Instructify

BY JASON DON FORSYTHE

Growing up during the tail end of the Cold War, I heard the phrase “Be happy you don’t live in the U.S.S.R because…” many times in relation to things I felt were unfair. As a child you don’t really have an appreciation for the ways legal systems and governments work outside of the United States. Until I got to middle school I didn’t know what a parliament was outside of a brand of cigarettes.

To get a better sense of how the rest of the world works, the website JuriGlobe is an excellent resource you can point students to or reference yourself when they ask those gotcha questions in class like “Is Turkmenistan’s legal system based on a Common Law or Civilist model?”

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BY JASON DON FORSYTHE

Need some global statistics to emphasize a point you’re trying to make in an ecology or civics lesson plan? Trying to drive home the point in a health-related lesson about the spread of disease or the scope of our ever-growing obesity epidemic? Then check out Worldometers, a real-time online ticker that tracks statistics ranging from food consumption, to energy use, to how much people spend on video games.

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BY BILL FERRIS

Given the polarized public opinion on the direction of American government, a game named Argument Wars seems like the perfect classroom activity to learn about the judicial branch of government. In this classroom game from Our Courts, students will argue both sides in several famous Supreme Court cases. According to the Our Courts website:

“In Argument Wars, you debate historical Supreme Court cases by advancing arguments and backing them up with supports. Play New Jersey v. T.L.O., Brown v. Board of Education, or Gideon v. Wainwright today! Coming soon: Texas v. Johnson, Miranda v. Arizona and more!”

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BY BILL FERRIS

The Lincoln Log has nothing to do with those fun wooden playsets you can build houses with. Instead, it’s “A daily chronology of the life of Abraham Lincoln.” Seeing as how Lincoln lived long before people could record the daily minutiae of their lives in blogs, the staff of the Papers of Abraham Lincoln combed through a lot of historical documents in order to find out what Honest Abe was up to on any particular day. In addition to a keyword search, you can search by date, year, or see what happened today in Lincoln’s life.

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BY BILL FERRIS

I’ve only been to Washington, D.C. once in my life. It was a great trip, and I loved seeing so much American history up-close. The spot that made the greatest impression on me was the Lincoln Memorial, not only because of Lincoln’s legacy, but also because of how impressive the monument itself is. It’s hard to truly appreciate the monument without seeing it and its gigantic statue in person. The Lincoln Memorial Interactive website, however, comes close.

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BY BILL FERRIS

Try your hand at balancing a state budget with the Colorado Backseat Budgeter, an online application from the Bighorn Leadership Development Program at Colorado State University. The Backseat Budgeter lets you decide how much to spend on health care, roads, education, social services and so forth, while raising or lowering tax rates to make up for budget shortfalls. In keeping with these hard economic times, the Backseat Budgeter starts you approximately $800 million in the hole.

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BY BILL FERRIS

For this month’s random roundup, we’ve selected the Library of Congress, our nation’s storehouse of pretty much everything worth knowing. As you’d expect, a lot of great resources for teachers have been derived from the Library. See your tax dollars at work by reading the articles linked after the jump.

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If the closest your students have been to the White House is Google Maps, consider taking a virtual field trip via The White House Museum. You can look at floor plans, read detailed descriptions of the various floors and rooms, discover what goes on in each section of the White House, and learn about the history of the executive mansion. The tour covers everything from 3D models of the Oval Office to the storied history of the White House bowling alley.

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Nostradamus once prophesied: “Three great leaders will become enemies / Earthquakes and disaster falling from the heavens.” Pretty wild stuff, am I right? As resident numerologist and astrology blogger for Instructify, I can agree with Nostradamus on the earthquakes and whatnot — but great leaders becoming enemies? That’s a bit too far-fetched, especially when the Youth Leadership Initiative is there to teach future leaders how to play nice.

The Youth Leadership Initiative is a great resource for your civics classroom. First of all, you’ll gain access to the YLI’s teacher-developed lesson plans when you visit their site. You’ll probably have to do some custom tailoring for your own class, but it’s a nice head start that lets you work on planning. Another distinct feature is the e-Congress program, where students are engaged by simulations in the entire lawmaking process.

