APGov - 3rd Period Homework

Week of February 16 - February 19
TUESDAY: Janda pp. 109-115, Congressional research sheet submitted to GoogleDocs by 11:59pm on Wednesday
WEDNESDAY: Janda pp. 115-118, Congressional research sheet submitted to GoogleDocs by 11:59pm on Wednesday
THURSDAY: Janda pp. 118-123
FRIDAY: Ch. 4 Exam on Monday

Due to lost school days, Member of Congress presentations will not be held in March.  The presentation will either be transformed to an online presentation or will be be rescheduled to early May.  A final decision will be made by the end of this week.

APGov - Periods 5&7 - Homework

Week of February 16 - February 19
TUESDAY: Congressional research worksheet must be submitted to GoogleDocs by 11:59pm Wednesday and read Janda pp. 115-123
THURSDAY: Chapter 4 Exam Monday and Read Janda pp. 334-340

Due to lost school days, Member of Congress presentations will not be held in March.  The presentation will either be transformed to an online presentation or will be be rescheduled to early May.  A final decision will be made by the end of this week.

Homework Over the Break

Hi everyone! I hope you're enjoying Snowmageddon! Some important pieces of info for you:

1. HOA - Civil War seminars will proceed as normal when we return to school. Use some of your time out of school to continue research. There's a good chance that Central Library will re-open before W-L.

2. APGov - we will not be taking a trip to the computer lab for you to do research for your Congress project. I've posted instructions on how to conduct your research on thus blog, a few entries below this one. You are responsible to have completed the Member of Congress worksheet by the second day of school. It must be completed through GoogleDocs with footnotes and the document must be shared with me on GoogleDocs (detailed instructions are in the assignment blog post).

I'm heading north this morning and will have limited access to the Internet. If you need to reach me with a question, contact me through Twitter. My ID is Room3011. Haven't used Twitter before? Consider this an opportunity to enter the 21st century. To tweet me, just include @Room3011 in your tweet.

Enjoy and I hope to see you all soon!

Mr. M

Why I Use Delicious.com

Earlier today I made a brief presentation on a few web2.0 tools, including the social bookmarking tool delicious.com.  There are several reasons why I've been using delicious.com, first for personal use then for professional use, since April 2006.  Let me show you a few of the features that make Delicious useful to me.

First, as seen in the picture below, delicious uses a simple and aesthetically pleasing presentation of your bookmarks.  The screen isn't cluttered and the shades of blue and gray make it easy to look at (yes, I actually care about this stuff.  I'm a Mac).  When you first open your delicious page your bookmarks are arranged chronologically with most recently added bookmarks at the top.  You can sort your bookmarks in various ways that I'll explain later.  As you look at the screen below, notice the bar between my address bar and my tabs.  This is a Firefox add-on that displays my most visited delicious bookmarks, making it easy for me to navigate to the websites I use most often.

click on picture to enlarge

When I find a new website that I find useful, I'm able to bookmark it in delicious by clicking on the "Tag" button to the left of my address bar (yes, this is also a Firefox add-on - it also may be available on Google Chrome).  This opens a new window which allows me to add tags to my new bookmark.  Tags are descriptors that will help me to find this bookmark again in the future.  In this case, I've navigated to the White House webpage and I've tagged this new bookmark with the tags "government", "politics", "president", "whitehouse", "apgov", and "apgovch12".  The last two tags help me connect a class and unit label to my bookmark.  Delicious will even suggest tags for me to use.

click on picture to enlarge

Tags are especially useful because I won't have to remember what folder I've saved my bookmark to, I can just look it up by its tag.  Below, you can see all of the tags I've used in delicious.  The larger ones are the tags I've used most often.  By clicking on one of the tags listed I'll be able to see all of the websites I applied that tag to.

click on picture to enlarge

If I click on my "Congress" tag, I've now pulled up all websites that I thought related to Congress.  This is great for users who often remember a website that they once used, but can't remember the name of it.  All I have to do is remember what the website was about, click on that tag, and find the website on that list of bookmarks.

click on picture to enlarge

Finally, I can share my bookmarks with my colleagues and they can share their bookmarks with me.  All we have to do is add each other to our network.  As you can see below, I've already added several W-L teachers to my network and I can see what Sandy and Paul have bookmarked recently.  I'd especially like to see what some of my social studies colleagues are bookmarking, so I'll try to encourage them to use delicious.com, too.

click on picture to enlarge

Besides just exploring my network, I can see what all delicious.com users are tagging.  For example, I'm curious what websites have been popular with people interested in the Supreme Court.  I've got a unit on the court system coming up and I'm looking to see what websites people have found worthy of bookmarking.  All I need to do is use the search box and type in "Supreme Court".  As you can see below, delicious suggest some ways to improve my search and then lists popular tagged websites below.  I'll probably find some sites that would be helpful when I teach the judiciary unit!

click on picture to enlarge

Delicious's integration with Firefox and its use of tagging makes it a perfect web2.0 tool for an organizationally-challenged teacher like myself.  If you'd like any help setting up your own account, I'm happy to help!

APGov - Member of Congress Assignments [UPDATED 2/3/10]

All member of Congress assignments have been recorded on this Google Spreadsheet.

UPDATE - Feb. 3rd
If you have not been assigned a Representative, you have until Feb. 4th to request one.  If you fail to do so, you will be assigned a Representative by me.  Remaining 5th period Representatives must be Democrats.  Remaining 7th period Representatives must be Republicans.

Great Budget Infographic

 

The New York Times has a great visual representation of President Obama's proposed FY11 budget.  Check it out and play around with some of the details.  What areas of spending will be increased and what will be decreased in Obama's budget.

Obama's Spending "Freeze"

In the past week, you've read articles that have described President Obama's plan to freeze many types of discretionary spending in the federal budget.  This video tries to visualize how significant this spending freeze will really be.  Many conservative news sources and think tanks have linked to this video, believing it supports their opposition to the President's proposed FY11 budget.



Thanks to Meredith R. for sending me the link!

HoA Civil War Reading Assignments

The following assignments should be completed by February 12th.  This is nearly 100 pages of reading, do not leave it until the last minute!

pp. 256-262: westward expansion
pp. 274-277: equality and inequality
pp. 318-326: technology and economic growth
pp. 320-321: guns and gun culture (special inset)
pp. 346-351: king cotton
pp. 351-356: the social groups of the south
pp. 356-362: social relations in the white south
pp. 362-369: life under slavery
pp. 369-375: the emergence of african-american culture
pp. 377-384: newcomers and natives
pp. 384-389: the west and beyond
pp. 389-394: the politics of expansion
pp. 394-405: the mexican-american war and its aftermath, 1846-1848

APGov - Periods 5&7 - Homework

Week of February 1 - February 5
MONDAY: Janda pp. 103-115
WEDNESDAY: Janda pp. 115-123
FRIDAY: No Homework

Ch. 4 Exam is currently scheduled for Tuesday, February 9th

APGov - 3rd Period Homework

Week of February 1 - February 5
MONDAY: Janda pp. 103-109
TUESDAY: Janda pp. 109-115
WEDNESDAY: Janda pp. 109-115 (no new assignment; we're spending today in the computer lab)
THURSDAY: Janda pp. 115-118
FRIDAY: Janda pp. 118-123

Ch. 4 Exam is currently scheduled for Tuesday, February 9th