In addition to updating links and references, providing crackerjack support to students and instructors, and drinking a LOT of coffee, the tech team at Soomo is always coming up with ways to make course customization of any of our assignment collections simpler and more efficient.  Now instructors customizing Soomo’s content in edit mode can easily reorder assignments or move them from chapter to chapter by clicking on the “grab and drag” icon on the roll-over toolbar to the left of each assignment. Here’s a screenshot from Americans Governing. The red arrow points to the relevant instructions:

I’ve already posted about the CIA World Factbook here, but take it from those of us at Soomo responsible for keeping stuff live and updated:  you need to double-check any interior links to the Factbook that you’ve added when customizing assignments. The main page link remains the same, but interior pages have new URLs in many cases.  The upside of this redesign? Maps that are easier to enlarge and collections of photos associated with many of the country or region pages, including seven photos of Antarctica– five of them of penguins.

Congressional Quarterly’s free website, CQ Politics, has been branching out with videos for a while now and many posts can be written on just how useful CQ’s array of resources can be when teaching American Government. As the battle over President Obama’s nomination of Judge Sonia Sotomayor to the Supreme Court heats up, however, this brief overview video, Notorious Supreme Court Confirmation Hearings, provides a useful introduction to partisan struggles over SCOTUS nominees, including Robert Bork and Clarence Thomas.

Global Voices showcases citizen-generated media from countries typically outside the daily purview of the mainstream press. The site, in its own words:

…aggregates, curates, and amplifies the global conversation online – shining light on places and people other media often ignore.

Video, photographs, and podcasts are included, and the site is searchable by country and topic. (Nifty maps, too!) Bloggers invited to become part of the site support tolerance,  abhor racism and terrorism, and whole-heartedly support free speech and freedom of information.  Thanks to Miguel Centellas, incoming faculty at Ole Miss, for sending this link along. Miguel’s take:

Global Voices is a “true” blog community of mostly amateur bloggers, but very good ones. … It’s like Indymedia w/o the ideological doldrums or overly developed sense of self-righteousness.

Statistical wunderkind Nate Silver got his start predicting baseball, but the political polling site he and a friend launched in 2008 appears to have brought him more fans than his work analyzing America’s favorite pastime. Silver’s site, FiveThirtyEight, bills itself as “Politics Done Right.” Most polling geeks–especially those who lean left– agree that FiveThirtyEight lives up to its billing thanks to Silver’s methodological transparency and successful calls of the 2008 races.

The site provides analysis of current polling data on congressional and gubernatorial races, along with wide-ranging posts on other political and cultural issues. (See here and here for examples.) Regular senate race updates like this one for April 2009 examine the likelihood of a party change based on recent polling numbers. Fiesty comments on Silver’s posts range (and rage) left, right, and center, providing alternative viewpoints and suggestions for further analysis.