One interesting resource related to the Presidential election is 270toWin.com. This website has a wide variety of maps, polls, and historical data that allows you to look at past elections. The website does a good job of explaining the complicated electoral college system and what it takes to become the President. One of the neatest features offered by the website is a simulation of the upcoming election, which is generated by polling data collected by the website. If you don't like the way the simulation turned out, then you can run it again and get a different result.
You may examine an individual state's page on the site. This will give you a current graphic barometer of polling data in the state. It will also show you how the state has voted in recent Presidential elections, as well as the number of electoral votes the state has had historically.
The site is very current with RSS feeds available, and there is a blog maintained by the website. There is a small section on the 2008 Senate races, and there is an interactive Senate map that allows you to pick the winners of these races. You can tell that the website has done their homework because they are aware that both Wyoming and Mississippi have two Senate seats up for grabs this year. You have the ability to pick one of each party as the winner in each of these states or each for the same party.
Perhaps the most interesting feature of the website, to me at least, is the answers section. You can find this under the 'more' tab. This section allows you, among other things, to find out when the last time the Democrats/Republicans won the election while losing both 'state x' and 'state y.' Doing this, you learn that no Republican has ever won the White House while losing Maryland and Massachusetts and Kansas. You can also learn that Minnesota has not voted Republican since 1972 (making it the only state Ronald Reagan never won an election in.)
This section is also a good tool for teaching Boolean Logic. Connecting two or three states using an 'and' or 'or' is a simple way to demonstrate to students just what Boolean logic is. The fact that the Boolean is represented graphically may also help visual learners.
Highest possible personal recommendation on this website.
JWF
Tuesday, August 26, 2008
Interesting Election Resource
This resource may be of interest if you are a political junkie. The American Past allows you to look back upon past Presidential elections and related data. You can use the maps on the site to examine previous margins of victory, among other data, on a county by county level.
The neatest feature of this site is the interactive movies section. One interactive movie will take you through every Presidential election since 1840 and show you the results on a county by county basis. It takes about three to four minutes to watch the film. It is interesting to note how the north and south have flip-flopped over the last 150 years on supporting the Democrats and Republicans.
The website has been created by the Digital Scholarship Lab at the University of Richmond.
JWF
The neatest feature of this site is the interactive movies section. One interactive movie will take you through every Presidential election since 1840 and show you the results on a county by county basis. It takes about three to four minutes to watch the film. It is interesting to note how the north and south have flip-flopped over the last 150 years on supporting the Democrats and Republicans.
The website has been created by the Digital Scholarship Lab at the University of Richmond.
JWF
Monday, August 25, 2008
Bidenmania
Unless you've been living under a media and/or digital rock, you should know that Senator Joe Biden, Democrat from Delaware, has been tapped to be the Vice-Presidential nominee of Barack Obama. Some of you may have even received a text message at 3:30 am Saturday morning informing you of Biden's nod.
Who is Biden? The USA Today for today described him as Pennsylvania's Third Senator (perhaps due to the proximity of Delaware to Pennsylvania and the fact he was born in the Keystone State). Many talking heads on the television have noted Biden's tendency to talk and talk and talk and talk . . . Well, you get the idea.
One place to find information about Biden is his official US Senate website, which you can access here. Understand that is this is an official Senate website maintained by Biden and his staff, it is not the best place to look for hard-hitting, critical analysis of Biden or his record. You can learn that by looking in the biography section that he won election to the US Senate at the age of 29. Under the terms of the Constitution, this would make him too young to serve as a US Senator. However, Biden did turn 30 by the time he took office in 1973. Also, you can sign up to receive the aptly named 'Biden Bulletin' which is an email newsletter.
One source of information about Biden is our old friend Galileo. From Browse by Subject, you can go to Social Sciences and select Political Science. Once there, you can do a search for 'Joe Biden' in the first search bar. The third result you get is actually a piece from USA Today that Biden wrote about Afghanistan.
Notice though, that when you change the search to 'Joe' in the first search bar and 'Biden' in the second search bar, the results are slightly different. This is also true when you change Joe to Joseph. A search for 'Joseph Biden' in the search bar gives us a set of results where the third result in Academic Search Complete is an an article relating to the future possible makeup of the Obama cabinet.
Another possibility is to go to Galileo and click on the 'Search' tab. At this point, you have the ability to search many databases by clicking on the show more databases link and selecting each database you want to search in. A search for 'Biden' and 'plagiarism' in Academic Search Complete and Research Library gives us a handful of results related to some incidents involving Senator Biden and accusations of plagiarism from his first presidential campaign in 1988.
