Visualizing unemployment

The American Observer shows the dynamics of unemployment during this recession:
The Decline: The Geography of a Recession




http://cohort11.americanobserver.net/latoyaegwuekwe/multimediafinal.html

Copyright curriculum materials

The Electronic Frontier Foundation has a free online curriculum for teaching about copyright.

from their webpage:

"The lesson plan concludes with a mock trial that tests the students' understanding of copyright and its limitations and encourages them to consider the positions of each party involved.

Unit Goals

* Educate students about copyright law, including the concepts of fair use, free speech, and the public domain.
* Explore the relationship between copyright law and innovation, showing how the courts and lawmakers have struggled to build a legal framework to both compensate artists and encourage innovative uses of creative works and new technologies.
* Help students understand their legal rights and responsibilities with respect to copyright and technology use.

Objectives for Students

* Critical and creative thinking: brainstorming, analyzing historical and contemporary sources, and questioning group and individual assumptions.
* Social skills: collaborating with peers.
* Communication: participating in group discussions, debates, class projects, and role-play; demonstrating comprehension by commenting (orally and in writing) on the material clearly and effectively.
* Research: collecting, organizing, and synthesizing data from various sources (scholastic articles, commercial news sources, Internet, video/film, music, art, and literature)."

http://www.teachingcopyright.org/curriculum/hs

Banking crisis

"This American Life", from Chicago Public Radio, has an excellent show explaining the current banking crisis. They illustrate it using a dollhouse loan that goes bad:

"Mark to market, that's another phrase you might have heard. And it applies to exactly the situation Adam is in right now. He's got a dollhouse on his books for 100, but if he had to sell it now, he could only get 50 - that's the market price, what he could get right now. Marking it to market means Adam would have to enter the market price - 50 dollars - or 20 dollars - or whatever it really is - into his books.

And the bankers have all been saying 'please don't make me do that,' because if you do, I'll be declaring bankruptcy."

You can hear the podcast or read a complete transcript of the program at their website.

The Credit of Crisis visualized

Here's a clear explanation of the foundations of the financial crisis by Jonathan Jarvis

Saving

Saving Money in Plain English is a simple introduction to savings and compound interest.