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Gapminder is great for filtering and analyzing data. For instance, students can manipulate country data including population, gdp, and life expectancy. They can then add variables or filter out factors. An historical analysis can also be analyzed by reviewing changes in these data sets over the last hundred years or more.

(Please note the link to a Free Demo download on the right hand side of the linked page) Orwell is an episodic indie game that puts players in the role of an analyst working for a fictional surveillance state in the wake of a bomb explosion in a public square. Players are tasked with scouring news sites, social networking sites, message boards, blogs, text chats, and the like for clues as to the identity of the bomber and possible motivations for the bombing. Potentially relevant information is highlighted, but it is up to the player to decide whether each piece of information is worthy of inclusion in a report to be passed up the chain of command. The items selected create the narrative that law enforcement will act upon, but the player has no say as to what actions are taken beyond selecting what to include in the accumulated data. The story unfolds through the narrative that player-selected data constructs and the actions that result. Mistakes can result in the detention or prosecution of innocents. This forces the player to exercise research and critical thinking skills, particularly evaluating data as relevant or irrelevant, reading between the lines, and maintaining awareness of how each piece of information contributes to an overall narrative. Embedded in all of this is a clever critique of the surveillance apparatus and how it relates to our conceptions of freedom, safety, and privacy-a critique, I would argue, worthy of the game's name. I selected Orwell for this critical thinking post because it is essentially a gamified exercise in research, or, put another way, research with training-wheels. All of the pieces of data that the user can include are presented in context, and players must evaluate how a clue relates to both its context and to the investigation as a whole in order to make useful selections. That kind of consideration is essentially what we are doing as we research material for inclusion in an academic paper, and so I believe the game doe

Always trying to work smarter, I make Google Forms do the data analysis for me. By creating an adaptive form, I am able to quickly, efficiently, and impressively record student data. The results are easily translatable into flexible grouping options, formative instruction materials, and of course, good old fashioned tests. Combine Forms with the output google spreadsheet, with conditional formatting, and Flubaroo, and you're working smarter than you've ever done before!

Plickers is a tool that teachers can use to assess their students quickly and in real-time without the need for students to have a device. As long as teachers have a device with the Plickers app downloaded, they can scan their students Plickers card to collect data in a matter of seconds!

A platform for real-time formative assessments + a FREE next-generation student response system.

Short Description: Formative is a free, online tool which allows teachers to create a variety of assessments, collect data, and provide feedback to students in real time. In setting up an assessment, teachers may create their own material or upload documents, images, and YouTube videos (to name a few) to which they may add questions. Such questions can include multiple choice selections, True/False, short responses, and "Show Your Work", the latter two requiring manual grading/correction. After all responses are submitted, the teacher may then receive a summary of class scores and export that data to a spreadsheet. Furthermore, the feature of tagging certain skill sets to an assessment enables a teacher to track each student's progress with a particular subject. Examples of Uses: Formative can be used for nearly any subject or topic. Throughout a unit, a teacher could create multiple assessments to evaluate their class's understanding of the material. In a Social Studies unit on the Founding Fathers for instance, a teacher could upload photos of the different Founding Fathers and ask for an identification and brief description. For another question, they could upload a map of the United States and ask students to manually draw in where certain historical events took place. Also, the teacher could upload portions of the Declaration of Independence and/or the Constitution and have students respond to questions posed regarding those documents.

The QR, or "Quick Response" code, is much like barcode, except that it can hold more data. With one quick scan using a QR code reader app (most of which are free) the "matrix image," as Edutopia's Monica Burns calls it, can lead you to a specific place on the web.

Software developer Mike Matas demos the first full-length interactive book for the iPad - with clever, swipeable video and graphics and some very cool data visualizations to play with. The book is "Our Choice," Al Gore's sequel to "An Inconvenient Truth."