Vive le tweet!  A ma of twitter’s languages

“What a joy these maps are to behold. It’s as if someone took one of those composite satellite maps - you know, impossibly showing the whole world at night, the darkness broken by hubs and strings of artificial light (1) - and gave it the power of speech.

For the riot of colours on these maps correspond to the diversity of languages spoken, or rather: typed, on Twitter.

The fun really begins in Europe, where some of countries just vanish off the map: Belgium tweets in Dutch and French, Switzerland in mainly in German, with a French bit west of the Röstigraben (3). And other countries emerge out of nowhere: Catalans twitter in their own language, not Spanish. German dominates Central Europe, but a surprisingly large chunk of Austria appears to be tweeting in Italian - as do a lot of dots inside France. 

Those are the really fascinating bits of this map of Twitter’s languages: the ones that show a divergent reality to the one we find on most other maps - even ‘proper’ linguistic ones: is that blue dot south of Amman really a Danish oasis in the Jordanian desert? Does nobody tweet in Lithuanian? And is that Spanish being tweeted in Bermuda?”

Click through for full article

Death by dictator

Interesting infographic, great for Social Studies and History

The accident of birth

infographed:

Lots of interesting information about refugees worldwide and today’s headline you will never read in mainstream news: “10% of the world’s refugees are given asylum by Iran.”  I’m not trying to make a statement with that, I just thought it was some weird math.

Detroit, stagnation and regeneration, a great teaching tool

100 abandoned houses by kevin bauman (via shrimp salad circus).

(via uberjoi)

USA Language Map

An interactive map showing the diversity of languages spoken in the USA.  A fantastic resource for distribution and patterns.

The original designer, Illac Diaz, has set up a website to educate and raise funds for his project.  Check it out here

mothernaturenetwork:

Beautifully simple design: The plastic bottle light
Cut a hole in a developing world roof big enough for a plastic soda bottle to fit snugly into. Fill a bottle with water and a little bleach and set it halfway into the hole cap side up. Voila, you now have a daytime light bulb. The sunshine is diffused by the water in the bottle and kicks off the light equivalent to a 50 watt bulb that costs nothing to run. See how it works.

Infographics of the Day: How Segregated Is Your City?

 Every city is integrated (and segregated) in unique ways.

Recently, cartographer Bill Rankin produced an astounding map of Chicago, which managed to show the city’s areas of racial integration.

Eric Fischer saw those maps, and took it upon himself to create similar ones for the top 40 cities in the United States. Fisher used a straight forward method borrowed from Rankin: Using U.S. Census data from 2000, he created a map where one dot equals 25 people. The dots are then color-coded based on race: White is pink; Black is blue; Hispanic is orange, and Asian is green.

This picture shows New York city, click through for more

Using lego to teach refugees.  Awesome hook, great thinking and discussion topics.  Click through for more posters and teaching suggestions.

Who are the USA’s illegal immigrants?

Illegal immigration is much more complicated issue than the usual dichotomy of “Illegal immigrants are destroying our country” versus “Illegal immigrants play a vital role in our economy.” Before we even embark on the discussion, we need to know who we’re talking about. How many illegal immigrants are there, where are they from, and how do they fit in to the economy?

SOURCE: Pew Hispanic Center (PDF)

A collaboration between GOOD and Albertson Design
 

Youth Movement

From 2007 to 2010, Gallup posed this evocative question to people in 148 countries all over the world. To include an additional dimension, the responses of young people aged 15 to 29, as well as educated adults, were also tracked. Together, the conceivable gain in overall population tell a tale of how the wishful relocation of young and educated people could shape what the world would resemble as desire becomes reality.

A collaboration between GOOD and Column Five Media

Source: Gallup