sustainability, travel and transportation, politics and elections, or socioeconomics and geopolitics.
Tableau Public Activity COMING SOON
TIMEMAPSThe highlight of TimeMaps is an interactive spatiotemporal visualization called Atlas. Users can view an interactive world map or zoom in to view regional maps. The world map starts at 3500 BCE, and at the bottom there is a scrolling timeline. When scrolled over, it goes all the way to present day, and the map changes to correspond with whichever time period you click. On the map itself users can hover over or click on a pin to get information about what's happening in the region during that time period. By scrolling through time, you can see societies and empires appear, grow, shrink, and disappear, providing a visual of change over time in a region or the world.
TIMEMAPS ACTIVITY
UNDATAUNdata is a data service that provides international statistical databases for public use. The numerous data bases or tables collectively termed as datamarts cover topics like agriculture, crime, communication, development assistance, education, energy, environment, finance, gender, health, labor market, manufacturing, national accounts, population and migration, science and technology, tourism, transport, and trade. UN data provides specialized databases, popular statistical tables, and statistical profiles of countries and regions. This resource exists to educate users about the importance of statistics in policy and decision making. Run by the United Nations Statistics Division, this resource would help students (and teachers) learn about statistics and could assist with an evidence-based project.
UNdata Activity COMING SOON
UNITED STATES CENSUS BUREAUUnited States Census Bureau is responsible for producing and providing information and data regarding the American people and the United States economy. Their website provides a wealth of information that can be incorporated into social studies classes.- The Explore Census Data page provides access to table displays that allow you to add geographies, topics, or any applicable filters. You can also reorder, pin, and hide columns.
- On the same Explore Census Data page, you can link to data profiles for the United States, Los Angeles, and New York City, which provide statistics for topics like race and ethnicity, health, education, and housing.
- A Visualizations page provides infographics with Census Bureau data from 2014 to the present.
- For ideas on how to use data on the Census Bureau website Data Gems provides short tricks and how-to videos.
USA FACTSUSA Facts is a not-for-profit, nonpartisan civic initiative providing comprehensive and understandable government data. They provide accessible analysis on US spending and outcomes in order to ground public debates in facts. Useful features on the website include:- The Issues section organizes information by important issues being debated in American society. Included on each issues page is noteworthy data to explore.
- The Data page addresses topics from the American standard of living to immigration statistics to government finances, allowing users to explore data, compare historical trends, and interact with visualizations.
- In the Reports section you can find numerous interactive data visualizations, special reports, and data-based articles.
HOW HAS THE UNITED STATES CHANGED OVER TIME? WEBSITE ACTIVITY
US BUREAU OF TRANSPORTATION STATISTICSUS Bureau of Transportation Statistics is part of the Department of Transportation (DOT) and the preeminent source of statistics on commercial aviation, multimodal freight activity, and transportation economics, and provides context to decision makers and the public for understanding statistics on transportation. Notable features for social studies teachers are:- The BTS Data Inventory, which provides open access to transportation statistics and data visualizations, including transportation data by state and county.
- A Map Gallery with a collection of maps published by the Office of Spatial Analysis and Visualization. The available maps highlight different types of transportation and transportation-related issues throughout United States history.
- A Transportation Economic Trends section that highlights transportation's role in the economy and explores changes (trends) over time through a series of interactive charts.
VISUALIZING ECONOMICSVisualizing Economics is a website designed by Catherine Mulbrandon who combines her expertise in economic and financial data to create and publish information graphics. She has data visualizations on various economic topics including income, taxes, gold, stocks, inflation, and housing, as well as data visualizations useful for world history. Several of the data visualizations are interactive and provide source information.
Visualizing Economics Activity COMING SOON
VOTING AMERICA
The Voting America website is an interactive site that displays patterns of voting in presidential, congressional and individual elections in the US through videos. One can see the timeline in which changes in voting occur.- At the top of the website, just below the title, is a button called Maps. Under Maps, there are options for the type of election one wants to understand voting data patterns on. There is also a population map that showcases the changing demographics of African Americans and whites in the US.
- For presidential and congressional elections, one can see the changes in voting patterns based on party affiliation. For individual presidential elections, one can see which states a candidate secured electoral votes from based on party affliation.
Wolfram Alpha
Wolfram Alpha is a powerful tool for data analysis and visualization that understands natural language. It is a unique engine for computing answers and providing knowledge. The site works by using its vast store of expert-level knowledge and algorithms to automatically answer questions, do analysis and generate reports. Topics most relevant to social studies teachers include 'People', 'Demographics & Social Statistics', 'History', 'Political Geography' and 'Economic Data'. Try asking it for "wealthiest nations" or "birth rates by country".
WORLD-HISTORICAL DATAVERSE
This World-Historical Dataverse Project, run by the University of Pittsburgh, attempts to address the need for global historical data. The website provides links to both internal and external databases that may be useful for world historical research. They also have an external data portal page with links to projects like the Migration Data Hub and the Project on Religion and Economic Change.
World-Historical Data Activity COMING SOON
WORLD BANKThe goal of the World Bank is to decrease extreme global poverty to less than 3% in 2030 and promote shared prosperity by fostering income growth of the bottom 40% of every country. Most useful to social studies teachers is the website's section on Understanding Poverty, which includes the following:- A searchable and browsable World Bank Open Data portal with visualizations on a variety of topics related to global poverty.
