Autosummarizing

One of my teacher-students, Jerry Walsh, just told me about "autosummarizing" which literally summarizes a long passage.  This might work well if you have your students go to a Wikipedia page that has much more information than you want.  I, of course, do not want something downloaded on my computer like Microsoft Word, so I found Tools4Noobs which does the same thing for free. For example here is a Wikipedia passage on Campaign Finance and here is the Tools4Noobs summary. Obviously you would have to look at it yourself first to see if it kept your most important parts, but it's worth a try. 

Investopedia (Wikipedia for Stock Market Questions)

This summer I am teaching a fairly new course to VA called Economics & Personal Finance.  In teaching it I am finding new items for those of you who teach it in your state or who teach it as part of government.  Here is a site called Investopedia which is like Wikipedia except that it also has videos.  For example here is one on elasticity.  

How Great is Wikipedia?!

I am going on a limb here, but I actually do like Wikipedia and go to it all the time when I have questions. I know this bothers English teachers in my building, but they have never seen the Common Craft video above which essentially says that all entries must have be verified and unbiased (thanks to freetech4teachers.com for mentioning a similar video).

Wikipedia for Your Mobile Device

Okay, so I am a little bit on a roll.  Followers of this site know that I really like Wikipedia. So if you agree here is an app for your Droid and one for your iPhone.  

TruthDig
Perhaps I am behind the times as I just found out about this site, Truthdig, as it has been nominated for a Weblog Award for best political coverage. To borrow from the wikipedia site citation, it "is a Web magazine that provides a mix of long-form articles, interviews, and blog-like commentary on current events (as well as cartoons and video), delivered from a progressive point-of-view. The site is built around major "digs" led by authorities in their fields, who write multi-faceted pieces about contemporary, often controversial, topics. Articles on Truthdig are open for comments, and the participants in the discussion tend to be somewhat left-leaning." What I like is that it gives more depth, and is referred to as a webmagazine.

The 114th Congress

Dan Larson and I have been hanging out at the AP US Government reading for years and I am looking forward to doing the same with Andrew Conneen at the AP Comparative exam this year.  At any rate they just put out their 114th Congress preview and it is great.  You can see all of their videos here and their site here.  What I like about Andrew and Dan is that they have dropped their textbook for AP Gov't and are working to do the same in AP Comparative.   You can see how they do it on their site.  Also you can follow Andrew on Twitter.

Wikipedia and the National Journal have some nice graphics on the 114th.  

US v .Windsor, Oral & Written Format

It used to be that I had to rely on the Bush v. Gore case to let my students hear oral arguments. Now in two days we have two oral arguments I can choose from that my students will be interested in hearing.  The nice thing about the one above is that you get a picture of the justice who is speaking.  I put Hollingsworth v. Perry on top and US v. Windsor underneath it. Here are both today's and yesterday's for both transcript as well as the oral arguments.

The top item on this blog is from Oyez which is a tremendous site that has every Supreme Court case and everyone oral argument that has been released in audio format.  I use it (and Wikipedia) when I want my students to look up court cases. 

Iran and Censorship

Transparency is one thing that is covered in AP Comparative and, of course, one of the countries studied is Iran.  Well here is a short article on how some pages in Wikipedia and Google Sites (basically a platform for videos and message) have been blocked in recent days.  Since it also mentions Iran's president you could tie it into last year's election or even to the Green Revolution. 

Summarizer

Do you ever want to quickly read a webpage or a written document?  I have posted about Tools4Noobs.comtools4noobs.com.  It is fun as it lets you input a url and/or something you have copied and pasted.  But I think I like, as a summarizer for documents, FreeSummarizer.  Both of the sites allow you to control how long an answer you want.  So this might be a great way to get students to look at a long Wikipedia page in a short amount of time. 

Midterm Election Results

I saw a nice graphic in a Time magazine article at my parents' home, but can't find it online.  So, of course, Wikipedia.com saved me as here are the midterm results for both houses for the last 80 years.

Presidential Pardons

We just spoke about pardons today, so here is a link from Wikipedia that tells how many people were pardoned by each president and who are the ones that were notable.

Net Neutrality
Here is an interesting op-ed that charges that Google has been "punishing" companies by taking them out of Google searches and making sure that Google products go straight to the top of searches, bypassing the "Pagerank" algorithms used by Google. Since we have been discussing the bureaucracy, this is a great way to present it. Here is the proposed rule from Oct 27th from the FCC (and it is supported by the Obama administration). Its first few pages are fairly easy to understand. Here is a link that also mentions how just one word can make a significant change and a good way to introduce your students to the power of language in government. You can also do a quick search and find the pros/cons of the topic. Here is a bill that is also currently in Congress and here is the Wikipedia article on it. Several of these links I found on the Comparative Government site.