I am a graphics guy. I think teaching with graphs, charts, infographics, etc makes learning material more interesting. I came across the site Better World Flux which provides interactive visualization of information on what really matters in life. Indicators like happiness, life expectancy, and years of schooling are meaningfully displayed in a colorful flowing Flux. Better World Flux visually communicates the world state in terms of standards of living and quality of life for many countries and how this has changed, and mostly improved, over a period of up to 50 years. This site is a tool for building a consensus, telling a story and sharing it, all whilst raising awareness for the UN Millennium Development Goals.
When viewing the data you can look at individual countries or you can look at the world averages with all the countries included. For students completing geography projects over countries, this would be a valuable resource. I could also see this being used in other social studies classes as well. You can look at the data change over time as well, at least from when data was made available. You can customize your own data sets and combine them as well.
You can see an image sample of the data graphic below as well as a video that shows how to use the website.