- DataBank, which is an analysis and visualization tool that contains collections of time series data on a variety of topics.
- The World Development Indicators site, which is a compilation of relevant, high-quality, and internationally comparable statistics about global development and the fight against poverty. The database contains 1,600 time series indicators for 217 economies and more than 40 country groups, with data for many indicators going back more than 50 years.
WORLD DIGITAL LIBRARY
The World Digital Library site is a digital library that contains a wealth of primary sources that can be used to showcase the timeline of world history by highlighting important dates and events. The documents can be viewed in a timeline or interactive format.- In the home page, when you click on an image, it itakes you to the image's page. Under the title, a description of the document is noted.
- As you scroll down, on the right-hand side, important information such as the sponsor of the work, the date it was created, the work's time period, the location is was commissioned in and the work's subject topic are referrenced. Additionally, the type of the item is listed.
- To the left-hand side, there is a map image that locates where the work is from.
WORLD HEALTH ORGANIZATION (WHO)The World Health Organization (WHO) is an agency of the United Nations which is responsible for guiding international public health. The website provides access to a variety of health data and data visualizations that students can use for investigation of contemporary global issues. Features include:- World Health Statistics 2020, which gives an overall visual big picture summary of many health topics.
- Data Stories, which has visual stories about health, wellbeing and healthcare driven by the data of WHO.
- The Global Health Observatory with data and data visualizations on child health, immunization, global influenza virological surveillance, noncommunicable diseases, tobacco control, and mortality and global health estimates, to name a few.
WORLD WAR TWO TIMELINE EXPERIENCE
The World War Two Timeline Experience is an interactive website that displays and explains major events that occurred prior, during and after WWII. Most useful to social studies teachers are:- The Map feature, located at the bottom left of the map, showcases a world map displaying whether a country was allied control, axis controlled or a neutral zone. To the right, one can filter major events by time to see where there occurred in that time period.
- The Chart feature, to the right of the Map feature, displays major events on a timeline based on the year one selects in the filter option.
- Clicking an event displays a note on its start and end dates, a summary of the event and the key players. There is a video to the left of the note with footage of the actual event. To the right of the note, a map zooms in on the location of the event and displays the direction in which forces moved if applicable.
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Categorical or Topical Data Visualizations
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Categorical or topical data visualizations help us answer what or how questions. They are useful for comparisons, distributions, patterns, proportions, and relationships.
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2020-09-10T10:58:25-07:00
Sometimes inquiry in social studies involves making comparisons, observing relationships, or noticing patterns at a particular time or in a specific setting, rather than over time and space. When this is the case, it is often helpful to use categorical or topical data visualizations. These types of data visualizations are more focused on helping us answer what or how questions, rather than where or when questions. These types of data visualizations usually fulfill one or more of the following functions.
Comparisons
Comparisons are an important aspect of social studies education. The Michigan K-12 Social Studies Standards ask students to compare physical, cultural, political, and economic aspects beginning in early elementary and in every grade level thereafter. Bar graphs, line graphs, pie charts, population pyramids, and treemaps are commonly used to compare categories of data. In his data documentary, The Fallen of World War II, Neil Halloran makes extensive and effective use of bar graphs to compare countries' losses in WWII, and to compare total WWII deaths to deaths in other wars.
Distribution
Bubble charts, multi-set bar graphs, and scatterplots help us to see distributions of data. That is, they help us see how data is spread out or grouped. In social studies, we are often concerned about outliers -- people or countries who lie outside of the majority with regard to income, education, access to resources and so on. For example the Our World in Data visualization to the left, which displays countries by a combination of their literacy rates and numeracy rates (the size of the circle corresponds to population) raises questions about what is going on in countries at the lower left of the graph.
Patterns
Area graphs, bar graphs, bubble charts, line graphs, population pyramids, and scatterplots all reveal patterns that give meaning to the data and allow us to draw inferences. Look, for example at the population pyramid for Germany on the left. Being able conclusions from the population pyramid depends upon observation of patterns -- in this case, observing that a large portion of the population is "middle-aged" tells you that birth rates, and therefore population growth, are low. On the other hand, the population pyramid for Nigeria on the right shows that there are a lot of young people and very few people past the typical window of child-rearing. This points toward a high birth rate and fast population growth.
Proportions
Sometimes in social studies, we are interested in questions related to proportions or parts of a whole. For example, what proportion of the world's nuclear weapons are concentrated in non-democratic nations? What fraction of global deaths each year are due to violent conflict? To curable diseases? In cases like these, data visualizations like bubble charts, pie charts, stacked bar graphs, treemaps, and word clouds are useful. The treemap above, for example, displays different categories for causes of childhood deaths, and shows the proportions for specific causes within the different categories in 1990. It then overlays information about proportionate causes of death in 2017 so that observers can see what's changed.
Relationships
Bubble charts and scatterplots are ideal for showing relationships between variables. This is what Hans Rosling depends upon in the compelling arguments he made in his many TED Talks. Though he depends on "low-tech" visualization for a large portion of this video, he drives home his point toward the end by highlighting the relationship between child mortality and children per women. He argues that in order to slow the pace of population growth in the world, we need to provide better access to resources and healthcare in the poorest countries so that children are more likely to survive and thrive and family sizes decrease.
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