AP Seminar: Online Resources Recommended by AP Teachers
We surveyed AP Seminar teachers about what online resources they recommend, and the list below comes directly from their responses. The list also includes teacher descriptions of the resources. This is not a comprehensive list, nor is it an endorsement of any of these resources by College Board.
- Resource pages for teachers
- Provides coverage of news from different media outlets across the political spectrum. “It’s very useful in teaching lessons about vetting for credibility and bias.”
Cato Unbound: A Journal of Debate
- Resources pages for teachers
- Each month, an essayist tackles a topic in a lengthy essay, and essays opposing that idea are written. “Multiple perspectives presented that balance out fairly well. Timely topics.”
Civic Online Reasoning by Stanford History Education Group
- Online instructions tutorials/resources pages for teachers
- Sequences of lessons to teach students how to effectively evaluate online information.
- Resource pages for teachers
- “Tons of great readings, organized by topics that are very applicable to Seminar.” Readings also have guiding and assessment questions to check for understanding.
- Self-directed student practice
- A thorough site that students can use to self-check not only grammar, but sentence structure recommendations, passive voice, agreement, tautology, and other complex error explanations. “This is helpful during the IWA and IRR process when teachers cannot give specific, individual feedback.”
Harvard Project Zero’s Thinking Routines Toolbox
- Resource pages for teachers
- Great for ideas about “scaffolding some of the thinking” students do in AP Seminar.
- Online simulation; resource pages for teachers
- Videos and podcasts with discussions and debates on contemporary issues.
International Debate Education Association - Debatabase
- Resource pages for teachers
- Organized by topic. “Nudges students toward broad questions that already exist ‘out there’ in the world as debatable topics,” and as such are topics “that will likely be well represented in sources that are fairly credible.”
- Resource pages for teachers
- A range of “idiosyncratic links that are all compelling in a variety of ways.” Provides students with a variety of sources “with real voices.”
- Resource pages for teachers
- Podcasts on a range of topics that can be used to develop student questioning and curiosity, and “to look beyond the low-hanging fruit for their performance tasks.” “Excerpts are best as the podcasts tend to be up to an hour long.”
- Resource pages for teachers
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Examines all kinds of divisive issues from opposing sides. It focuses on rational debate and uses “fairly reliable, contemporary news articles and historic analysis to frame the issue clearly from the major viewpoints.” Can be a good starting point for “getting research ideas or teaching perspectives early in the year.”
- Resource pages for teachers
- Provides data/reports on public opinion polling, demographic research, and content analysis covering a wide range of contemporary topics. Useful to get students to start thinking specifically about analyzing and evaluating data/evidence separately from editorial, opinion pieces where they tend to trust "reasonable sounding" claims.
- Online instruction tutorials/resource pages for teachers
- Online writing lab with resources and instructional materials for writing arguments (which also covers different citation styles). This site also has presentations and videos for students on its associated YouTube channel.
- Resource pages for teachers
- Incredibly rich visual information that is excellent for analysis and argument creation.
Web Literacy for Student Fact-Checkers (Michael A. Caulfield)
- Online text
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Open source text that provides immediate helpful strategies for students to leverage in evaluating information and sources they encounter online.
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