Worldview Upgrader Course

I'd missed the arrival of this since I last checked the website, but am thinking of using it at the start of the year with my groups.

It has a series of short videos connected to the Gapminder quiz on the SDGs. 

Students are asked to take the test and then the videos take them through the reasons why they might be wrong about their thinking and they repeat the test. This is something I've done for quite a few years and it works well.

The videos can all be found on VIMEO.

The quizzes are on the Gapminder website, although at the time of posting the site is down for scheduled maintenance. Hopefully it will be back in a week's time as I intended using the quiz with students as part of our introduction to Year 8.

Audiobooks on Spotify

If you have Spotify Premium, as I do (I have Spotify's Family plan in fact so that everyone in the family has their own separate account), you also have access to Audiobooks. 

When this first launched there weren't too many, but over the last few weeks, I have discovered there are hundreds of excellent books which would be of interest to geography teachers. I thought about making a list of the relevant books but there are too many of them really...  in fact, quite a lot of books that were on my list to buy. Plenty to keep me going into the New Year. 

If I get a moment and feel the urge over the Christmas break I shall make a list anyway.... watch this space...

Gapminder Query

Another year of teaching has started with another run of the latest iteration of our Factfulness scheme of work. We have the book on Audible to play certain sections where Hans outlines the ideas and misconceptions and takes the students through why they perform so badly compared to chimpanzees... which is picked up in Ola's video about the terrible results. Bananas are required for this lesson.

It always makes a great way to start the year.

One of the diagrams that we use is also taken from the book and is shown here.

I pulled it out today to start thinking about the next few lessons and started thinking about the bottom diagram.

Where should the eighth person go?

And are the income level boundaries still the same, or should they have shifted upwards given the increasing cost of services and commodities since the original book was written and published? $32 a day doesn't buy what it used to.

Would be interested in any thoughts on this, and I can then discuss this with students.

Year 8: Gapminder Misconception Test - why do people generally score poorly...

 Here's Ola Rosling explaining why...

For Year 8 homework help.

Stereotyping Africa

A slightly different take on 'the danger of a single story' which we have used already with students...

Dollar Street

We watched the first half of this TED talk this week... worth watching the rest.

Gapminder - time to upgrade your knowledge

I've been answering a few emails for a while now as part of a group of Beta testers for new Gapminder output, and you can now test your knowledge with the new Upgrader for the original Gapminder ignorance test. 

Here's Ola Rosling announcing it.

Introducing the WORLDVIEW UPGRADER! Gapminder's new FREE service for helping replace misconceptions with facts.https://t.co/GGCrfOGPiG#gapminder #worldviewupgrader pic.twitter.com/eZ6whaRsnj

— Gapminder (@Gapminder) November 30, 2020

I will be using this with my Year 8 group later in the week.

Here's my certificate - proof that my knowledge has been upgraded.

Give it a go, or set it as a homework.

Factfulness - what's happening to the world's population

The rapid growth of the world population, when will it slow down? from Gapminder on Vimeo.

Factfulness - what do the bubbles mean?

How to use Gapminder Bubbles from Gapminder on Vimeo.

Hans Rosling

We've been introducing Year 8 to the work of Hans this week.

Here's what he had to say, back in 2014...

For the first time in human history reliable statistics exist. There’s data for almost every aspect of global development. The data shows a very different picture: a world where most things improve; a world that is not divided. People across cultures and religions make decisions based on universal human needs, which are easy to understand. The fast population growth will soon be over. The total number of children in the world has stopped growing. The remaining population growth is an inevitable consequence of large generations born decades back. We live in a globalized world, not only in terms of trade and migration. More people than ever care about global development! The world has never been less bad. Which doesn’t mean it’s perfect. The world is far from perfect.

The True Size

Started teaching my Factfulness unit for a second time.

Going to use this to explore whether what we 'know' about countries is always correct.

Factfulness - now on Twitter

Follow the account here. An essential account to follow for Geographers. 
We use the book during our Year 8 teaching.

Follow @factfulness! pic.twitter.com/pOsZjEmdlQ

— Factfulness (@factfulness) June 27, 2019

Hans Rosling... something to aim for in terms of style

Here's a Hans presentation.... We are aiming for something simpler, but communicating one piece of good news from the Factfulness book

How many are rich and how many are poor? from Gapminder on Vimeo.

Gapminder Quiz

Thanks to Paul Turner for sharing his Gapminder resources, of which more to come...

Gapminder Quiz by GeoBlogs on Scribd

Gapminder and Factfulness

Year 8 will be using this early in the new school year. Have a play now if you want to get used to it in advance.