If It Were My Home - Country Comparisons

      If you are looking for a new spin on doing country research, a new tool for teaching geography. Perhaps your class is discussing a current event and you need to build some background knowledge.  If so,  If It Were My Home would be a great site to visit.  

If It Were My Home will compare any country in the world with the US.  The facts are pulled from the CIA World Fact Book and presented in such a way that it makes the information more visual and engaging.

By choosing a country from the long list on the homepage, If It Were My Home takes the information and compares it to the same statistics in the US.   The visual color of the fact relates to positives or negatives. For example if Chile were your home instead of the US you would consume 73.8% less oil, which is colored green.



Facts can be expanded to give more information and where they gathered the facts from.  This is helpful in explaining how they came up with the data and percentages.  
If It Were My Home also places the map of the country over the geological location of the person researching.  With the image to the right, Chile is placed over the Eastern Oregon region to show a visual size comparison.  This is extremely helpful with younger students.

Below the list of colored facts there is also a short paragraph with more information about the chosen country.   Many times it is more about the history of the country and major issues that the country may have.  Below the more information section is often links to books that are recommended about the country.

Once in a certain country there is also the ability to take that country and compare to another one from the list.  So I can compare life in Chile to life in Argentina.  The same comparisons, data, and maps of the comparison will be generated.  I have to say, this website is addicting!  A note for classroom use, this is a free site and does contain ads once on the comparison page.  

Awesome Stories - Primary Source Research for Students

Awesome Stories is a great free story based research site that provides additional media with a focus on cited primary resources.  The stories are high interest, focusing on events from the present as well as the past.

With the recent passing of Nelson Mandela there are story snippets from his book Long Walk to Freedom. Each page contains numerous additional resources in the form of hyperlinks within the text as well as from the list on the side of primary source photos, movies, sound files, and other media.   

Students can use the search bar to look for specific topics or use explore the calendar to see stories for that week.

With the free version of this site there is access to all the stories and the primary sources.  With an additional silver membership (free for a 30 day trial) there are expanded options such as teacher account with student tracking, audio read alongs, visual vocabulary builder activities, CCSS alignment resources as well as other features.  A more advanced gold level is in the works.

Newsmap - Mapping Todays News

Would it be interesting to see how different countries perceive which current events are most important? Check out these perceptions using a tool called Newsmap. (screen shot below taken on February 26, 2011)

The news is layed out in blocks, larger blocks representing a bigger focus around the country, represented by the number of articles written about that topic. Reading stories from different countries is accessed by clicking corresponding tab found across the top. Different types of news are highlighted with different colors; for example world affairs in maroon while sports are in blue. Checks near the bottom allow one to select which type of news to display. Each block links to a story from a variety of newsmedia sources.

This resource would be great for any current events class, as students could compare viewpoints from different regions around the world. Foreign Language classes could use this tool to read comparative stories in different languages. An ad free mapping of todays news, definitely worth reading.