BY BILL FERRIS
America runs on electricity. And coal, and wind power, and hydroelectric, and Dunkin Donuts. Powering a Nation, a multimedia project from the University of North Carolina School of Journalism and Mass Communication, looks at the cost of our current energy situation, the possible alternatives, as well as the consequences of making the sorts of wholesale changes that green energy would bring.
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.
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.
As a reminder that things can always get worse, the Library of Congress has released several photos from the Great Depression on the photo-sharing site Flickr. The LOC has posted some of the most frequently requested photos from their collection as free digital images in their FSA/OWI Favorites set. Like other LOC photo collections on Flickr, you and your class can tag and comment to your heart’s content.
I’m totally over this financial crisis business. People everywhere are homeless and jobless. Also, there are only so many ways to write an article without resorting to the overdone, “In today’s down economy, blah blah blah…” Nevertheless, it’s an issue that affects every one of us, which means that economic and financial education has never been been more important.
To help your students ease into the world of managing their own money, tell them about Mint.com. It’s a free site that helps users create a budget, track bank accounts, watch spending habits, and monitor investments. Mint will offer helpful suggestions on how to get out of debt or buy an affordable car.
Instilling good financial sense into your students now can help them make sound financial decisions in the years ahead. Mint.com can help them do exactly that. -BILL FERRIS
Teach financial responsibility with Saving Our Futures
Get some game in the Stock Market (I immediately feel less cool after saying that)
As the economy continues to founder, it’s a good time to help students improve their financial literacy. I’d like to think when they grow up they might handle the economy better than we have. America’s Prmoise Alliance has developed curriculum on financial responsibility, Saving Our Futures, where you’ll find lots of materials here to help educate your students on being smart with money. SOF uses simple, practical advice such as don’t buy stuff you cannot afford. It also explains credit, savings, and even gets into public policy.
Saving Our Futures is a companion to the documentary I.O.U.S.A. If you haven’t seen it and don’t want to shell out for a DVD, the documentary website has a condensed 30-minute version. It’s pretty frightening, and would be a good introduction to these materials for your students in a scared-straight sort of way.
Lest you think you don’t have time to teach this stuff, may I direct your attention to the epidemic of home foreclosures and lost jobs in America. Making sure students know a thing or two about money may prevent a mess like this from happening again. -BILL FERRIS
This American Life: when banks go bad
Instructifeature: Four views of the recession…and none of them look that great
Marketplace explains the credit crisis as an Antarctic expedition
In my own geeky world of talk radio programs, This American Life adds a little bit more of a storytelling element than most programming on National Public Radio. To me, anyway, the TAL team’s stories can arguably be considered more accessible than NPR. Now it time for me to sit back and let my inbox fill up with a whole bunch of hate. But I will concede this: NPR’s Planet Money podcast has been on fire lately.
So when Planet Money’s Alex Blumberg and Adam Davidson made this episode for This American Life, it was the best of both worlds. They do an excellent of job explaining the breakdown in banking that has occurred and the problems that banks currently face. The acting sounds a bit hammy sometimes, but I think its also hammy on purpose, as though they’re subtly being a bit derisive towards the bad borrowers and lenders.
The Bad Bank episode is a good starting point for students who have questions about what started this whole recession mess. The best part is that Blumberg and Davidson make it understandable for people like me, who — while incredibly smart — still have difficulty getting past the language barrier of business and finance. -NICK YINGLING
Instructifeature: Four views of the recession…and none of them look that great
Marketplace explains the credit crisis as an Antarctic expedition
If you put two economists in a room, you get two opinions, unless one of them is Lord Keynes, in which case you get three opinions.- Winston Churchill
These troubling times give a whole new meaning to the term dismal science, but all this despair brings lots of opportunities for teaching. Aside from the obvious moral lesson in the person of Bernie Madoff, as with most economic catastrophes, this one brings a lot of data, and in that data can be some great lessons for your kids. Here is a recent post from Flowing Data, an infographics blog. It originated at The Big Picture. While Flowing Data is suitable for students, The Big Picture is run by a Wall Street type, whose language can be blue in keeping with his milieu, so be forewarned.
