Executive Orders

This video is a nice introduction to Obama's reasoning to use executive orders.  Here are all Obama's orders so far and here are all presidential orders.  Of course he has already issued 166 which by the way is a long way behind Ronald Reagan who had 380. 

We Trended Again on the State of the Union

I have to tell you that we have had more Tweets than ever from our kids this year.  We had students from five teachers and trended on Twitter (#usgovclasssou) the last 40 minutes of the State of the Union.  You can do it as well and WOW the kids really enjoy seeing their hashtag featured on Twitter which really spurs them on.  Here is the post discussing how to use a hashtag for your students.

You can also go to our hashtag of #usgovclasssou and see how well behaved our students were. 

Writing and Delivering the State of the Union Speech

Other than President Ford, everyone including W. Bush seemed to think the state of our union was good even as we entered two wars.  That and other similarities are very interesting and clearly ongoing if you watch the snippets from State of the Union speeches from Kennedy to the present.

Also, here is a short, but interesting read talking about how many people take part in writing the State of the Union speech.  The video below short clip on the making of the 2012 speech.

On Tuesday, you might want to go to the "enhanced" White House page where you can get lots of extra tidbits about the speech as it progresses.  This means you will be able to watch the speech and see graphics at the same time.

State of the Union Preview, Twitter and Bingo

Above is a State of the Union preview.

My classes are joining with four others to discuss the speech via Twitter as it proceeds.  If you want to join us email me as we are willing to expand on our group.

Here is a Bingo game put together by Frank Franz you could also use for your classes. 

Federalism and Gay Marriage

Just an hour ago our brand new Attorney General Mark Herring (D) who won in the closest contest in VA history (907 votes) just released a brief in favor of gay marriage.  Here is the NPR interview and here is a "print" article.

• In VA we have both a law and an amendment against gay marriage.  
• Herring has decided to both not defend the law/amendment which certainly brings up the question of whether the top prosecutor for a state can ignore a law
• Herring has submitted a brief to federal court (hence the federalism) supporting the gay couples challenging the ban.

For government class it begins with federalism.  Then students need to consider several different items.

• 10th amendment's reserved clause which says marriage is not in the US Constitution and therefore it is up to VA or any state
• Full faith and credit clause.  We recognize opposite gender marriage, but not same sex when people move from state to state
• Equal protection clause of the 14th amendment which is where Herring is arguing saying that it is the right of all people to marry.  He is also tagging Loving v. Virginia which he has argued in a brief that that precedent is about marriage for all, not just minorities. 

History Controversy and the Law

There is a bill in my Virginia legislature co-sponsored by Delegate Tim Hugo (R) and Senators Dick Black (R) and Dave Marsden (D) to force all localities to use the "East Sea" when using "Sea of Japan" in our textbooks.  This is a nice example of government and education intersecting.

1. If we are only using ebooks, does "textbook" cover it.  That sounds silly, but legislators need to be very specific.  Of course most teachers use many resources other than a textbook so does that mean if it passes it doesn't apply to handouts (digital or paper) since they are decidedly not textbooks.   Both "Sea of Japan" and "East Sea" are in our state requirements to teach, called the Standards of Learning.  For what it is worth, our textbook already has both as you can see above. 
2. In Virginia, and in the US government it always helps to have co-sponsors (or as we can them in VA, co-patrons) so a bill has the chance to die twice.  Here is what the bill is doing in our state senate and here is what is going on in the house. 
3. It has bipartisan support, although limited as you can see from the co-patrons in the House and the Senate. 
4. McGuireWoods, one of the states most powerful lobbying firms is now involved. 
5. It actually has international implications as the Japanese ambassador to the US just met with Virginia's governor on the issue.  Since Japan is a big trading partner with Virginia it obviously has economic ramifications as well.  
6. Where is the line between state legislators and localities and for that matter the federal government and the two lower entities.  In Virginia we have something called the Dillon Rule which muddies our line which makes me wonder if this piece truly falls under it. 
7. What exactly is the controversy?  The Japanese support the name "Sea of Japan" and the South Korean prefer "East Sea."

