Open Congress

My roommate at the AP Reading, Tim Dowler, just gave me a great site called Open Congress which I am going to add to my Congress project this year.  Open Congress has every active bill in the  US Congress, but adds a nice nuance such as "hot bills."  You can also look at bills for each house or look up bills by committee, or member of Congres.  

Become an AP Grader

This week I am in Salt Lake City grading AP Comparative exams.  In the past I have also graded AP US History and AP US Government.  Honestly the sound of grading a bunch of exams every day doesn't seem to excite lots of people, but every single  (and there have been a lot) person I have convinced to be an AP grader has loved the experience.

• First off you really get to understand how to write the free response questions so you can teach your students to do the same. 
• Secondly you meet a number of outstanding teachers who, in my case, have become a network that I consult year round.
• You also might also end up being asked to work for the College Board in other ways (writing AP questions, creating a syllabus, teaching summer institutes, etc.

So if you are interested in applying, my advice is to get your application in during the early fall and you should hear in late January or early February.  Good luck.  

The British Parliament in Two Minutes

Georgia Virtual's AP Comparative Page

So Georgia Virtual's AP Comparative page has a lot of good resources such as key words, images, short narrated PowerPoints and more some of which you might find helpful in your own class. 

Gerrymandering and Virginia

Gerrymandering, explained

My home state of Virginia just had its gerrymandered Congressional districts thrown out as you can see in this article.  For those of you teaching the concept, you can see a nice explanation above.  Be sure to hit the tabs at the bottom to see everything Vox has labeled.  Virginia has until September to improve its map.  

Sell Your Class With This Video

Every year we make a video in my department to "sell" our courses.  Well now we have a new bar in this super video made by Paul Sargent.  One easy way to make a film like this is to use WeVideo which is an app you can add to Google Drive or use separately.

Below is a tutorial on how to use all the different aspects of WeVideo. 

All the Ways to Donate to Campaigns

This is such a good explanatory video going from the $2700 limit for individuals to PAC limits of $5000 to super PACs to dark money and what the pros and cons are of each.  At 2:56 length, it definitely will be one of the videos my kids watch next year.  

Summer Reading

For all of us, summer is a time to reflect and refine.  One thing you might want to help you do that is Deeper Learning Through Technology: Using the Cloud to Individualize Instruction.  Yes, I wrote it, but I created it so that it would be immediately useful in your classroom.  For example for each chapter there are several ways that the entity being discussed has been used in the classroom.  I also have several classroom challenges in each chapter so you and your PLC can actually be more motivated to try each item being mentioned.

As implied by the book's title, the goal is to better individualize your students learning using Google Drive, flipped learning, expanding your PLC beyond your school doors, how to assess your students and so much more.  While I have research to back up each item, the main goal is to give teachers a practical manual they can use it for the parts best suited for their classroom or bit by bit over the course of the year.  

You can buy the book individually or get group discounts. 

Shift Happens

When I do in-services I used to start with Shift Happens, but then it wasn't updated for a while.  Well I just found s 2014 version of it which is still quite good, even if it is a bit old given how fast technology moves in a year.  If you haven't seen the series before, you will be somewhat amazed at the statistics for learning in the 21st century.  

My Entire US Government & Comparative Government Courses

I put my entire AP US Government and Comparative Government course (both as a stand alone US or as a double - both of which I teach) course right here.  The link has all of the videos that I will be using next year (since next year I will not be using a book for either class).  If you find this link at all helpful and you hang onto it, you will see that I do make changes during the year (esp. in comparative where I am doing more tinkering).  So have at it, and if you can give me suggestions, please do. 

Moonshot Application

So I just applied for Google's "Moonshot" project which will bring teachers together in July in Amsterdam to tackle projects that will transform education.  The application is woefully short which makes me wonder if an algorithm will knock out the first group (esp. since it is due June 26th and winners will be contacted just three days later).  Either way I am always up for doing something that could be a game changer.  Not applying means you can't go and applying means you have more than a moonshot!

Here is the application.  Good luck.  

Add Sound and Annimation to a Google Presentation

One of our teachers just asked me how to add sound to a Google Drive presentation. I like this tutorial explaining the answer as it shows how you can actually go to a specific spot in a video. Therefore when you click on the spot on a slide it will play exactly what you want.  For example, if you click on this link, you will go exactly to the part of the video above that tells how to get to a specific spot in the video.

While we are at it the teacher also wanted to know how to add in animation which is done in the video below.

School is Not Out for the Summer on My Blogs

So most of you would laugh that my seniors are not finished until June 10th and my undergrads not until June 18 - yes the 18th!  But I also teach during the summer so this blog is always being updated all summer, so if you want to keep finding out new things then keep coming all summer.  

Search for Ideas on My Blogs

I was on a Facebook page for teachers the other day and one of the educators mentioned using my site to search for lesson plans and ideas.  It made me smile as that is exactly one of the uses for this page.  Consider that between my four blogs (US history, World history, US and Comparative Government, Economics) I now have over 6000 posts since 2008.  Even the "baby" among my blogs, econ, has 250 posts in the last year!  So if you are looking for content, technology or pedagogy, hopefully I have it.  If not, write me and I'll look into it.   Otherwise look in the upper left side of this page and put what you are looking for in the search box.

Next up will be summer assignments (which you can already search for and see what I posted for last year).  

The Electoral College

I have done a number of posts on the electoral college, but this one does the best on explaining why we even have it, much less how it works.  Thanks to Mark Muskrath on the Facebook AP Government page