The post features four different line graphs about unemployment in this, and past, recessions. Looking at them there can be a great lesson in critical thinking. I’m going to show the graphics, and share some thoughts of my own about each at the bottom. I would NOT teach based on the notes at the bottom, but instead, see what your students can dig out of it. You may notice things of interest in this that I’ve missed, I only provide commentary to get your thinking rolling.This first one from Time Magazine shows job losses in recent recessions.
Graph number 1 has only recent recessions on it, so it’s missing some of the context that some of the next graphs have. It is also comparing based on numbers, rather than the percentage of the population. Since it is only looking at recent recessions (1990, 2001, now), the population figures have some growth (~13% between 1990 and 2000) this can cause some problems in comparing the numbers, but we’ll see in some of the other graphs with older data, this is a big difference.
Graph number 2 looks at percentages, and goes back to all recessions in the post-WWII era. this gives context, and by using a percentage, makes it a comparison of apples to apples (as opposed to apples to kumquats). Two things stand out — the job loss is still not as severe today as in 1940s and 50s recessions, but there is also a trend towards recent recessions lasting longer, so we may not even be at the mid-point yet.
Graph number 3 is similar to number 2, but it looks at job loss numbers like graph number 1, and you can see how that skews things quite a bit when you compare historic data
And finally, g
raph number 4 uses 100 as a baseline for peak employment, so it’s like it’s looking at percent of employment rather than percent of unemployment, but it can go above 100 because employment can be higher than it was at the peak. This was very confusing for Bill, my editor, so here is how I explained it to him:
Let’s say you are a sales person paid on commission, and your salary is one line. Your salary hits a peak of $100,000, then drops at the recession starts. 100 is equal to your peak salary. Your salary begins to free fall for about 12 months, so that it ends up at $50,000. You would then be at 50 on a 100 point scale. Then it starts going back up, at 18 months, you’re back to $75,000 (or 75 on the scale). There is a recovery and at 24 months, you are exceeding your old salary, and you are up to $125,000 or 125 points on the scale.
Then let’s say another line is your smarter, but less well-paid older brother. He has a PhD, but he’s an adjunct professor (lecturer) at local community college. He manages to take home $50,000 before the recession hits state education budgets. So that month his salary is 100 points. It drops rapidly too, hitting $25,000 in six months which will put him at 50 points (half his peak salary), and then drops to $10,000 which is 20 points at 12 months. Stimulus money to the state arrives just as the food stamps do for old bro, and he shoots back up to $50,000, or 100 points at 18 months, when the local university goes on a hiring spree for retraining. The lines would looks similar (with some differences) for both of you, even though the “real” dollars earned is not the same. This is good for comparing numbers that are not apples and apples, like the number of people employed in 2007 versus those in 1981, but unlike percent of employment, you can exceed 100, if your employment level goes above where it was at the start of the recession which is what you want to happen. The other graphs show something like this by showing the job losses as negative percentages, and job gains as positives. This is a sophisticated way to represent things, but can be confusing, right Bill? Let’s hope that helps us get our thinking caps on. Please let us know if this helps explain things to your students! -ALICE MERCER
4 Different Looks at Job Losses During Recessions via FlowingData
Marketplace explains the credit crisis as an Antarctic expedition
If there is one thing I learned from my third marriage it is this: always have a prenup. Failing that, I guess the next thing best thing is to just have so much money it doesn’t really matter. Now the question becomes, “How do I get ultra-mega rich?”
Countless late night infomercials each make their own claims about how to reach Scrooge McDuck levels of wealth, and a semi-frequent one is that you should make your money work for you. I mean, that’s a tactic Wall Street wizards use all the time—why can’t you?
The Stock Market Game is a great way for students to practice saving and investing skills, as well as build upon a lot of other subject-matter skills in the process. Some readers out there, like myself, remember doing this game the old fashioned way — our teacher gave us an imaginary cash amount and then our class tracked the investments using newspapers. This process was made even more difficult by the fact that this was the Dark Ages before we had computers, when pterodactyl attacks were all too common.
