First Day of Class

I'm so glad to meet you all today! What are some things you want to learn or get out of this class?

Digital Story of How a Bill Becomes a Law

Using some sort of video software - such as Movie Maker or PhotoStory - you and your group are going to create a digital story about the process of how a bill becomes a law.

Wiki What?

I know you've heard of and used Wikipedia numerous times but do you know what a Wiki is? We are going to try an experiment...it is up to you whether or not it is successful and we continue this.

We are going to use a wiki to do our vocabulary for this unit. Essentially, each person will be responsible for adding the words and definitions to our wiki and then for refining them and make it better.

If someone is not contributing to our group wiki, we can not continue to use this tool. I am excited to see what great definitions you all create!

What do you see in the clouds?

Do you remember laying in the grass or riding in the car and looking up to the sky and imagining the clouds were different shapes? Some would look like a dinosaur, some would look like a racecar.  This is kind of a twist on that childhood game!

Pretty soon, President Obama will make his annual "Back-to-School" speech just as he has for the past two years. We are going to create a Wordle, or word cloud, to compare these three speeches.  After President Obama's speech next week, your assignment will be to find a transcript of the speech and make a Wordle from it. Then, do the same thing for the previous speeches. When you are finished, you should have three Wordles.

The purpose of this is to determine what the main point is in each speech (Wordle does this by making words larger the more they are repeated) and then compare it with speeches in the past. 

Of course you can print your Wordles to turn in or you can copy and paste the URL the website will provide you into an email to me.

Extra Credit Opportunity: Find a speech from a past President that was intended for students. Create a wordle of that speech as well.

Del.icio.us

To help with this semester I want you to go ahead and set up a delicious account. Delicious is a social bookmarking site that can be really helpful for the rest of your highschool career but also beyond highschool. Do you know how you can save sites own your computer through either "Favorites" or "Bookmarks"? This is like that - but online. So you can access these saved websites anywhere, anytime.

Go to delicious.com and follow this tutorial to set up your own delicious account.

Which amendment is most important to you?

Out of the amendments we have learned in class, which amendment is the MOST important to you? Be sure to explain to us why you chose this amendment!

Tell us about the candidates...

Election 2012 is already gearing up! Your assignment is to share with your classmates information about a candidate. What office are they running for? What party do they affiliate with? What are some things they stand for? What are some things they are against? 

This does not have to be limited to text! Post images of the candidates, relevant videos, link us to more information (maybe the candidate's website or FB page or Twitter account). These are all just suggestions...I can't wait to see what you all come up with and learn more about political candidates! :)

Here's something to get us started...Election 2012 blog

Why Blog?

Why are we using a blog in school? Aren't those like diaries? Aren't they only for people who are trying to be famous?



So, to put it simply - blogging helps reach our educational goals. Blogging will provide us with a line of communication outside of the classroom. Especially for you all, blogging is great because you can work on it any time, in any place with an Internet-enabled computer.  It is my hope that blogging will motivate you all to become invested in your own education. Blogging also will (hopefully) get you all to read, write and enjoy it! We will use this tool to discuss classroom assignments and relevant issues.

This blog is different from other blogs you may have encountered. We are all in this together - so we will all be "authors" of this blog! That means, when you run across something interesting that you want to share with the class that relates to something that we are learning, you will have the ability to do so on our class blog!  "With great power comes great responsibility."  Each of you will be expected to contribute to our learning community. I am confident that this will be a great semester! Let the learning begin! :)

Welcome!

Welcome to Civics and Economics!

Students often ask - why do we have to learn this? My answer in Civics is easy! All of the material we will learn in this class is relevant to your life. Whether it is learning the branches of government and the jobs of each branch or learning about government finances and how individuals make economic decisions, someday you will need to know this information. 

We will use several tools this semester - textbook, ACHS website, Moodle, and this blog. Be certain that you access these tools regularly, as they will be instrumental to your success in this class.