What Is Needed for 7 Billion People?

Earlier today I shared three ways to look at the world as a village. Those infographics try to help us see the world in numbers that we can relate to. On the opposite end of the spectrum we have to consider the challenges posed by a global population that now exceeds seven billion people. The National Geographic video embedded below gives a quick overview of how the population grew to nearly 7 billion and the challenges presented by a population of 7 billion.


Applications for Education
Before showing the video to your students you might want to share a couple of other National Geographic videos that attempt to help us understand how big seven billion really is. One of those National Geographic videos is about the space needed to host a party for seven billion people. How Big Is 7 Billion? video attempts to put seven billion into terms we can relate to. After watching all of these short videos ask your students to develop and propose their own responses to the challenges presented by a growing population.

Where Are You In the 7 Billion? Find Out Here

Earlier today, I posted a couple of resources from NPR and National Geographic for teaching students how the world's population grew to 7 billion and what that means for the world. Just a few minutes ago I discovered another neat resource dedicated to the topic of the population reaching 7 billion.

The World at Seven Billion is an interactive resource from the BBC that you can use to determine approximately when you were born relative to the other seven billion people on Earth. To find out what your number is, just enter your birthday and press "go." Your number is determined using the UN Population Fund's data.

The World at Seven Billion can also be used to see how quickly your country is growing or shrinking by the hour, day, and year. The World at Seven Billion also provides life expectancy data based on your home country.

Visualizing How We Reached 7 Billion

This morning NPR had a story about the world's population reaching 7 billion. Then this afternoon Ronald Ho posted a link to the following visual explanation of how the population reached grew so fast over the last two hundred years. Watch the visualization below.



National Geographic has been running a year-long series of stories about the population reaching 7 billion. You can find all of those resources here.

Applications for Education
Some questions for students to ponder as they watch the visualization: why did the population increase so rapidly? What problems for the environment will the growing population cause? What problems could competition for resources cause?

The Face of Seven Billion People

The newest issue of National Geographic appeared in my mailbox this afternoon. I opened it up to find a neat poster titled The Face of Seven Billion inside the new issue. Online, National Geographic has the same poster in an interactive display. The Face of Seven Billion uses tiny drawings of people (each represents 1 million people) to create the face of one person. Click the tabs to the side of the image to read some data about the characteristics of the world's population.

While the interactive image is neat and does offer some good data, I think National Geographic's 7 Billion: World Party and video 7 Billion People are more informative resources.

My Mini City - City Planning and Simulation

My Mini City is a city simulator that introduces users to real-life challenges facing city development and planning including unemployment, sanitation, overpopulation, and natural disaster. My Mini City does not require users to download or update any software, it is a completely web-based application. Being an entirely web-based application gives it an advantage over other city simulators on the market today. As most readers of this blog know, I am a huge proponent of web-based applications because their usability over a myriad of network and operating systems.

Applications for Educators
Geography/ Social Studies teachers will like My Mini City for the number of real life problems the program simulates. It's a great teaching tool as it makes students account for number of geographic, economic, and political concepts.
Earth Science teachers will like My Mini City's sanitation, population, and natural disaster simulations.