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"NOAA View is a new project from the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration. On NOAA View you can explore visualizations of data sets in the categories of Ocean, Land, Atmosphere, Cryosphere, and Climate. Each category has multiple subsets of data from which to choose. The data sets can be displayed in weekly, monthly, and yearly units. A basic explanation of each data set is available." Resource for discussing climate and weather.

"Press the play button below to watch the war unfold over time. Drag the scrubber or click on the months and years to change the date range. Roll over the circles for more information on each battle. Casualties are defined as killed, wounded, missing and captured." Cool visualization of all Civil War battles. A couple questions that couple be useful when students view this timeline: - Using the available data, explain the Union strategy during the war - Using the available data, explain the Confederate strategy during the war. - Using the available data, explain what event/series of events represents the turning point of the war.

I've never been a huge baseball fan, but I do like data. This interactive display shows the total expenditure of every Major League Baseball team (from 1998 out until a few years in the future). Clicking on a team in the top chart will break that expenditure down per player and show what each player makes per year. Just looking at this chart for a few minutes, I've come up with the following questions that could be used in a math class for a problem solving lesson. Some of these questions would also require the students to locate some additional data as well. * Is there a correlation between team expenditure and winning the Championship/making the playoffs/number of wins in a season? * What percent of a team's total expenses do "star players" take up? * Are star player's "worth it" for a baseball team? * How have team expenses changed over the past 15 years? * Are baseball players being paid more today than in the past or are their salaries just keeping up with inflation? * How much do today's baseball stars make in comparison to the stars of the late 90's and early 00's? Is this difference warranted? I'm sure there are plenty of better questions here that I'm missing.

"Empower your students to think critically about data, ask meaningful questions, and communicate their conclusions."

"The root cause of the American Civil War is perhaps the most controversial topic in American history. Even before the war was over, scholars in the North and South began to analyze and interpret the reasons behind the bloodshed." Another interesting problem that Voyant (and other data viz/textual analysis tools) could help us solve. Provide students with a little background and then give them the Articles of Secession for a variety of states. Have them analyze/interpret the overall reasons for Secession based on what they uncover.

"The Spatial History Project at Stanford University is a place for a collaborative community of students, staff, and scholars to engage in creative spatial, textual and visual analysis to further research in the humanities. " Data visualizations that are tied to geography. Quite a few are applicable to US History SOLs

"This map, made with data from the 1870 census, shows rates of wealth per capita in the settled United States. The scale stretches from white-"under $175 per capita"-to dark orange-"$1300 and over." (In today's terms, that range of per capita net worth would be $3,125 to $23,214.29.)" Possible uses when teaching Reconstruction

"If teachers don't have enough time to ask, answer, reflect on, and revise their thoughts about the questions above, then we shouldn't be filling their time with things other people get paid to do, like writing curriculum, writing fancy-schmancy benchmark tests, looking at data that's not useful on the individual student level, or discussing which minutes of the day the bathrooms will be open to students." So many things going on in this article...Personally, I found this statement to be the main standout. I agree with this completely - instruction comes first and all the rest is secondary. If you do a great job with instruction, many of the other time eaters/wasters should fall into place and take care of themselves naturally.

"Here you will find one of the greatest historical atlases: Charles O. Paullin and John K. Wright's Atlas of the Historical Geography of the United States, first published in 1932. This digital edition reproduces all of the atlas's nearly 700 maps. Many of these beautiful maps are enhanced here in ways impossible in print, animated to show change over time or made clickable to view the underlying data-remarkable maps produced eight decades ago with the functionality of the twenty-first century." Large Database of Interactive historical maps

Lesson ideas for this resource @ http://blogs.henrico.k12.va.us/waberry/2014/03/06/tuvalabs-datasets-to-promote-critical-thinking/

"Draw an interesting curve, then click 'Correlate!' to find query terms whose popularity over time matches the shape you drew."

Real time data visualizations provide kids with real world connections to what they know and recognize. They pique their curiosity; that's their power. As with other visual content, there are a host of possibilities for using them in the classroom to demonstrate the strength numbers have on perception and success.