I’m a map guy. And I’m also starting to realize that I’m a data guy. Infographics. Graphic images of data and graphs and charts and colorful statistics and numbers organized in handy ways. Yup. I’m into that.
So when I ran across a quick post on the ASIDE blog, I couldn’t resist spending some time browsing through a whole ton of very cool tools. And, of course, still trying to figure out how you might use them in a classroom. But my head is moving in the geography / civics / government direction.
But the post also provides some handy ideas for taking the Amazon data and comparing it with Chinese company Alibaba.
Real time data visualizations provide kids with real world connections to what they know and recognize. They pique their curiosity; that’s their power. As with other visual content, there are a host of possibilities for using them in the classroom to demonstrate the strength numbers have on perception and success.
It turns out that there is a ton of different web sites and tools that track both real-time data and use visualization tools for helping us see the world around us.
To get you started, here a few: