Hans Rosling is a remarkable speaker on the TED stage. We spent time watching and discussing his TED Talk because Rosling presents information that will be useful in each of the AP Human Geography Topics—but just as important, he provides a myth-busting perspective: Sub-Saharan Africa, traditionally viewed as the poorest and most backward of the world's cultural regions, has, in fact, made much progress over the past several decades.

While we discussed the presentation at length, and took notes in class, it is probably a good idea to spend some time re-viewing it later in the course, or during ExamCram.

Here's a link to the TED Talk:

http://www.ted.com/talks/hans_rosling_reveals_new_insights_on_poverty?language=en

Here's a link to the transcript page for your notes.

Tom Friedman is the author of a very important recent book titled "The World is Flat". While it would be a rewarding experience for all of you to read it, we watched an MIT "open courseware" talk by Friedman in class to provide an historical context, or framework, to help you understand the immense changes that have taken place in human civilization over the past several centuries.

Here is a link to the video we watched.

Here is a link to the notes pages for the video.

Click here to see a javascript generated wordcloud based on the text of The World is Flat.