Dossier spécial
You can use world facts and statistics in many ways in class : for some they
are precious info to study geography or economics, for students, they are ways
to learn interesting facts and discover other countries, and for teachers, it
is an opportunity to make learners practice comparison in an authentic context.
I explored some sites for you, choosing the theme of ‘phones’:
Ask the brain
http://www.askthebrain.com
where I found for example this page about ‘phones’, with short testimonies
of users, statistics and lots of other information.
http://www.askthebrain.com/phone-.html
Nation Master
http://www.nationmaster.com
where I found these statistics for having a phone at home : 970 out of 1000
people in Monaco, versus 33 in Albania:
http://www.nationmaster.com/graph-T/med_tel_mai_lin_in_use_cap&id=EUR
The site also offers lists of superlatives : the poorest, the richest, the
most murderous, the most educated….and the most square-eyed…..what do
you think it is? 😉 see
http://www.nationmaster.com/graph-T/med_tel_cap
the statistics come from the CIA World Factbook 2002
CIA World Factbook 2002
you can access this publication online
http://www.cia.gov/cia/publications/factbook/
and even download it in .zip format, and make it available for your
students in school
http://www.cia.gov/cia/download.html
You can also access this site through
http://www.odci.gov/cia/publications/factbook/geos/cd.html
Brainyatlas
this site offers uptodate maps to download, and country profiles with the dates
of the statistics (some date back from 1995, some others are missing….)
http://www.brainyatlas.com/
As for phones, you can compare the systems in the different countries:
http://www.brainyatlas.com/fields/2124.html
you can also find figures, but they are difficult to analyse since they just
give numbers and not ratios, and the numbers have been collected in different
years…..but this can also be an intersting subject to discuss….
http://www.brainyatlas.com/fields/2150.html
Fact Monster
from InfoPlease
http://www.factmonster.com/countries.html
free country profiles, with various infos, including numbers and statistics
the site also offers free online
– an atlas with maps
http://www.factmonster.com/atlas/index.html
– an almanach, with a page of world stats and facts
http://www.factmonster.com/ipka/A0770063.html
– a dictionary
http://www.factmonster.com/dictionary.html
– an encyclopedia
http://www.factmonster.com/encyclopedia.html
as for ‘phone’, here is the definition the encyclopedia gives, but no
statistics there:
http://www.factmonster.com/ce6/sci/A0848085.html
Theodora.com
A world factbook by year, still with the CIA as a source
http://www.theodora.com/wfb/
and also flags, lots of maps, and information about geography and the climate.
See also their chapter ‘country rank’, with lots of statisctics to compare,
based on the 1999 statistics.
http://www.photius.com/rankings/index.html
No phone there, but you can choose, for example, to compare the use of nuclear
energy in these countries, or discuss their competitiveness ranking….
http://www.photius.com/wfb1999/rankings/competitiveness.html
And if you feel interested in competitiveness, you can access the « World Competitiveness
Yearbook » , all the information about how this rate was calculated and access
other results on the site of the institute in Switzerland who did the study
http://www01.imd.ch/wcy/
