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.

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.

Refugee Misconception Study from Gapminder

We start Year 8 by looking at the work of Gapminder and their misconception tests. 

There is now a new one for our students to complete.

Most people overestimate how many refugees flee to the richest countries! We discovered this misconception and many more in our new Refugee Misconception Study.
See all of the findings here: https://t.co/a6CM5VgQvK pic.twitter.com/rJNT9MQPma

— Gapminder (@Gapminder) June 21, 2023

Gapminder has released a report which is available to download, and explores the misconceptions that people have about migration and refugees.

As it says on the site:

Refugees are often in the news. The best ways to help them, where they should be housed and how much money to spend assisting them are fought over by politicians, the public and in the media. In our Refugee Misconception Study 2023, we discovered that – regardless of people’s opinions – they were almost equally wrong about the facts.

We asked nine fact questions in seven different countries. The average number of questions each person answered correctly across those countries was 2.1. That is worse than random!

I like the fact that as well as monkeys they also now compare people's score with chatbots...

Time to update my knowledge again...

Gapminder - new upgrader quizzes

 A new set of Gapminder quizzes.

Sick and tired of prejudice about your country?
We just published 196 quizzes to confront common stereotypes.
Search for your country here: https://t.co/2hx1NaQlC3 pic.twitter.com/3xf3qAxJtz

— Gapminder (@Gapminder) September 16, 2022

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

 Here's Ola Rosling explaining why...

For Year 8 homework help.

Updated Gapminder World Health Chart

The first Gapminder graphic that many people will see is the classic world health chart, with a bubble for each country showing where it sits on the graph of life expectancy against income. Mind the gap.

That has now been updated for the most up to date figures (2021) and the new version can now be viewed or downloaded as a PDF from this page.

Image copyright: Gapminder, but they kindly share resources under CC license.

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.

Hans on the wall...

Ready for the start of new term.


Hans Rosling is up on the wall with the Factfulness poster next to him.

Made with the Rasterbator website.

This will make a 6 x 3 grid - A4 or A4 portrait. Use the trim lines to trim the pages to overlap and line up each page. Work out your size first...

Gapminder Wall Chart from GeoBlogs

Gapminder World Health Chart

Going up on my wall today...

Gapminder World Health Chart by GeoBlogs on Scribd

Print this off on 18 sheets of A4 (or A3) and then reconstruct a large wallchart version of the chart to refer to when teaching.

Thanks to Matt Podbury for the steer here.

Shared under CC license (as are all Gapminder related documents and resources)

Dollar Street

We all own stuff, and a quotidian act is generally adding to that by buying something new.
In order to do that we need an income (or a credit card) and our income generally determines the sort of stuff that we buy, and at what cost.

There are many TED talks which are of value to Geographers.

We've been using Dollar Street with Year 7 and Year 8 groups to explore the inequalities in access to food and other items in homes with differing levels of income.
The students have been fascinated by the images that Dollar Street offers, and we have been asking them to explore the 'stuff' that is owned by the families and whether there are thresholds to owning an object such as a washing machine (see the Hans Rosling video on this topic to see how important it is)



I've put together a resource for Geography teachers (and others) on how to use Dollar Street in the classroom.
It's not finished yet, but is a collaborative Google Drive document which will hopefully grow...
You're very welcome to add your own ideas to this document...
It's embedded below for your interest...



Following on from that, Anna from Gapminder gave a TED Talk a while ago, and that is now available to view here...

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.

GA Cambridge Branch CPD - a date for your diaries for January

This will hopefully be of interest to those who can get to Cambridge fairly easily.

Curriculum making: new tools and serendipity Alan Parkinson A practical CPD session for teachers which will introduce a number of new resources made with the British Red Cross, Gapminder Foundation and others, along with the work of the GeoCapabilities project, which outlines the teachers' role of 'curriculum making' and the use of curriculum artefacts. Alan will demonstrate a number of websites and apps which he has been using in his teaching and which may increase the depth of investment that students have in geographical topics, and describe how serendipity plays a major part in his work. The session will take place on Wednesday 23rd January (5.00 pm - 6.00 pm) at Netherhall School, Cambridge, CB1 8NN (map) Please use the link here to sign up. The session is free to Branch members. You can join the Branch for £1 on the day.

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.

Dollar Street in the classroom

We've been using Dollar Street this term with Year 7 and Year 8 groups to explore the inequalities in access to food and other items in homes with differing levels of income.
The students have been fascinated by the images that Dollar Street offers, and we have been asking them to explore the 'stuff' that is owned by the families and whether there are thresholds to owning an object such as a washing machine (see the Hans Rosling video on this topic to see how important it is)




As part of preparations for this work, and also to support a Global Learning Programme CPD course that I'm hopefully leading in March if we can get a few more bookings, I've put together a resource for Geography teachers (and others) on how to use Dollar Street in the classroom.

It's not finished yet, but is a collaborative Google Drive document which will hopefully grow...

You're very welcome to add your own ideas to this document...
It's embedded below for your interest...

New Dollar Street website for King's Ely Geographers to investigate...

Gapminder have just launched a new version of their DOLLAR STREET tool, which enables comparisons between countries. At a time when we are moving away from the idea of developed and developing countries, it's useful to have a visual tool of the range of data to show comparisons between places.

The tool has a range of stories, and is based on over 30 000 photos, taken of over 200 families in 40 locations. Families can be ranked within the world as a whole, or smaller areas, and by indicators including toilets and teeth.
It provides an alternative visual way of showing diversity in quality of life.

See Anna Rosling Rönnlund's TED talk too