YLI also features a pretty robust mock-election simulation tailored right down to your own local legislative district. You guessed it: good ole’ reliable cyber ballots! We missed the boat on last year’s big election, but I’m hoping that there will be mock elections during non-election years. I would enjoy the comic possibilities in imagining my own megalomaniacal simulated candidates, so it would be cool if the creative team at YLI hits me up for some notes.

The Youth Leadership Initiative is a non-partisan unit of the University of Virginia Center for Politics, so you can rest assured that no particular agenda is being promoted. Seriously, not even the far-reaching “let’s all bow before General Zod” lobbyists have their claws in this program (although, if you’re interested, I have a newsletter you might want to read). The other hook is that this is an entirely non-profit program, which allows your class to participate at no cost. With all these positives, you might want to form your own exploratory committee to find out more about the Youth Leadership Initiative. -NICK YINGLING

Youth Leadership Initiative

Related stuff:

The Road to the Capitol

See who’s hating who at World Conflicts Today

3 Challenges to Wiki Use in Instruction
Every teacher’s got a wiki these days. So what do you do with it in class? Integrating a piece of technology doesn’t lend itself to flying by the seat of one’s pants. THE Journal presents 3 Challenges to Wiki Use in Instruction, discussing what factors must be overcome to get the most out of wikis in education.

The World of 100
Imagine if the world were condensed into a village of 100 people. Now imagine if these villagers’ lifestyles were documented in the form of snazzy-looking charts. Toby Ng Design has created The World of 100, an illustration project in which demographic information such as population, literacy and air quality are depicted in striking graphic representations.

Learn 35+ Languages for Free in iTunes
LifeClever presents this list of free language courses available on iTunes. Good for your language students, or for anyone who’d like to converse in another language.

100 Free Online Lectures that Will Make You a Better Teacher
As a dedicated teacher, you’re always looking to improve professionally, right? A good tip at the right time can make a world of difference. This list of online videos will give you knowledge and ideas for getting even better at what you do. These videos deal with instructional suggestions, technology demos, and rules of the road for new teachers. -BILL FERRIS

Photo credit: One Good Bumblebee on Flickr.

It’s time again for our random roundup. This month’s theme: NASA, pioneers of space and subjects of an awful lot of posts.

Do-it-yourself is in, even with podcasting at NASA!
It seems that every time you turn around these days someone’s encouraging you to complete a DIY project.  Why pay for someone else to do it when you can do it yourself?  Apparently, NASA has the same attitude on its website on Do-It-Yourself Podcasts.

Set the controls for the closest planet to the sun: NASA Mission to Mercury
This site includes up-to-the-minute clocks that record the elapsed time of the mission as well as the Orbit Insertion time. Watch the actual August 3, 2004 launch of Messenger from mission control. You can take your class through a tour of images already taken by Messenger as it zooms toward Mercury.

Blast Off with the NASA Kids’ Club
NASA Kids’ Club is a great way to learn more about space exploration. It’s got great pictures, games and activities that will pique the interest of space-minded kids. As a no-cost way to learn about the space program, the NASA Kids’ Club is the Right Stuff.

Observe NASA’s Earth Observatory
What if we were able to turn our telescopes around and get a closer look at what is happening right below our feet? The folks at NASA have done just that with their Earth Observatory site. Teachers, head right for the Experiments tab and give your students interactive ways to study global warming and plant biomes around the world. If you love reading blogs (and I know you do!), check out the Expedition to Siberia blog that offers almost daily updates and pictures of this fascinating trip.

Cool satellite image from the inauguration
Check out this great picture from the presidential inauguration. As the GeoEye-1 satellite hurtled through the cosmos,  it took this snapshot to commemorate the historic occasion. That’s a lot of people! Not only that, I now know the roof of the Capitol is tarheel blue.

Observe Mars in 3D
Still have some of those promotional 3D glasses kicking around from after the Superbowl? Fire up one of NASA’s 3D image galleries to take your students on a tour of Mars.

