http://video.ted.com/assets/player/swf/EmbedPlayer.swf
I’ve just spent a couple of days working with some wonderful teachers in Hamilton, as part of two different cluster meetings. In my presentations to these groups I referred to the trends in population growth, and the considerations for us as educators of this on issues of globalisation, cultural awareness, language learning etc. in our future planning.

It was with interest that I saw the link to the video above from TED, featuring Hans Rosling on Global Population Growth. I really like this presentation for two reasons…

1. it presents the issues in a very visual and entertaining manner, providing much food for thought. The clip itself would be very useful as a resource in the classroom – to generate discussion and further research.
2. the way Rosling presents the information provides a brilliant example of how such complex and big picture issues can be made ‘accessible’ for learners, and so the modelling of what he does could be adapted by a classroom teacher wanting to introduce students to these ideas.

Rosling’s video, combined with resources such as the Miniature Earth project, provide us with opportunities to really engage our students in ways of understanding the implications of global population growth, and the distribution of wealth, health, food etc.