Snackr is a free iPhone and iPad app that allows you to listen to a set of customized news channels. Snackr's goal is to provide you with headlines and summaries of news that is most important to you. You can used the app to hear tech news, world news, sports news, weather, and more. Watch and overview of Snack in action in the video below.
Applications for Education When I taught Contemporary Global Studies my students were responsible for reading and watching the news. If you teach a similar course, Snackr could be good app for your students to use to get an overview of headlines and hear a bit of the stories. After listening to their Snackr news channel, they can select a story or two to investigate in further detail.
Today's episode of CNN Student News leads-off with a couple of segment about elections in Syria and Russia. The segment about elections in Russia include interviews with people on the street. Today's episode also includes a couple of good discussion questions for your students. The first, at the conclusion of a story about a "shoe frenzy," asks students if there is anything they would camp-out to buy. The second discussion question asks students for their thoughts about the idea of paying students to attend school.
Today's episode of CNN Student News is embedded below.
Scholastic's Election 2012 is a nice set of resources through which elementary and middle school students can learn about various aspects of the 2012 Presidential Election. Election 2012 prominently features student-friendly articles about the Republican primaries and caucuses. Before you have your students read those articles you might want to have them take advantage of some of the other resources provided by Scholastic's Election 2012.
Scholastic's Election 2012 Q&A page offers short answers to common questions like, "what is a primary?" and "what is Super Tuesday?" After going over those questions and answers with your students they can test their recall of that information by playing the On the Road to the White House Game which is based on the Election 2012 Q&A.
Applications for Education Scholastic's Election 2012 could be a good way for elementary school and middle school students to follow the process of choosing a new U.S. President. The section about the candidates themselves is a little thin, but that could be the jumping-off point for students to do some research about the candidates.
Produced by the Council for Economic Education, Econ Ed Link hosts hundreds of lesson plans and interactive games for teaching students about a wide range of topics in economics. Teachers can search the lesson plan index by grade level, concept, standard, or length of lesson (one class period vs. multiple class periods). Most of the lessons attempt to provide "real world" context.
The interactive section of Econ Ed Link offers four pages of videos and games. The videos and games can be used as stand-alone activities or as part of lesson plan. I tested out the interactive game on developing good credit habits. Developing Good Credit Habits is a game appropriate for middle school and high school students. Students earn money by correctly answering questions about credit scores, interest rates, and spending practices. The purpose of the game is to purchase items and pay expenses without damaging your credit score.
Applications for Education Econ Ed Link offers lesson plans appropriate for all K-12 students. Many of the lessons are designed for use not only in the classroom but in the home as well. The parent section of Econ Ed Link offers good material that you can send home with your students to get parents involved in students' learning about personal economics.
Last night President Obama delivered his 2012 State of the Union Address. Every US-based news website has coverage of the event. If you're thinking of discussing the State of the Union Address in your classroom today, here are a few things that should be helpful to you.
The White House website you can find the entire video of last night's address. The White House published the "enhanced" video which includes some visuals to complement the content of President Obama's key points. You can view the video online or download it directly from the White House website.
The White House published a short "behind the scenes" video about the writing of the State of the Union Address.
You can find the full transcript of President Obama's State of the Union Address on the White House's website. Put that transcript into a tool like Wordle to create word clouds that will help students quickly recognize the most-used words and phrases in President Obama's address last night.
Finally, Larry Ferlazzo has a short list of visualizations of last night's address. Included in that list is this NY Times interactive display of last night's State of the Union Address. The interactive allows you to skip through the transcript to read the text and watch the corresponding video.
Liberty, The American Revolution is a feature on PBS.org. There are a couple of resources in this feature that are worth noting. First, and probably the most useful, is The Chronicle of Revolution. The Chronicle of Revolution provides a timeline of events that contributed to the start of the American Revolution. Students can read newspaper accounts as they go through the chronicles. Within each newspaper account are links to further reading about important people and places mentioned in the articles.
The second item of interest in Liberty, The American Revolution is the Road to Revolution game. The game isn't really a game, it's more like a quiz with some graphics added to it. The game is designed to quiz students on the information in The Chronicle of Revolution.
Applications for Education The Chronicle of Revolution and the Road to Revolution are best suited to use with middle school students or possibly older elementary school students. Neither resource will replace your textbooks, but they certainly make good supplements to them.
Please click here for seven more resources for teaching about the American Revolution.
