7 resources you need to teach the 2020 elections

I know we’ve already started down the path of the 2020 elections. But now it’s getting serious. We’re deep into the primaries and we’re actually counting votes.

So if you haven’t yet jumped into teaching about what’s coming next fall, now’s the perfect time. And History Tech has got you covered. Today, we’ve got seven handy online resources that’ll provide lessons, information, maps, graphs, and all sorts of other election goodness.

Need election resources? iCivics can help.

We all love iCivics. And why not? Tons of useful tools. Simulations. Games. Lots of teaching materials. Oh, yeah. And it’s all free.

If you’re not super familiar with iCivics, it’s good to know why it exists.

“iCivics exists to engage students in meaningful civic learning. We provide teachers with well-written, inventive, and free resources that enhance their practice and inspire their classrooms.”

Simple. Accurate. But not very specific. So what does iCivics have that can help you this spring and next fall? Here are just a few of my favorite tools designed specifically to help with teaching the upcoming election.

In less than a year, all eyes will be on the Capitol steps for the next Presidential Inauguration. It’s going to be a busy year on the political front, and in your classroom. You can help your students become more knowledgeable about the U.S. election system with two of iCivics’ most popular games:

• Win the White House
• Cast Your Vote

Fake news: 3 things we can learn from Finland (And 3 cool tools from right here in the US of A)

We all get smarter when we all get smarter.

Pretty simple concept. It’s the whole idea behind PLCs, #sschat, and, well . . . school in general. Learning together makes a lot of sense.

I recently ran across an article highlighting how the entire country of Finland is working together to combat fake news. I got smarter. And when I followed the article with a quick conversation with some SHEG folks about their Civic Online Reasoning Assessments, it was like I took a genius pill.

Way back in 2014, before we knew Russia was messing around in American elections, Finland began noticing intentional misinformation campaigns focused around issues like immigration, the European Union, or whether Finland should become a full member of NATO. These campaigns ramped up in 2015 and a year later, the Finnish government rolled out a multi-pronged, cross-sector approach designed to give its citizens the tools they needed to be effective digital info users.

As the US continues to experience intentional attempts by both international and internal groups to manipulate the digital world we live in, can Finland’s experience help us we get smarter?

Race to Ratify is latest awesome iCivics game that you should be playing right now.

I got the chance over the last few days to spend time with tons of social studies gurus and learn tons of new stuff at the National Council for History Education conference in Washington DC. Thanks to Dr. Richard Satchwell and Judy Bee at Illinois State University and all the folks at the @TeachingLC Library of Congress Teaching with Primary Sources project for making the trip possible.

Part of our TPS time together was spent with developers of the five Library of Congress interactive civic education apps they’ve created. Very cool stuff that you can find at the LOC. All five are super handy for helping kids make sense of primary sources and for training students to engage as informed citizens. It was great sitting with the developers and learning more about how to use the apps with kids.

But I am just as excited about something Emma Humphries, Chief Education Officer at iCivics, threw out at the end of her formal presentation about their DBQuest app:

We’re releasing a new iCivics game tomorrow called Race to Ratify.

She couldn’t really share a ton about it but we got the chance to get a quick taste of the game. And when she said “tomorrow,” she meant last Friday. So it’s been officially out in the wild for a few days. I’ve played with it a bit since then and it’s pretty much like all iCivics content.

Awesome.

iCivics: The bacon of social studies

I like bacon.

Bacon cheeseburgers. Eggs and bacon. BLTs. Chocolate covered bacon. Maple and bacon doughnuts. Bacon and onion gravy. Bacon topped baked potatoes. Bacon wrapped Little Smokies. Bacon wrapped anything.

I’m probably not the only one. And I get it . . . some choose not to eat bacon for religious or health reasons. (And have much stronger will power than I do.)

My point? Pretty much everything is better with bacon.

So what’s the bacon of social studies? That one thing that goes better with everything and is so delicious that you really need to find a way to integrate it into your classroom? The answer is simple.

Using STEM in the Social Studies: Taking action

Scott Noet and Kim Gilman (my good buddy from Shawnee, Kansas) met as Goethe TOP Fellows several years ago. And now they’re partnering up to share some of their best ideas about how to move students from analysis to action using STEM activities.

Kim says that we spend a ton of time focusing on helping kids to perfect their analysis skills. Nothing wrong with that. But we can’t forget that we also need to be helping kids take action – to actually using their analysis skills to make the world a better place.

I especially love a couple of things they shared: