Speaker: Anna Rosling Rönnlund
TED2017
Date: April 2017
Location: Vancouver, BC
Description from TED website:
What does it look like when someone in Sweden brushes their teeth or when someone in Rwanda makes their bed? Anna Rosling Rönnlund wants all of us to find out, so she sent photographers to 264 homes in 50 countries (and counting!) to document the stoves, beds, toilets, toys, and more in households from every income bracket around the world. See how families live in Latvia or Burkina Faso or Peru as Rosling Rönnlund explains the power of data visualization to help us better understand the world.

My Review / Notes / Thoughts
Oh wow, this video really has me excited! It is PACKED with educational potential!
I attempted to find the website … and it had moved … so if you’d like to check it out for yourself, here it is! https://www.gapminder.org/dollar-street
Ok, so as I watched I was considering the fields of study that this video (and corresponding website) would work well with…. oh my the ideas!
- Cultural / International Studies (a no-brainer, right?)
- Data Analysis / Data Science – after all, this is a form of it
- Political Science (especially international)
- Psychology / Sociology / Anthropology
- Business / Economics – a great comparison for incomes
I had more ideas but my brain started to hurt! What other fields of study can you see being able to leverage this video with?
Oh… I guess research fields … you could make assignments with this to actually participate in the study! From their about page:
Please help us find homes in your country! We need help in finding homes in countries that are not yet portrayed on Dollar Street, and in adding more homes from the countries we already have! We need support with lot of other things as well. If you want to help, please open the form below and fill it out so we can get an idea of how we can best work together! It shouldn't take more than a minute. Thanks!
https://www.gapminder.org/dollar-street/about
Wouldn’t that make for an interesting class project even? I can see it used in High Schools as well as College courses! Students could even learn to calculate the values (that info is on their about page).
Check it out! And let me know if you find a way to incorporate this into your classroom!
Until next time … live long, life-learner!