Gapminder.com

We had another visit with Gapminder World.  Our in-class, small-group project of finding something of interest and creating our own way to display the information was thoroughly enjoyable, albeit a bit overwhelming - too many choices and such different questions in our small group.  Nonetheless we found something that we could all invest in and then had to find a way to display the information.  Interestingly, our questions led to more questions that led to more research outside of the gapminder website.  We had to answer why (education spending flatlined in 2001 with the inception of NCLB) and that led down some controversial paths that had what appeared to be very conflicting information.  Given more time I think students would begin to ask more questions about what is actually being asked and answered in the research, broadening their understanding of how difficult it is to be clear, concise and as "objective" as possible.  This looks to me to be a potentially very inter-disciplinary study of how we get information, how we look at it, and what it really means.  I think this could be very valuable across all content areas.  The implications are very broad and far-reaching in this "Information Age."