Warm-up
- What does this show?
- If you give up, click to learn the answer
- Why does it look this way?
Task #1 – Choose an Interesting Map
1) Use one of the WorldMapper links below to find a map that you think highlights an interesting point to inequality between different countries.
2) Save the map image to your server space (usually right-mouse click, “save image as”). Make sure you know what this map is showing.
3) Log-in to this Web site, change your password and then start a new post.
4) Use the last link / tutorial to upload the map image to your blog post. (here is a tutorial from an older version of WordPress, but it still shows you how to basically upload a image).
5) After uploading your image, write down the trend or pattern that you believe the map is demonstrating. Here is an example post.
Task #2 – Making Insightful Comments
You have tried to understand patterns and trends based upon WorldMapper’s interpretive maps. Good work. Now you can provide useful comments to your peers who did the same looking at different maps. Go to the list of Posts, scroll through, looking for another map that interests you from another student. Please don’t just pick your friends and don’t bother making lame comments: add an intelligent, insightful comment that highlights similarities or differences between your map and the one you’re commenting on. You can agree or disagree or find intriguing relationships.
Task #3 – The HDI
1) Go to WorldMapper’s Human Development Index map.
2) Open the PDF for the HDI map so you can learn more.
3) Define what the Human Development Index measures:
4) Choose three of the most developed countries and three of the least. Study the maps and data then decide what factors do you think creates this inequality.
5) Go to the Discussion
Hans Rosling’s Videos from TEDTalks
From the TED biography: A professor of global health at Sweden’s Karolinska Institute, his current work focuses on dispelling common myths about the so-called developing world, which (he points out) is no longer worlds away from the west. In fact, most of the third world is on the same trajectory toward health and prosperity, and many countries are moving twice as fast as the west did.
What sets Rosling apart isn’t just his apt observations of broad social and economic trends, but the stunning way he presents them. By any logic, a presentation that tracks global health and poverty trends should be, in a word: boring. But in Rosling’s hands, data sings. Trends come to life. And the big picture — usually hazy at best — snaps into sharp focus.
