K-12 Government/Election Teaching Materials

Check out games and activities on the topic of your choice!

Watch this! It's truly terrifying! Share it w/friends and family. This is a must see. It puts all the facts together about the NSA "failure" to protect use from the 9/11 hijackers because of Bush leaders refusal to follow FISA laws. NSA Takeover Secret govt agency kept intel from FBI about 9/11 hijackers, for money & power to spy on all. The upshot is that these non-elected US govt agents were able to convince our Congress that they weren't to blame for keeping intel about 9/11 terrorists living in USA for over a year from FBI. Instead NSA chief convinced US Congress that the NSA could have prevented 9/11 if they had more money and power to spy on everyone in USA. Now they have it.

watch this; abuse of power

amazing story of her first years here in the United States, when Ayn Rand wrote in her notebooks and fashioned her first hero after a serial killer of the 1920's. Why was this information not available when I was wanting to learn more about her early life? Everyone who knew her and helped her rise to prominence didn't want to have this information leaking out to the general public.

Help Barack Obama craft his inauguration speech... MadLibs style!

An excellent article about ways technology is being used to learn about the election and participate in the conversation.

Both major parties' historic tickets-a black man for president, a woman for vice president-as well as compelling economic and foreign-policy issues are converging with the campaigns' use of text-messaging, online networking, and nontraditional media venues to draw young people into the contest. Teachers have also seized on the opportunity to use the favored devices of today's students in teaching traditional civics lessons along with the 21st-century skills experts say people will need to thrive in the information age. "The idea is to teach kids as young as possible to be able to navigate this increasingly complicated media world by giving them some basic tools for analysis

The number of voters under 30 in the 2000 and 2004 presidential elections remained stagnant at just 17 percent. Teens become apathetic because politicians are unresponsive, politicians become indifferent to teens because they are apathetic and don't vote.
The way to break this cycle is to make teens feel like they have a voice that politicians will listen to. Politicians have been reaching out to youth by holding events on social networking sites like MySpace and Facebook. CNN even held the YouTube debates, allowing users to submit questions directly to candidates. Making politicians answerable to young people forces their interests to be considered.\n\n

Great compilation of lessons and resources for elections (all grade levels). The resources continue to grow and you can contribute your own lessons to this site.

Entire collection of lesson plans and teacher resources for elections, government, voting, constitution, electoral college, teen voting and civic engagement, etc. from HotChalk.com

Here is a list of website resources for Presidential Inauguration via GHartman on Twitter.

Meet Barack Obama courtesy of Scholastic.

Here's a nice compilation of many teaching resources for elections, propaganda, democracy, civics, government, voting, and presidential resources.

An excellent compilation of teaching resources, lessons and projects for K-12.

This should be a very informative debate. The video will be archived if you can't view it live. Looking forward to hearing an education focus for the Presidential election!

Join us for "Education and the Next President," a live debate from Teachers College, Columbia University, with Linda Darling-Hammond, education adviser to Democratic Presidential nominee Barack Obama, and Lisa Graham Keegan, education adviser to Presidential Republican nominee John McCain. The event is being exclusively Webcast by edweek.org with generous support from NASSP. A video archive of the event will be available Wed., Oct 22, at noon.

I really like this web site which models web 2.0 communication inviting participation throughout the site on issues, stories, etc. while providing helpful information. Check it out. It also provides a link to a Presidential Transition Directory. The Transition Directory was developed to introduce Presidential nominees, appointees, and members of the President-elect's Transition Team to the operation of the Federal government and to the resources available to help them begin their service in the new Administration. Very helpful organizational chart and other information for students learning about government.

Up to date announcedments and information about Barack Obama. He invites people to share their inspiring stories from the campaign and election day. Every page invites people to provide feedback on his agenda for the presidency. Excellent model for web 2.0 and a tool for communication.

Another great lesson plan from the Dirksen Congressional Center's Congress in the Classroom workshop. Designed for students in grades 8-12.

During The Dirksen Congressional Center's annual Congress in the Classroom® workshop participants are asked to introduce the lesson plans, resources, and techniques that have proven successful in teaching about Congress in their classrooms.A 2008 participant, Jan Loyd, Cabot Junior High South, Cabot, AR, presented a lesson entitled, "Elect Me! Creating a Campaign Platform and Advertisement." Students will be a candidate for an election as a United States Representative or Senator in the upcoming election. They will need to decide which party fits their political views best. Next, they will plan and present a 3-5 minute campaign commercial about them as a candidate, their platform, and why the voters should vote for them.

To test your knowledge of prominent people and major events in the news, we invite you to take our short quiz. Then see how you did in comparison with 1,003 randomly sampled adults asked the same questions in a recent national survey conducted by the Pew Research Center. For an analysis of the findings from the poll on the public's News IQ, read the full summary of findings.

A fascinating quiz that students could take (teachers too) that would provide some very engaging conversations about current events. You can compare your News IQ with the average scores of men and women; with college graduates as well as those who didn't attend college; with people who are your age as well as with younger and older Americans.