So if you want an interesting example to discuss with your students this might be one of many where government impacts them in school.  Of course there are so many more! 

Images and Citing Them

Yes t is a snow day and I am all caught up in my grading and have everything set for the next week, so hence times for a bunch of posts t oday.

To that end the video above shows you how to quickly weed out images that do not have citations and how to then get the citations.

I got this from Chad Kafka's Google+ post. 

State of Union Enhanced Presentation

As you can see from the short White House video above the White House site will have enhanced graphics live to go along with the speech.  I know I will Tweet it to my students when we are discussing it on line.  

How to Teach During the State of the Union

Most government teachers like to assign their students to watch some or all of the State of the Union.  A very traditional assignment is to play State of the Union Bingo.  The idea is to use a board that talks about key topics in the news and see which student can get a Bingo first. Hopefully in playing the kids will also learn something.

Well as you can imagine my students (and some from other classes) will be Tweeting the State of the Union and here is how you can do the same yourself.  First off you need to know that not all of your students can Twitter (yes I know this is shocking).  For those I use an editable Google Drive document.  To do this simply go on such a document and go to the blue "Share" button on the upper right.   A new window will appear (see below) that will say "Anyone who has the link

can view" and then the word in blue will say "change."  Change "view" to "edit."  Now take the url at the top of the page and give it to your students.  Even if the kids do not have a Google Drive account, they will be able to write on the e-sheet.

Now for the multitudes of students that DO have Twitter, you will need a hashtag.  A hashtag was actually not even developed by Twitter, but it is simply a name with the "#" appearing first as in "#usgovernmentteachersblog"  Go to the search engine on the upper right on Twitter and type in your hashtag and see if anyone else is using it.  If not, then you are fine (and if someone else is using it, then that is fine, but lots of other people may join your conversation).

Now you need to decide what your assignment will be.  I usually ask that the kids give me three comments, but they usually give lots and lots more.  While it is easy to find the comments on a Google Drive document, it is harder to piece them all together on Twitter so I have the kids send me a snapshot of at least three of their comments.  It also helps if you get another teacher or two in on your assignment to spice up the assignment.

So what are you looking for in Tweeting the State of the Union.  Well you as the teacher should teach.  I will make some comments such as "Notice that none of the military leaders and Supreme Court justices are applauding."  "Look beside Michelle Obama" and watch how Obama weaves in those people into the speech something started by Reagan with Lenny Sputnik in 1982."  What you want from your students is really anything that might be relevant to a government class such as Republicans standing, Democrats sitting, that is a non partisan policy idea, partisan one, he is talking about discretionary items, entitlements, there is the cabinet, wonder if all 535 members are there, etc.

Finally you will be on a public forum (not the Google Drive document, but Twitter) so anyone can join in.  I have had a number of our grads join in and had my students make thousands and thousands of comments, but have only seen three in appropriate ones and the chance to teach live during an historical moment can't be beat.

If you have more questions (the idea for this post came from one of you), the Tweet (@kenhalla) or email (kenhalla@gmail.com) and I'll add it to the post.

AP Comparative Website

This website is an assignment by Andrew Conneen of Stevenson High School in Illinois.  It is quite comprehensive and can even replace a review book if you want.  It really is a great way to have the kids collectively work together on an assignment which also lets them make sure that they know the material.  It covers all six countries as well as the European Union and bolds all the key terms that kids need to know for the AP exam. 

How Representative is the US House of the US?

The image above is a great visual of how the US House is not representative of the way the US looks ethnically.  The cool thing about the feature is that if you click on say African-Americans it will show you the US population versus the House as it will for all ethnicities.

If you want to see more about the breakdown of the entire 113th Congress as analyzed by the Congressional Research Service, go here.  

Flipped Classroom on CBS News

I love that CBS refers to the flipped classroom as a new way to teach, but at least they interview two of the pioneers - even if they don't go back to the true originators (for that you have to read my book!).  If you are flipping, think about it and watch the video to be convinced. 

