Google Earth + CIA Factbook = GIS Goodness

Posted by Mike Curtin on May 11th 2009 to Globalization, Google Earth, Social Studies  Tagged

I’ve always been a fan of Google Earth.  Who isn’t?  And even before Google Earth (heck, before Google) there was the CIA World Factbook, one of the first truly useful sites in the history of the web.  The Factbook first came online in 1994 and it was truly a forward-looking project in terms of its scope, its reliance on database technology (remember that back then, most web content was static HTML), and its organization.  I’ve been recommending it to colleagues for almost 15 years now!

So I was overjoyed to discover a few days ago that someone had created kmlfactbook.org, a site that allows you to overlay data from the factbook onto 2D maps or the 3D Google Earth globe (you must have the Google Earth browser plug-in installed to see the 3D renderings).  You load the site, select a data set (population, GDP, infant mortality…), set details on how the data should be rendered and click “Preview.”  You can even download the data as a KML file for Google Earth.  And though I haven’t tried it yet, the site says that you can upload your own country data to create custom maps and graphs.

What a great way for kids (and adults) to understand the ideas behind the statistics.  This is an indispensible tool that belongs in any teacher’s technology toolbox.

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Presidential Elections on the Web

Posted by Mike Curtin on August 12th 2008 to Social Studies  Tagged

I’ve been talking to one of my colleagues in the high school social studies department about working with her students throughout the Fall on understanding how the internet is changing the American electoral process.  Exciting stuff.  From the impact of bloggers to fundraising on the web to Obama’s VP announcement via SMS, there’s a lot to talk about.  To get the ball rolling, I want the students to look at how candidates over the last 12 years have used the web to support their campaigns.  It took some digging, but between the Internet Archive Wayback Machine and 4President.org, you can get a pretty good sense of how things have developed so far:

It’s been an interesting exercise for me because I’m not used to thinking of the web as a primary source for investigating history.  Current events, certainly, and a great vehicle for presenting materials such as text, photographs, and video - but until now I’ve never really considered web sites themselves as historical artifacts.  Of course, none of it would be possible without the wonderful Wayback Machine, a tremendous resource whose value will grow exponentially as time goes by. 

I hope you and your students find these sites useful.  I’ve tagged them all as ’election’ on my del.icio.us page.  Enjoy…

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