Now the game is online, allowing students to look at their portfolio, enter transactions, and research stocks and mutual funds. I’d still encourage actual newspapers in the classroom — letting a kid glean just a little insight to those confusing business section pages listing all the small numbers can be pretty empowering.
A quick note: Registration dates vary from state to state. Also, it would seem as though some spring-semester programs have already begun. By clicking through the “Registration” link, you will be able to find your local coordinator who will be able to provide you with more information about getting started. -NICK YINGLING
Photo credit: azrainman on Flickr.
Quick! Name five famous discoveries honored by the Nobel Prize…(crickets chirping)….Um, Al Gore won one, right? Ask your students and you’ll likely get a similar response. The people at Nobelprize.org decided that they didn’t want children growing up not understanding the significant accomplishments honored by the Nobel Prize. By visiting the educational outreach section of the website, you can introduce your students to these accomplishments in a fun and engaging way, as well as teach your course content.
The site offers several interactive activities for each category of Nobel Prize — physics, chemistry, literature, medicine, peace, and economics. There are games, readings, and simulations in each section. In my class, I’ve used the blood typing game to help students understand the differences between blood types. In the physics section, there is an interesting simulation about microscopes. By using this, you could show students what the different types of microscopes can do. There is also a microscope quiz that could be used to assess understanding. Another neat feature is the readings. In the DNA-RNA-Protein reading, for example, you can select a “Basic” or an “Advanced” text. This would be excellent for differentiating instruction.
Lest you think this site is only good for Science, there is a section about the Nobel Prize in Literature, and a game about William Golding’s classic, Lord of the Flies. I’m kind of a science gal, so I didn’t do so hot on that game; maybe your high school English students will do better. Regardless, you will find this site useful. -REBECCAH HAINES
Educational Games via Nobelprize.org
Everyone would agree that learning is important. If we didn’t, none of us would be doing what we do. But are we practicing what we preach to our students? Are we, as educators, continuing our education in the same way we urge our students to do every day? In the past, unless you were willing to shell out thousands and thousands of dollars for additional schooling, continuing education was tough to come by. Not anymore.
Academic Earth is an organization founded with the goal of giving everyone on earth access to a world-class education. In conjunction with top-level universities such as MIT and Princeton, Academic Earth brings the best content together in one place and creates an environment where that content is remarkably easy to use.
There are thousands of lectures currently available from the world’s top scholars. You may already be familiar with the MIT Open Courseware project or the Open Yale courses, which make thousands and thousands of lectures and courses available online for free. Academic Earth includes these resources but has added lectures from Berkeley, Harvard, Princeton and Stanford.
Currently, 17 subjects are represented ranging from Astronomy to Religion. All subjects include individual lectures, but many of them also offer entire courses. For example, if you’re interested in Computer Science, you can view all 32 lectures in Introduction to Computer Science I by David J. Malan at Harvard — for free. All of the videos at AE can be shared to a Facebook page, emailed, or embedded into a blog or wiki. Academic Earth also gives users the ability to create your own custom play list to make future visits a tad easier.
So the next time you’ve got the urge to learn a little about “The Fourier Transform and its applications” or “Convex Optimization,” Academic Earth is the place to go. - JERRY SWIATEK
Professional development is just a “tweet” away
Science professional development in your PJs
Find cool tools for teachers: interactive professional development in Second Life
Like most catastrophes, America’s financial crisis has created such a mess, it’s tough to make sense of the problem. Paddy Hirsch, senior editor of American Public Media’s Marketplace radio program, explains the situation in an easy-to-understand format by looking at The credit crisis as Antarctic expedition.
In this video, Hirsch explains that a group of intrepid Antarctic explorers (banks) are so weighed down by ruck sacks full of bad investments, they can no longer leap over cracks in the ice, and each bank that falls through risks pulling the others down with it. Also, likening a bank failure to an icy grave underscores the seriousness of the situation.