NYTimes Timeline on Iran

This is a fantastic timeline on Iran which you can use in your AP Comparative class.  It is titled as a timeline on Iran and its nuclear program, but it has much more such as Rouhani's election, history going back to Khomeini and Pahlavi, Iran's supreme leader and much more. 

On top is CBS Nightly News' video on the nuclear talks. 

Demographics and Voting

Now this is the way teaching should work.  Back in November I did a post about a WashPost article which was essentially summarizing with maps eleven demographic areas of the country.   The article was a summary of the book "Patchwork Nation." So Keith "Hip" Hughes read the post, went "cray cray" and produced the video above.  If you teach AP government, you'd like the video as there was a free response question a few years ago that could be addressed by the video.  It also works for standard government as Keith has a fun style that I am sure your students will enjoy. Hey why not build a lesson around the article and video!

Last Signup Day for my Tech Integration Class is Friday

Sorry to my regular blog readers outside of Fairfax County, but I love teaching my Academy Course and just wanted to remind people that tomorrow (Friday) is the last day to sign up.  So in case you are considering it (or haven't considered it yet):

I will be teaching the sixth version of my technology integration course with Fairfax County Public Schools this spring.  We will learn about such items as webquests, pacing your students individually using technology, flipping the classroom, using electronic textbooks, collaborating online, how to use Google Drive and lots more in a ten week course.  You can get more details here on page 42.  To sign up go to MyPLT (if you need help go to page 72) and put either the title or just a few words from the title or even e-mail me and I can add you to the class.  The deadline for signing up is January 17th.

The class will be on Thursdays from 4:30 to 7ish at Woodson.  It is free to FCPS employees, but if you live in the areas and are not in FCPS you can take it, but you have to pay for it (page 9).   If you have questions, please e-mail me at ken.halla@fcps.edu. 

SkyDrive Tutorial

So it would be fair to say that I prefer Google Drive over Microsoft's SkyDrive.  SkyDrive is the cloud based way to use Microsoft.  It is not as robust as Google Drive in that it does not have any apps you can add, nor can you run scripts and has less free space, but it has been growing in the last two years.  To start you have documents, excel, PowerPoint or one note to create and upload files from Microsoft Office.

Above is a fairly nice video on how to use SkyDrive. 

My Post for Digital Learning Day

Tomorrow the Alliance for Excellent Education, that started Digital Learning Day, is posting my thoughts on Digital Learning Day which I am also posting below. 

Last year in my Digital Learning Day post for the Alliance for Excellent Education I said that "One day all of our students will have interactive lessons where the teacher will walk around the room connecting information, helping pupils do their work and making sure that the necessary learning is being done correctly and where appropriate, collaboratively.  Classes will be self paced and conclude with interactive assessments that measure students’ ability to find and use online resources to answer probing questions."

Interesting what a year brings.  This spring I have a book coming out from Corwin Books talking about just what is printed above (something I had no idea about when I wrote the post).  I also am co-teaching, for the first time in my career, and doing it with an ESOL WHI class.  Fully half of the kids have been in the class have been in the US fewer than two years and all but a few of the students are either immigrants on ones who do not speak English at home.  

To that end we have flipped every single lecture (nothing profound, but all less than ten minutes each as you can see here) and have our students working at different paces.  One parent told me her daughter was looking at videos and webpages and wondered why she hadn't been reading more of the book more.  I told we were were using multiple modalities and the e-book was only one of the resources.  But that child has only been speaking English a few years and finds it helpful to go over each video several times.  

We also proved to the kids a valuable lesson telling them that on the most recent lesson that no one would be allowed to take the test until the study guide was completely done.  Between our two classes twelve kids tested us and we pulled each one in the hall individually and called home asking that their child stay after school to take the test and then had them sit down to work on the study guide.  Guess what?  The ESOL kids tied the test scores of the mainstream ones and all our students were EIGHT percentage points over the school average for the test!   