Last year, before the presidential election, we first featured Politifact. I even worked in a Flavor Flav reference. But that was months ago, the election is over and I hate reading anything I wrote that’s more than three weeks old.  To quote so many ex-girlfriends, “I’ve moved on.”

Still, we wouldn’t like to see all that youthful energy your students had for politics die down. Neither would the folks over at PolitiFact — which is why, I’m guessing, they started the Obameter.  After having compiled a list of 500 campaign promises made by President Obama, PolitiFact is keeping track of each promise’s progress.

Readers can sort by a handful of subjects and can sort promises by rating. Not surprisingly, we can see that the overwhelming majority still fall into the No Action category. President Obama has been in office barely a week, so I wouldn’t view that number too pessimistically right now (This is still politics, though, so maintain some degree of pessimism: introduce students to the expression, “the speed of government”).

Before the election, I urged that students double-check their fact-checking. Now, sticking with my theme of hyphenated words that involve the word “check,” I’d encourage students to check-in and check-up on what’s being done by this new administration. Political re-engagement! Its not just for every four years! -NICK YINGLING

The Obameter: Tracking Obama’s Campaign Promises via PolitiFact

Related stuff:

Cut through political spin with PolitiFact

The candidates answer tough questions about science at Sciencedebate 2008

Check out this great picture from yesterday’s inauguration. As the GeoEye-1 satellite hurtled through the cosmos,  it took this snapshot to commemorate the historic occasion. That’s a lot of people!

Not only that, I now know the roof of the Capitol is tarheel blue. -BILL FERRIS

2009 Inaugural Celebration. Washington D.C. National Mall via GeoEye.com

[UPDATE: Here's another great photo, courtesy of Popular Science.]

Some new neighbors moved into the old Bush place on Pennsylvania Avenue today. If you couldn’t make it to the welcome to the neighborhood party, you can still get to know the new residents of the White House at the newly updated WhiteHouse.gov website. It’s a good chance to read up on President Obama, as well as the 43 presidents who preceded him. WhiteHouse.gov has everything your students would want to know about the president and the presidency, from info about the new administration to the function of each branch of government to taking a tour of the White House.

The site has also added a new level of interactivity — you can subscribe to the White House blog’s RSS feed to receive regular updates. In addition, the Obama administration will use the site to keep the public informed about possible legislation. “One significant addition to WhiteHouse.gov reflects a campaign promise from the President: we will publish all non-emergency legislation to the website for five days, and allow the public to review and comment before the President signs it.” This would provide a great chance to include timely, relevant content into your civics lessons.

While poking around, you also might be interested in reading Obama’s education agenda, including his plans for funding No Child Left Behind, as well as teacher recruitment and retention. Does the president adequately address America’s educational needs? How about the needs at your own school? Let us know in the comments! -BILL FERRIS

WhiteHouse.gov

Related stuff:

Find Where the Government Keeps its Secrets

Have you ever watched one of the U.S. Congress sessions on TV? Or gone to Washington, D.C. and sat in on one of the assemblies? Well, if you haven’t, don’t waste your time. It’s quite possibly one of the most boring things in the history of the planet. Thankfully, there are more informative and engaging ways to stay up to date about the federal government and important political issues.

The Communicator is a free, online newsletter designed to boost students’ understanding of the U.S. Congress through engaging lesson plans and projects. By providing educators with news and ideas to enhance civic education, the Communicator seeks to improve citizens’ knowledge about our Congress. Updated monthly, The Communicator is essentially a collection of useful classroom resources, such as lesson plans with links to related websites, links to interactive multimedia projects, and special topics geared directly toward teachers with tips on how to effectively use the information in your classroom.

So if you teach social studies, American history, or civics classes, you can take advantage of The Communicator to keep your lessons up-to-date and relevant, while actually engaging your students in learning about the U.S. House and Senate. -LAUREN FROHNE

The Communicator

Related stuff:

Jon White Studio: Great animation & educational treats

Electoral Insanity at USDemocrazy.net

Access, Analyze, Act: Three cheers for representative democracy!

Photo credit: cliff1066 on Flickr