The video is a great primer for students trying to grasp how the credit crisis got so bad. Like a real Antarctic expedition, the credit crisis is fraught with peril. Let’s just hope we all don’t get left out in the cold. -BILL FERRIS
The credit crisis as Antarctic expedition via Lifehacker
I’m sure you’ve heard the results of various Gallup polls throughout this election season. Rather than waiting for the nightly newscast to mention what the pollsters say, you can keep track yourself by going straight to the source. Gallup.com has the latest results, updated daily. Further, you can see the results from a seemingly infinite number of demographics, such as candidate support by race, gender, church affiliation, education, age, and many more.
Gallup records people’s opinions on pretty much every topic, from baseball to economics to Russia. So once the election is over, there are plenty more statistics available for your classroom use.
How can you use this information in class? Have your students follow along or chart the results. When one candidate’s numbers rise or dip, you could ask them their opinion on why the flux occurred. Or have them propose solutions to America’s falling consumer confidence. You can do a lot with this kind of data at your disposal. Now is a great time to put it to use. -BILL FERRIS
The candidates answer tough questions about science at Sciencedebate 2008
Cut through political spin with PolitiFact
What do the Middle Passage, the post-Civil War movement of rural African Americans to the north, and Caribbean immigration have in common? All of these events involved the migration of people of African descent to, within, or from what is now the United States. These and other migrations are the focus of In Motion: The African American Migration Experience, a project of the Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture at the New York Public Library. This unique resource brings scholarly research and primary sources on many different migrations together, creating exciting possibilities for student research on both individual topics and comparative themes.
Each section of the website includes a detailed historical overview of a specific migration, interspersed with primary sources that the reader can explore in detail. For example, in the section entitled Runaway Journeys, you will find paintings, engravings and photographs of enslaved people, interviews with former slaves, maps, newspaper advertisements for runaways, photographs of the shackles and collars used to restrain slaves, letters, personal narratives of escape, writings from slave holders, secondary accounts from historians, and much more. In all, the website brings together more than 16,500 pages of text and 8,300 illustrations to create an incredibly rich archive for historical research.
The Educational Materials section provides lesson plans for using these resources that go well beyond history and into other curriculum areas, including economics, mathematics, language arts, performing arts, and world religions. For example, students can use documents from the Great Migration to study wages and expenses in 1919 in an economics lesson plan, focus on the arts of the Harlem Renaissance while learning about the Second Great Migration, or explore the Constitution in detail while studying the slave trade.
Taught well, history is always a comparative endeavor — we want our students to understand how the past differs from the present, and also how different moments in the past relate to one another. In Motion beings together an incredible collection of tools that students can use to figure out the connections between migrations and to develop their own interpretations of African American history. -KATHRYN WALBERT
In Motion: The African American Migration Experience
Drop Me Off in Harlem: Learn how people and culture intersected in the Harlem Renaissance
Learn about the lives of runaway slaves with The Geography of Slavery
Stock up on history resources at the National History Education Clearninghouse
50 Things Everyone Should Know How To Do - Do you know how to build a fire? How about CPR, do you know it? Or give directions? All of these things are essential life skills that you should know if you don’t already. This list from Marc and Angel covers everything from swimming to changing a tire in order for you to be more self-reliant.
6 Things Money Cannot Help You Achieve - Even Bill Gates and Steve Jobs still have to deal with the same time that you and I do, even if they could buy and sell you and me in a heartbeat. Surely there are other things than the ones presented on this list by Dumb Little Man, but these 6 make good sense. Money can’t buy you self-esteem, unfortunately, nor will it buy happiness.
52 Character Building Thoughts for Children - These might not be great tips for your older students, but the elementary crowd could really benefit from them. Leah Davies, M. Ed. brings us these great quotes on KellyBear.com. There are some real gems here, like this: When I am sad, I help myself feel better by thinking of things that are good in my life.
9 Ways to Save At The Movies - I know this isn’t completely related to teaching, but since school is out for most of us, we might have some more free time on our hands. Unfortunately, free time allows you to spend more money. If you plan to see any of the awesome, or not awesome movies this summer, here are some ways you can save from The Consumerist. My favorite on the list: Be careful with the concessions. -JEREMY S. GRIFFIN
(photo by Jo Jakeman on Flickr)
moxie design studios