Get ready for an information glut on Biden over the next week, just as you will get one when John McCain announces his VP pick on Friday (probably).
JWF
Who is Biden? The USA Today for today described him as Pennsylvania's Third Senator (perhaps due to the proximity of Delaware to Pennsylvania and the fact he was born in the Keystone State). Many talking heads on the television have noted Biden's tendency to talk and talk and talk and talk . . . Well, you get the idea.
One place to find information about Biden is his official US Senate website, which you can access here. Understand that is this is an official Senate website maintained by Biden and his staff, it is not the best place to look for hard-hitting, critical analysis of Biden or his record. You can learn that by looking in the biography section that he won election to the US Senate at the age of 29. Under the terms of the Constitution, this would make him too young to serve as a US Senator. However, Biden did turn 30 by the time he took office in 1973. Also, you can sign up to receive the aptly named 'Biden Bulletin' which is an email newsletter.
One source of information about Biden is our old friend Galileo. From Browse by Subject, you can go to Social Sciences and select Political Science. Once there, you can do a search for 'Joe Biden' in the first search bar. The third result you get is actually a piece from USA Today that Biden wrote about Afghanistan.
Notice though, that when you change the search to 'Joe' in the first search bar and 'Biden' in the second search bar, the results are slightly different. This is also true when you change Joe to Joseph. A search for 'Joseph Biden' in the search bar gives us a set of results where the third result in Academic Search Complete is an an article relating to the future possible makeup of the Obama cabinet.
Another possibility is to go to Galileo and click on the 'Search' tab. At this point, you have the ability to search many databases by clicking on the show more databases link and selecting each database you want to search in. A search for 'Biden' and 'plagiarism' in Academic Search Complete and Research Library gives us a handful of results related to some incidents involving Senator Biden and accusations of plagiarism from his first presidential campaign in 1988.
Get ready for an information glut on Biden over the next week, just as you will get one when John McCain announces his VP pick on Friday (probably).
JWF
It begins tonight
The political junkies are salivating as the Democratic convention coverage begins tonight. Where can one read about the conventions - past and present?
Current information can be gathered with a Google search, a scan of CNN or Fox. What if you'd like to read about the last convention or even the 1980 Democratic Convention. You know I'm going to send you to GALILEO!
I selected Browse by Type because I knew I wanted newspaper articles. The Newspaper link opens with a list of newspaper sources. I can't search through them the way I can search when I use the Browse by Subjects tab. I tried the New York Times links (both current and Archive) only to discover they end up being "I pay" sites.
What can I access as part of GALILEO? ProQuest offers The New York Times and the Los Angeles Times, (plus the Christian Science Monitor, Washington Post and Wall Street Journal through the Newspapers database.
ProQuest is easy to use. The Advanced tab allowed me to limit my search by year. I wanted to check out the 1980 convention - there are 69 articles from 1 Jan 1980 to 31 Dec 1980 about the Democratic Convention! The drawback is I found nothing for the 1976 or earlier conventions.
Now what? I went to Browse by Subject, selected Social Science, selected Political Science and Administration - limited my search for Democratic convention (no quotes) to 1976 and several articles came up through Academic Search Complete. There were even a few with a search limited to 1972.
For the confirmed political junkie, GALILEO offers access to resources to feed your addiction for information about the political process!
Your Georgia librarian has the password to use GALILEO at home! Watch the coverage and read the articles!
-kls
Current information can be gathered with a Google search, a scan of CNN or Fox. What if you'd like to read about the last convention or even the 1980 Democratic Convention. You know I'm going to send you to GALILEO!
I selected Browse by Type because I knew I wanted newspaper articles. The Newspaper link opens with a list of newspaper sources. I can't search through them the way I can search when I use the Browse by Subjects tab. I tried the New York Times links (both current and Archive) only to discover they end up being "I pay" sites.
What can I access as part of GALILEO? ProQuest offers The New York Times and the Los Angeles Times, (plus the Christian Science Monitor, Washington Post and Wall Street Journal through the Newspapers database.
ProQuest is easy to use. The Advanced tab allowed me to limit my search by year. I wanted to check out the 1980 convention - there are 69 articles from 1 Jan 1980 to 31 Dec 1980 about the Democratic Convention! The drawback is I found nothing for the 1976 or earlier conventions.
Now what? I went to Browse by Subject, selected Social Science, selected Political Science and Administration - limited my search for Democratic convention (no quotes) to 1976 and several articles came up through Academic Search Complete. There were even a few with a search limited to 1972.
For the confirmed political junkie, GALILEO offers access to resources to feed your addiction for information about the political process!
Your Georgia librarian has the password to use GALILEO at home! Watch the coverage and read the articles!
-kls
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