Polls from the New York Times
Polling is a very important part of teaching government. It is also a way that I connect to AP Statistics and AP Psychology since both use statistics to make their conclusions. If you go here, you will find all of the New York Times polls.

Obama's Travels and the Election of 2012

Part of our job as government teachers, I believe, is to demystify our federal government. Here is one way. This article details why Obama goes where he goes. Most of it has to do with what were the close states in the election of 2008 and what are projected to be in 2012. I am sure if one looked at the domestic travels of the Cabinet, one would see the same similarities. This article also comes with a graphic which I will use in my class in the fall. Above is a video that also briefly mentions Obama's travels.

Lesson Plans
This has some real potential, but it is only a limited free offer. So go in and take what you need, but your visits will be limited.

AP Study Guides
If you go here, you will see a bunch of AP US Government and AP Comparative Study Guides - the entire books! If you don't see yours, put the title, including the publisher in the box and it will appear. This is TOO cool. They are not complete, but still they give you a great deal of the books.

The Federal Deficit
This WaPost had a great graphic on the federal deficit yesterday showing how it compares to other large historical ticket items.

Iranian Elections
Interestingly enough, 538.com has some great stuff on the Iranian election. If you teach AP Comparative, you will love it. Otherwise, it might just be of interest for you as a scholar. It includes vote returns by region, their analysis why the returns are "fishy" and graphics on the election.

Visuword

Now this is pretty cool. I have been struggling to "update" the way I have my students prepare their chapter reading at home. I know they are not reading the entire chapter and, frankly I'm not sure I want them to do so. But here is a way to possibly present part of the chapter. Enter in a vocabulary word and it will give you a word web of related words (which is really the best way to learn) and you can click on any of the words and it will give you a definition. You can see the one above here for the word "democracy."

Electing the President in Plain English
This comes from CommonCraft which explains a lot of things in "plain English." Here is how we elect the president.

Economic Site

I'm here at the AP government reading and picked up this site from another teacher. It is the "Foundation for Teaching Economics" which has a lot of lesson plans for economics. Follow the links on the page to get there.

12 Essentials for Technology Integration

Here is a great booklet put together to help you set up an online class for your students. While I am in a county that pays for Blackboard.com, remember you can have your students put everthing up for free - your assignments and the work for the kids. If you want to know how, check on this Free Technology for Teachers site. This site tells you how to set up Google folders, have cool slide shows, podcasts, create student webpages, get clips of films, get videos on Teacher Tube and more. About the only site I'd add is Moodle.com which allows teachers to set up folders for classes.

Blog Site For Politics
If you want a very insightful and early look (ie before most articles are written), the Wash Post's "The Fix" is a great source. What also nice is that he includes video which you could use in your classroom.

Visit msnbc.com for Breaking News, World News, and News about the Economy

Visit msnbc.com for Breaking News, World News, and News about the Economy

Inside the Presidency
I just watched the first part of the NBC show that takes an inside look at the presidency (see above). NBC has an entire page devoted to it. It is a good way to review the presidency as the show has the Chief of Staff, Press Secretary, head of the National Security Council, Secretaries of State and the Treasury and many others. It also allows for discussion on the manipulation of the press by the White House (did he go for burgers at Five Guys to be a regular person and win approval points?). The second part will be on tomorrow night at 9 PM EST.

Amazing Site of Links
This site will take me a while to get though as it is a very rich source of links, video, etc. broken into a variety of topics. For our purposes, it includes categories for world and US history as well as US government.