"Electing the President" Brochure from the League of Women Voters

The League of Women Voters has published a fantastic resource for understanding the presidential electoral process.

Its brochure ("Electing the President: A Guide to the Election Process") includes information about how the U.S. Constitution affects election rights, voter turnout in presidential elections, money and politics, the primary schedule, and the nominating conventions.  It also has a glossary of campaign terms and ideas for lessons.  The pamphlet is in pdf format so it is easy to copy or share with your students.

Digital Learning Day 2016: How will you participate?

Digital Learning Day 2016 is Wednesday, 17 February.  The event, sponsored by the Alliance for Excellent Education, is designed to showcase successful digital teaching and learning in our classrooms, and encourage all teachers to use innovative instructional technology to improve student outcomes.  As the Alliance says, 

"Digital Learning Day is not about technology, it's about learning."

You can plan a special activity or event for that day and register it for free on the Alliance's Digital Learning Day website.  That website also has information about a contests and online resources.  You can follow Digital Learning Day on Twitter @OfficialDLDay.

This video (2:23) from 2015 would be a good introduction to Digital Learning Day to share with your colleagues and administrators.

Watch Your State Legislature Live

In Virginia we have to teach state and local government in addition to the US government.  Well what we call the General Assembly (used to be called the House of Burgesses) is the longest serving legislature in the world dating back to 1619.  If you want to see them live during their sessions (which are occurring now until mid March) you can go here.  If you Google your state legislature and type "live stream" into the search you can find yours.

Above is a short video explaining the Virginia General Assembly

But how did it play in the room?

This fun interactive feature in the Washington Post looks at the lines in President Obama's eight State of the Union Addresses that produced the most applause.

What drew the greatest applause?  When President Obama referred to the military.  Overall it appeared that his congressional audience tired of his appeals, as this graph demonstrates:

Analysis and Summary of the State of the Union

Above is a short NYTimes analysis of the State of the Union speech.

Here is a fact checker for the major claims he made in the speech.

Below is a three minute highlight of the speech from the WashPost and here it is in its entirety. 

How would movie director Wes Anderson explain the traditions and rituals of the SOTU Address?

Yeah, no student ever asked that question.  But, if one ever does, an answer might look like this video (3:51) from CNN.

A crazy cool way to compare President Obama's SOTU Address to every other previous address

We can all read, listen to, and watch President Obama's State of the Union Address.  But to really understand the historical context of that address, we need to compare it to other Addresses by former presidents.  This site allows you to do that.

On the left half of the page is the text of President Obama's address.  On the right side is a horizontal list of former presidents.  As you click on a word or two-word phrase, a bar chart displays the frequency that a former president used that term.  For this example, I highlighted the phrase "tax cut" that President Obama used in the second paragraph of his address.  That phrase yielded this bar chart:

You can see that the former president who used that term most frequently in his SOTU Address was Bill Clinton.  Two former Republican presidents, George W. Bush and Ronald Reagan, used it less than half as frequently than either President Obama or President Clinton.

The display here is sleek and dynamic.  As you click on a term the bar chart grows to the right, and presidents are listed in the order of their frequency of using the term.

It looks hypnotically cool, but how could you use it in class with your students?  Here's one idea: Have your students go to the site and read the speech.  As they read, they should compile a list of the five words or terms most important to understanding the topics of greatest concern to President Obama.  Then click on each word/term and determine what former president also relied heavily on that topic.  Have them then research how that issue impacted that former president's agenda.

At tonight's State of the Union, Obama will feature several people as he goes through his speech.  It is a technique that was started by Reagan when he highlight Lenny Skuknik (above).  Here are some of the people who will be at the speech.

Thanks to Doug Zywiol for this very recent interview with Skuknik. 

A little perspective: How well do front-running outsiders do once the voting starts?

How have front-running political outsiders fared in previous presidential primaries?  Not well (at least for the past two presidential campaigns), according to this feature from the Wall Street Journal, which analyzes trends from 2008 and 2012 nationally and in Iowa and New Hampshire. 

Will that pattern continue during this year's contests?  A good question to discuss with your students.

What is an Executive Order and What Did Obama Do?

Thanks to Rebecca Small for these two great videos, the top of which defines executive orders and the bottom of which describes what Obama's recent executive order is all about.  

Is there a "daughter effect" in this year's presidential campaign?

A fascinating story in today's Washington Post says that there is, at least as it relates to the Democratic candidates for president.  The story reports on a recently published study that aggregated recent public-opinion survey data.  The conclusion: "parents of daughters are 14 percentage points more likely to support Hillary Clinton in the primaries than parents of only sons."

It would be fun to try to see whether this "daughter effect" pattern replicates in our classrooms.  Better still, assign this as a research project.

State of the Union Address

Getting ready for next week's State of the Union Address by President Obama?

In this video (24:29), Donald Ritchie, U.S. Senate Historian, describes the history of the address from President Washington to the present.

Unbelievable Short Video on the Budget Process

This is a great video on the budget process that includes resolutions, fiscal year, discretionary and non discretionary spending, appropriations and so much more that you need to teach in government, all in just five minutes.

Thanks to Johnny Burkowski on the AP US Government Facebook page for the tip. 

Who's up and who's down in Iowa

Interesting read in this post from the Iowa Starting Line website about the Feb. 1 Republican caucus.  They call it today's Monday Power Rankings.  

Here's their assessment:

1. Ted Cruz and Donald Trump are 1-2.
2. Marco Rubio and Jeb Bush are 3-4.
3. Chris Christie is in 5th but surging.
4. Ben Carson is in 6th and falling.

It would be fun to share and discuss this with your students.  Another good idea would be to find additional Iowa coverage supporting and contradicting this assessment.  Polls from RealClearPolitics and the prediction market PredictIt would be good resources.

Moving to New Digital Challenges

This may come as a surprise to many of my readers, but today is the first day in almost 25 years that I won't be in a brick and mortar classroom.  It was a bittersweet last two days with my students as I have an amazing bunch of kids (two classes of which are above), but was offered a great job to head up my county's online campus.  I am excited about the transformation to a new setting as I love learning new things and meeting new people, but saying goodbye to my students and fellow teachers wasn't easy.

So what does that mean for this blog?  I will continue to post, but the daily posts will be led by

• Jeff Feinstein who teaches nearby at West Potomac High School will take over the blogging on a regular basis for the US History and US Government Teachers blog, but since I am going to teach that subject online for the rest of the school year I will continue on that blog as well.
• George Coe, whose work many of you know will take control of the World History Teachers blog
• Rich Hoppock will be blogging on the US government, economics and US history sites
• Summer Johnson who is a special ed teacher and will be adding a new twist to the US Government blog

My new position is officially titled "eLearning Coordinator" so guess what - I have started a blog called appropriately enough the "eLearning Blog."  It will be useful to both my online and brick and mortar friends as you can see from the early posts.  But as with my other blogs, it will grow as I do in my new job and I hope you will want to stay around and learn.

What this also means is that I am looking for people to join us on all four of the content blogs as I'd like to open this to regular posters who are committed to posting 3x weekly on pedagogy, content and technology.  What I am not looking for is someone who wants to vent.  My focus (I hope) has always been on the positive and I would like to continue in that vein. If you are interested in talking to me, I'd need a few potential posts and then I'd be happy to give qualified people a trial period to see how it works for you and us.  Email me at kenhalla@gmail.com if you are interested.