Center for Technology and Teacher Education
CIA World Fact Book
Curry School of Education
University of Virginia
Credits
John Lee
Center for Technology and Teacher Education
Impact Project
University of Virginia
Social Studies
CIA World Fact Book
2
CIA World Fact Book
Description of Module
• Discipline: Government and Geography
• Specific Lesson Topic: Welfare of Children Relationship between various characteristics
of selected countries
• Methodology: Problem solving
K-12 Objectives:
1. Identify the type of data contained in a database.
2. Interpret data to answer questions.
3. Recognize patterns in the data.
4. Use databases to develop factual and comprehension level understanding of information.
Materials Needed:
• CIA World Factbook (http://www.odci.gov/cia/publications/factbook/index.html)
• Data chart
Center for Technology and Teacher Education
Impact Project
University of Virginia
Social Studies
CIA World Fact Book
3
Procedures:
1. Direct students to the home page for the CIA handbook. When students arrive at the site
they will need to go to the countries section. They will find a database of information
about countries of the world.
2. Explain that students will use the database to collect specific information about a country.
Have each student pick one country from those listed; they should then complete a chart
with data for the eight topics listed below.
Categories
Data topics
Geography
Area: total
People
Population
Government
Government
type
Economy
GDP
Communication
s
Televisions
Transportation Airports
Military
Military
manpower
Trans-national
issues
Disputes
3. Assign each student one of the following propositions.
a. There is a relationship between military expenditures and per-captia income.
b. There is a relationship between area and population.
c. There is a relationship between ethnic groups and languages.
d. There is a relationship between airports (total) and GDP per-capita.
e. There is a relationship between suffrage and constitution.
4. Students should collect data relevant to their propos