Dollar Street

 Help Students Get Some 

Perspective With Dollar Street!

@LisaBerghoff

" Imagine the world as a street ordered by income. Everyone lives somewhere on the street. The poorest live to the left and the richest to the right. Everybody else lives somewhere in between."

One of the biggest challenges we face as educators is helping students to see beyond themselves and their world. Gaining perspective is difficult to measure, but we know it when we see and feel it. With today's technology, it's easier than ever for our students to see parts of the world that they will never visit. Part of the problem is that when you only rely on social media for that you will get a very skewed version of what it is like to live in a place.  Even if you have the ability to travel, when you go to a place for a visit can you really say you know what it's like to live there? I have a friend who lives in the UK. He took one trip to the United States and he visited Las Vegas, NV and Los Angeles, CA. I would say that very little of what he experienced on his trip exemplifies how we live here in Illinois.

Another big hurdle we face is teaching students how to interpret data, especially large data sets and trends. This is one of those future-ready skills that our students will need to be successful as adults. Being able to tell a data story will be even more important in the workplace than it is today. We have a lot of information from other countries, but do we know and understand what we have in common and what is different about the way we live? 

I am thrilled to introduce you to Dollar Street:

From the Dollar Street Website:

Dollar Street was created by Anna Rosling Rönnlund at Gapminder. For 15 years she spent her workdays making global public data easier to understand and use. Over time her frustration grew: carefully selecting data to present it in colorful and moving charts made overall global trends and patterns easier to understand. But it did not make everyday life on different income levels understandable. Especially not in places far from home. "People in other cultures are often portrayed as scary or exotic." Anna explains: "This has to change. We want to show how people really live. It seemed natural to use photos as data so people can see for themselves what life looks like on different income levels. Dollar Street lets you visit many, many homes all over the world. Without traveling". 

Check out her incredible TED Talk: 

How Do I Get Started With Dollar Street?

Simply go to the Dollar Street website. 

Across the top you will see the "street" with the poor on the far left and the rich on the far right. You can also toggle between topics and various places in the world. You can choose a topic and a place, or multiple places and the images will appear, along with the income per month.  When you hover over an image, you can see where that family resides on the street at the top. You can also click on an image for more information. Then, if you want to know even more, you can click on "visit this family" and you will see all of the information about them. 

This site is fascinating to explore! Every time I look at it I walk away with so many answers to questions that I have but also so many more questions. 

Dollar Street has no political or financial agenda. It is licensed by Creative Commons license 4.0 so you are free to reuse, edit, and share images. They have a robust FAQ page that is also very interesting. 

In my opinion, there is a practical application here for every content area. 

If it's your first time looking at Dollar Street, use the Quick Guide for a short tour. It is a five-step tour that explains what is on the site and how to access the information. It's really very self-explanatory. 

This site does a beautiful job of marrying data with our humanity. Click on a family to learn more by watching short video clips and viewing images of everything from their toothbrushes and toilets, to how they socialize and decorate their homes.

I can't wait to hear how you are using Dollar Street in your classes.

Enjoy!