Why did that happen? Well rather than waste student time on lecture based teaching we spent the entire unit (and by now my cooperating teacher and I have adjusted quite well to each other) walking around and working one on one with each students.  Furthermore we probably call up 1/3rd of the students on a given day to look at grades and even to have student-parent-teacher conferences in the hall to work out issues.  We also have added in several formative quizzes each unit and the kids can take them as many times as they want to raise their grades. 

Additionally since our class is paperless our students (9th graders) have picked up computer skills way beyond what a traditional class might have.   Know that many of my kids started the year with very limited digital skills - one even asked me what a cursor was!  

Does this mean our year will be a success - who knows at this point?  We still have kids who don't want to do work at home and a few that are not doing well in several of their classes. But we have seen many glimmers of hope that using technology to self pace our students is helping improve learning.  

Starting AP Comparative - EU & Immigration

So I handed out the AP Comparative e-books (and some chose hardback) today as the kids will be getting their first assignment on Great Britain next week.  I may also assign them this article from the NYTimes in about ten days as it covers the following terms that might make an AP exam:
welfare, immigration, austerity, European Union, European commission, Britain, prime minister, David Cameron, former communist countries in EU, William Beveridge, tax credits, subsidies, Labour Party

What Does it Take to Become an Ambassador

This short video talks about four political appointees to be ambassadors and how long they have to wait to get the job.  It also mentions posts that career diplomats can garner.

If you go here you can see several other posts on becoming an ambassador. 

Still Room in My Tech Integration Course

I will be teaching the sixth version of my technology integration course with Fairfax County Public Schools this spring.  We will learn about such items as webquests, pacing your students individually using technology, flipping the classroom, using electronic textbooks, collaborating online, how to use Google Drive and lots more in a ten week course.  You can get more details here on page 42.  To sign up go to MyPLT (if you need help go to page 72) and put either the title or just a few words from the title or even e-mail me and I can add you to the class.  The deadline for signing up is January 17th.

The class will be on Thursdays from 4:30 to 7ish at Woodson.  It is free to FCPS employees, but if you live in the areas and are not in FCPS you can take it, but you have to pay for it (page 9).  The class fills up quickly, so if you are interested I would sign up sooner rather than later.  If you have questions, please e-mail me at ken.halla@fcps.edu. 

State Elections & National Funding

This is a fascinating NYTimes article detailing how Republican and Democratic lobbying firms are raising money not just for state campaigns, but also for state ones with the purpose of getting legislation through that favors their side.  Here are several examples of partisan legislation and what states it has gotten through.

Part of the plan for the Republicans was developed by Ed Gillespie who has decided to risk his reputation and tackle one of my sitting senators, Mark Warner (D) who has a 61% approval rating.  Following his own strategy he is planning to center his campaign around ObamaCare. 

What Makes a Great Teacher?

After years of being an AP coordinator and department chair I still know if someone will generally make a great teacher in the first few minutes I meet them.  But explaining it is a bit harder.  Having said that I know while a number of teachers view this site, so do some students.  So the video above is for you or for those of you who want to reflect on your own teaching.  It is worth the five minutes to watch it.

Keith Hughes' video breaks it down into content knowledge, having a strong paradigm on learning, being authentic and having great human relationships.  I really like how he says if you do the last two discipline will take care of itself - coming from someone who thinks raising his voice and sending kids to the office doesn't have much impact and even can be a reward in some case!  Hughes But sums it up well by calling teaching "magic."  Do you have anything to add? 

Essential Court Cases for the AP Govt Exam

Years ago I stole Rebecca Small's list of essential court cases and while I have made a few additions, it is essentially still hers.  But today I found this great list + definitions and it seems to be even a bit better.  Of course, based on the more recently released AP exams and free response questions or lack thereof (my kids laugh every year when I say THIS is the year ETS will have a free response with court cases) knowing a number of court cases won't make much difference, but knowing the key clauses WILL.  

