How do you know what you don’t know? - Issue 59
The CIA World Factbook has gone, long live Country Profiles, David Attenborough’s life’s work, searchable and the new International Geography .training is live, now with more IGCSE and AI.
The CIA World Factbook has gone, long live Country Profiles
In February, the CIA World Factbook quietly disappeared. No warning, no explanation. The Factbook was one of those dependable, slightly dull places you sent students to look up the basics about a country.
The mild silver lining is that building a replacement is no longer the job it once was. With agentic coding tools, one person with some time and a clear idea can put together something fairly serviceable, so I had a go.
It’s called Country Profiles. It’s free, it’s on alltheway.education, and it’s built for IB DP Geography in mind, but should be useful for all.
Search any of 200+ countries, and you get the figures that matter to the course, each one sourced inline (World Bank, UNDP, UN World Population Prospects, WHO) with a trend line alongside. And because it isn’t a frozen archive, the numbers refresh as the official datasets update, so you’re not teaching from a five-year-old snapshot.
There are also a few activities students tend to take part in:
Country Clash — Top Trumps for nations, essentially: pick your stats, two countries go head to head, and the highest wins. Play against the computer or a friend. You can also print decks to PDF.
Compare Countries - up to six nations side by side, indicator for indicator, with an export to a spreadsheet option.
Rank & Reveal - students predict how countries rank on a given measure before the real answer appears. They’re often some way off, which makes for a useful conversation. Hans Rosling would, I hope, approve.
The Factbook’s closure was a shame. But it was also a reasonable excuse to build something a little more current, and aimed squarely at the geography classroom.
David Attenborough’s life’s work, searchable
I came across this today and thought it was worth a share:
Nearly 5,000 episodes across 90 series — from Zoo Quest in 1954 to Secret Garden in 2026. Search by animal, habitat, location, natural phenomenon, or theme to find exactly the episode you’re looking for.
The new International Geography .training is live, now with more IGCSE and AI
The 2026-2027 season of International Geography .training webinars is available for booking.
We have tried to focus on what we perceive as gaps in available training for geography teachers. You will find three IGCSE-focused webinars, two on artificial intelligence, and three for IB DP geography.
alltheway.education
alltheway.education is a one-stop shop for all I am working on. Have a quick look at ‘The Shed’ for things I am tinkering with at the minute.