Tech Tips for the Week of September 28 - CIA World Factbook, Estat, Excel

First as a follow-up to last week's Tech Tip, my colleague Rob Geiger pointed out that my video on using the Format Painter had neglected to draw attention to the benefits of double-clicking on the Format Painter button. Double-clicking essentially "locks" the Format Painter in an "on" state so that you can swipe the Format Painter cursor across multiple selections, copying the format of your original cursor position. When you are done applying formatting in this way, clicking on the Format Painter button again turns it "off." Thanks, Rob.

In this week's Tech Tip, I would like to draw your attention to two great information resources for Social Studies teachers and a powerful tool for managing and understanding the information gleaned from those resources.



CIA World Factbook - The first information resource is the CIA World Factbook, a treasure-trove of current information and data on countries all around the world. Here you can find data on population, demographics, geography, economy, system of government, and much more, for virtually any country on earth. Furthermore, you can perform side-by-side comparisons of information and data from different countries.

EStat - My second recommendation for current information is Estat. Estat is a branch of Statistics Canada which aims to provide free data to education. Needless to say, as a branch of StatsCan its focus is on Canadian data, but this extends to such areas as trade with other countries, which can be valuable in such curriculums as Social Studies 6 and 7. One of the beauties of Estat is the querying mechanism which allows teachers and students to retrieve very specific data from very large and complex data sets. Furthermore, users can retrieve the query results in a table which can be imported directly into Microsoft Excel.

MS Excel - That segue brings me to my final recommendation, using Microsoft Excel as a graphing or data-analysis tool. Excel makes graphing accessible enough that students as young as grade 5 can make productive use of it charting abilities. There are numerous applications for Excel's graphing prowess in Social Studies, Math, and Science.

Of course, recommendations are all fine and dandy, but how would you use these tools in the classroom? Below I have included links to several video tutorials which demonstrate just that. Each is tied to a particular curriculum outcome and indicator, in this case, from the new (2009) Middle Years Social Studies curricula, but you could use the skills that are demonstrated in these videos in many other curriculum areas as well.

Social Studies 6, Outcome DR6.2, Indicator b - Using the CIA World Factbook to Collect Population Data
Social Studies 6, Outcome DR6.2, Indicator b - Graphing Population Data in MS Excel

Social Studies 6, Outcome DR6.2, Indicator c - Migration Rates by Country (no video, data only)

Social Studies 7, Outcome IN7.1, indicator d - Graphing Pacific Rim Trade in MS Excel Using Estat Data

Social Studies 8, Outcome IN8.2, indicator a - Analyzing Immigration Patterns in MS Excel Using Estat Data

I hope these links might be of some help to those who are attempting to implement the new SS curricula now or in the near future.

Do you have questions or curriculum challenges you would like to see addressed in these Tech Tips? Please let me know, and I will do my best to tackle them in the weeks to come.

Remember, if you would like face-to-face help with any of the tools mentioned in these Tech Tips, you can book a time with your local Elearning Catalyst
Teacher. To assist you in booking a time, click on a name below to view that person's calendar:

Rob Geiger
Cal Deobald
Lisa Bender
Shelby Budd

Until next week ...