Twenty-One Interesting Ways to Use Audio in the Classroom
Perhaps the coolest thing about the above PowerPoint is that it just appeared on my Google Docs page as I was added as a collaborator. It was made by Tom Barnett whose blog is here. I have been using Google Docs this fall for my students' group projects and love it. I even am going to try having students turn in some of their work this way as I am becoming frustrated by the clunkiness of Blackboard's way of turning in assignments. I'll do more on it later, but for now the twenty-one ways include podcasts with audacity, musical timers, recording projects in both audio and video and most importantly it includes all of the links for each idea.

Bureaucracy: Ambassadorial appoinments - Political Appointee vs. Career Foreign Service

I ran across this graphic on the The Monkey Cage blog. You won't find a political donor being sent to Bamako, Mali and unfortunately a career foreign service officer will never be the ambassador to Oslo, Norway.

Electing a US President in Plain English @ Yahoo! Video

The "in plain English" series is more about technical items (Google Docs, wikis, blogs, podcasts, etc.), but the one above simplifies the Electoral College.

Who Runs Government

This is a nice interactive by the Washington Post that shows you all the members of Congress, who are the Dems and Repubs, the leaders in the executive branch, administrative officials, governors, Hill staff, interest groups. Really the Post is a good source to keep visiting as they are trying very hard to do things to get people to come to their site since they are rapidly losing readers of their newspaper.

VA Done and NJ Still Up in Air
At least that's how I've read it (but then again, I thought NJ was over for Corzine months ago!). Just a week to go and a good time to talk about GOTV (get out the vote efforts by campaigns).

Saving Paper By Splitting Your Screen
Two years ago I almost bought another monitor so I could see two screens at the same time as I was tired of printing out paper, using it for a minute and then throwing it away. Perhaps the people who view this blog know about the trick above, but in case you don't, please watch the one minute video and learn how to see and work with multiple documents/webpages all at once.

Census Site for Schools

The US Census has put together a rather extensive site with lesson plans, a history of the census and more.

HBO Education site

The HBO education site contains teacher guides to many of their films as well as links to the film sites. Some of the films are: John Adams, 4 little Girls, Iron Jawed Angels, Recount, and The Laramie Project.

Ambassador Appointments
We are doing confirmations in my government class so these links will be quite helpful. This site tells you what percentage of the ambassador picks for each country since 1960 has been political (defined as not career foreign service). Now this site lists every ambassador under Obama, if they are political or foreign service, if and or when they were approved by the senate and has a link to a biography on each one.

Complete (free) Online Government Textbook
Here is a complete free online textbook from a group out of Philly that I have been working with for the last year. The book has several great features: 1) it is very easy to manuever since it is not a pdf such as the large textbook groups have for their online books 2) it has great links that will help you in the classroom 3) it has a super search engine that shows you where your information is in both the book and the Internet and 4) did I say it's FREE!

Student Presentations
If you go to youtube.com and type in "government class projects," you will see a myriad of ideas from other teachers. Above is a nice newscast that students did on current events. I am working on an idea where kids will have to do this and discuss the path of Obama's health care to date.

Health Care Support Falls Off
Remember that Pollster.com is an invaluable resource for the US government teacher. The poll above shows that Obama has his work cut with the liberals standing up for the "public option" and the conservative Dems wanting it out (see a few posts ago for some great links about health care). The poll above (or the ones below) are also a great way to talk about the number of people needed for a poll (generally about 1000 nationwide to be within +-3%). Here are the details on this poll and an explanation of how to use it.

The Living Room Candidate
This site is remarkable in that it seems to have every presidential from 1952-2008. Your students will get a laugh at some of the cartoon ones and be amazed at the way women are shown in some of the early advertisements. Above is the most controversial presidential ad of all time from 1964 which was only shown once on television.

Corzine's Weighty Ad on Christie
The ad above is getting a lot of play because Corzine is trying to attack Christie's weight. With the polls very close, it is getting to be pretty nasty in New Jersey! Here is a recent Christie ad.

Super Freakonomics
Perhaps this is more for the teacher than the student, but I have used examples from Freakonmics when I ask students if government should make decisions based on outliers for political expediency or based on statistics. If SuperFreak is as good as Freak was, then you may enjoy the video blurb above on the new book. If you are into econometrics and want to see Levitt's academic papers (upon which his books are based), then go here.