Online Mind Maps

Ever wanted to make a mind map online and had to resort to the rather clunky Powerpoint drawing tools to do so? I have and so when I discovered this text-to-mapping tool online, I was quite pleased. It's a very basic tool but it does the necessary and it allows you to play with the formatting of the mind map in quick fashion.

Visualizing Texts

There are a bunch of online tools for creating "word maps" out of websites or your own text. The resulting maps are great for classroom teaching, to give students a sense of the most common words/phrases in a text. Of course, they don't work so well when you're looking for themes (ideas expressed in different or multiple ways by different individuals but involving the same concept). For that, I still resort to an old-fashioned spreadsheet where I tally the frequency of occurrence of particular themes in a text. But once you have that tally, you can still create a cool-looking word map using one of these online tools.

http://www.tagxedo.com/
http://tagcrowd.com/
http://www.wordsift.com/
http://www.wordle.net/
http://www.visualthesaurus.com/vocabgrabber/

For a good discussion of the pros and cons of these different applications, check out this webpage:
http://sta.wp.trincoll.edu/?s=wordle&submit.x=0&submit.y=0&submit=Search

Unemployment Rates

This is a great tool (courtesy of the NY Times) for understanding how different groups in society are being differentially affected by unemployment as a result of the crisis. But there are lessons that extend beyond what is happening to the economy right now. Check out the 12-month average unemployment rate for Black men between the ages of 15 and 24, without a high school diploma...

Migration Issues

Livelihoods Connect: A cool website full of papers, conferences, organizations, etc. that deal with migration (with a heavy Asian and African focus).

Professional Sociological Organizations

1. International Sociological Association
2. American Sociological Association

Fellowships

Studies in India:
- Junior Fellowship from the American Institute of Indian Studies (AIIS). The application deadline is July 1 each year.

Free Online Documentaries

Stuff you won't find on YouTube.

Here is a collection of some cool and free online documentaries including stuff on refugees, racists, homophobics, wars, acupuncture, Einstein, Saddam Hussein and much, much more.
http://best.online.docus.googlepages.com/

Teaching Tools - History of Jim Crow

This website offers a wealth of information and activities to help you familiarize yourself with the Jim Crow laws. For someone like me, a foreigner, it was an eye-opener.

http://www.pbs.org/wnet/jimcrow/index.html

Included in the site are interactive maps of the U.S. indicating where Jim Crow laws were enacted, the migration patterns of African Americans from the south to the north, the states in which lynchings and riots occurred, etc.

My favorite part of the website is an interactive feature that lets you see just how difficult it was to vote as a black person during the Jim Crow era. The feature introduces you to the various innovations (such as the grandfather clause, and the literacy clause) that were introduced to prevent blacks from voting.

Teaching Tools - Prejudice

I found this cool website on PBS that has a variety of online surveys and slideshows that can be used to teach students about different forms of prejudice - from racism to sexism.

http://www.understandingprejudice.org/

Included in the site are:
- A baseline survey you can offer at the beginning of a class to give students an indication of their own prejudices
- A slideshow of different advertisements used throughout history that use negative stereotypes of different minority groups
- A slideshow of various U.S. presidents and their slave-owning history
- A test of your knowledge of Native American history and contemporary life
- The Ambivalent Sexism Inventory that helps you understand the dual nature of sexism
- A test of your hidden biases

U.S. Laws and Commissions

1. The Equal Employment Opportunity Commission

Dictionaries and Style Guides

1. Dictionary.com - Includes a dictionary, thesaurus, etc.
2. Bartleby.com - Includes Modern English Usage guide, encyclopedias of verse and quotations, Shakespeare, KJV Bible, etc.

Independent News Websites

1. Inter Press Service
2. Feminist Majority Foundation
3. Women's eNews
4. Global Information Network (Account required)
5. International Crisis Group
6. Stateline
7. All Africa
8. Reuters
10. Amnesty International
11. Idealist.org