Google Public Data Explorer

What is it: Google Public Data Explorer is a Google Labs project, so that means their testing it out, that is available to anyone. With the Google Public Data Explorer you have access to large data sets of public information such as Unemployment, Population, and Retail Sales. What great is that you can view them in a as various interactive graphs or charts that you customize. For example, I want to see a line graph that compares the unemployment rate of Texas, California and Florida.

How to integrate it into the classroom: Students and teachers can create incredible visualizations, of the data sets, that can be explored and discussed with one another.  At the elementary level, students can begin to explore the parts of an effective graph.  At the secondary level, students can synthesize the information into vivid discussions.
Once you've used the Google Public Data Explorer to create an awesome visualization of a set of data, you can link or embed them into your blog or web page.  Embeds and links are updated automatically! Real time data.  That's powerful! Some visualizations can be animated to show change over time.  Imagine the types of projects that students can create.