Educators Take Note — Neil Halloran’s The Fallen of World War II Brilliantly Demonstrates the Educational Utility of Intelligently Animated Graphic Representations

© 2015 Peter Free

 

08 June 2015

 

 

Citations

 

Neil Halloran and Andy Dollerson, The Fallen of World War II, Fallen.io/ww2/ (2015)

 

Marissa Visci, This Video Illustration Showing the Scale of Human Loss From World War II Is Devastating, Slate (05 June 2015) (with Neil Halloran’s video embedded)

 

 

Is this form of graphic visualization a cure for provincialism and ignorance?

 

Neil Halloran’s animated graph-based video, The Fallen of World War II, does a genius-level job of visually proportionalizing World War II casualties among the combatants and against the rest of History.

 

Marissa Visci, writing for Slate, said this:

 

 

The 15-minute video is divided into three sections: the first examines military deaths, while the second deals with those of civilians, including victims of the Holocaust. The third offers an illuminating, and ultimately uplifting, comparison between WWII and other world conflicts.

 

One particularly striking moment: when Halloran depicts Soviet fatalities as a seemingly endless parade of tiny red soldiers.

 

Marissa Visci, This Video Illustration Showing the Scale of Human Loss From World War II Is Devastating, Slate (05 June 2015) (with Neil Halloran’s video) (paragraph split)

 

The video also illustrates sometimes unremembered components of the Holocaust, as well as losses associated with the Axis Powers’ invasions of different countries. Notice, for example, Poland’s proportionately huge losses.

 

 

The moral? — The most effective treatment of this subject matter that I have ever seen

 

Neil Halloran’s brilliant method would also be useful in teaching science.