Here you’ll find links to exceptional Web content.
Gapminder — beautiful statistics
Hans Rosling is the best! Watch the following exceptional videos for exceptional examples of how to show numbers and tell the story of statistics. Rosling shows, with simple graphics, complicated and large numbers. His passionate delivery gets everyone excited.
Ted Talks
For exceptional speakers with profound and innovative ways of looking at the world.
- Dubunking Myths about the Third World. Hans Rosling discusses the “us” vs. “the third world” myths, once again with terrific, easy-to-understand graphics and his usual passionate delivery
- Temple Grandin: The World Needs All Kinds of Minds Temple Grandin explains her thinking process, why teachers need to consider different methods for different students, and why the world needs all kinds of minds.
YouTube
So many videos, so little time!
- Head Designed. A good video to watch when considering accessibility.
- Le Grand Content. A film that pokes fun of the PowerPoint culture with lots of surprises.
Digital Storytelling
You’ll find many wonderful examples of digital stories at the Center for Digital Storytelling. Here are a few worth watching and discussing:
- Sofas. Can you imagine telling an entire story about sofas? Wayne describes his relationship with sofas and struggles with homelessness.
- Pralines. Carol Burch Brown talks about the stark contrast of where she is today and growing up in southern family that had ties with the KKK.
- The Gift of Nonviolence. Dr. LeRoy Moore talks about his own abusive childhood which spurred him on to teach courses in nonviolent social change at the University of Colorado.
StoryCorps
You can’t go wrong with any of the stories on StoryCorps, but here are a few favorites:
- Q & A. (Animated) A 12-year old with Asperger’s syndrome interviews his mother.
- The Human Voice. (Animated) Studs Terkel speaks out about the vox humana.
- What has happened to the human voice? (Voice only) Compare this version of Stud Terkel’s story with the animated version. Does the animation help? Or is it excess?
- He told me all these stories about the tooth fairy. A childhood memory.
- I spotted this book that looked rather risque. Judge Olly Neil tells his daughter about stealing books from the library so he wouldn’t look like a nerd.
- The Betsy Ross story intrigued me. Bob Heft tells how he designed the current 50-star flag for a class assignment. His teacher didn’t understand and gave him the grade of a B-.
Grammar Help
- Grammar Girl website and individual podcasts are a good way to learn grammar details. The podcasts are a little long, if you’re impatient. Try Dashes vs Colons if you’re unsure when to use a colon, hyphen, en dash or em dash.
- Purdue Online Writing Lab (OWL). This is a completely trustworthy and helpful to verify grammar concerns and resolve writing issues.