The Blog Makes the WashPost

The WashPost liked my idea enough to have my students collaborate with me on a snow/cold day (here is the post) that one of the writers wrote a nice article on it which you can see here.   On one of the days I used two short videos and one of them we met in an online Blackboard site to finish a unit and study for a test. 

Before Snowden

If you have time to investigate the boundaries of democracy and government overstepping it, this is a fascinating mini documentary (13 minutes) from the NYTimes on a group that stole FBI documents (the old fashioned way  by breaking and entering) in 1971 and then released them to the WashPost.  The papers showed that the FBI was not only watching political activists, but US Senators, diplomats, sports' stars, predominant Americans and more and some of them even had their offices and homes broken into, mail opened and others were blackmailed.   The break-in lead to the FISA court and to Congress reigning in the FBI.  Obviously the perpetrators compare themselves to Ed Snowden.  The burglars were never caught and are now hawking a book! 

School on a Snow Day

I will admit that I can't get away with this with all of my classes, but my AP Comparative (which is AP US Government and AP Comparative in one year) is a motivated bunch. So while today is our second snow day (actually a "cold day" since it is 5 degrees right now) we have managed to work around the day off and not miss any time.  How you ask?

1. For my online kids I use Blackboard Collaborate so I created a class and gave my brick and mortar kids the link back in late October and we all agreed that at 10 am on a snow day we would have class.  24 of my 30 kids made the class and the others watched the session which was recorded.  
2. If you don't have something like Blackboard Collaborate you could you a Google Plus Hangout live stream where you could send a link to your students and they could watch a live lecture (here's how).    You could then use Today's Meet to send a link to students and you could see their live questions.   You would be able to do this by splitting your screen. 
3. Today based on what we are doing I decided not to how an online session and instead made the video above as both an introduction and a continuation of our material.  Then my kids will watch this video and look up these court cases.  
4. I communicated with the kids by using Remind101, Blackboard and even using my gradebook which has all of the kids' emails.  For the Remind101 message I used a shortened tinyurl (tinyurl.com/fcpscoldday) which linked to my normal homework e-sheet. so I didn't have to text the kids multiple times with the assignments.  
5. We will start our class on Thursday with questions (several have already emailed me with some) and then take a quiz where the kids can use their notes.  Then we will move on and still be able to have our test next week without a hitch. 
6. So if you have a motivated bunch and you can't afford to miss a day of school you might want to try some of the techniques. 

Take My Course

I will be teaching the sixth version of my technology integration course with Fairfax County Public Schools this spring.  We will learn about such items as webquests, pacing your students individually using technology, flipping the classroom, using electronic textbooks, collaborating online, how to use Google Drive and lots more in a ten week course.  You can get more details here on page 42.  To sign up go to MyPLT (if you need help go to page 72) and put either the title or just a few words from the title or even e-mail me and I can add you to the class.  The deadline for signing up is January 17th.

The class will be on Thursdays from 4:30 to 7ish at Woodson.  It is free to FCPS employees, but if you live in the areas and are not in FCPS you can take it, but you have to pay for it (page 9).  The class fills up quickly, so if you are interested I would sign up sooner rather than later.  If you have questions, please e-mail me at ken.halla@fcps.edu. 

US-Russia Relations

One of the courses I teach is AP US Government & AP Comparative.  With just two weeks to go in that course's AP Government part, you are going to start seeing lots of AP Comparative posts.  If you want to see what I put up last year (and there was a lot), go to the search box in the upper left hand corner and type in "comparative" and you will see all of it.

For now, there was a good article in the WashPost today discussing the diverging roles that the US and Russia have been taking recently.  

Sotomayor Halts Part of ObamaCare

Unfortunately I am not yet back in school, but for those of you who are above is a short recap of what Justice Sotomayor did in halting a provision of ObamaCare which means that some Catholic organizations do not need (temporarily) have to pay for abortions for their employees as it might be in conflict with the First Amendment's establishment clause.  If you want more details from EdWeek's School Law Blog.