Welcome to The Dirksen Congressional Center's Communicator - a web-based e-newsletter providing educators with news and ideas to improve the understanding of Congress -- http://www.webcommunicator.org.

1. What's in the Works? Our Websuite Redesign!
2. House Floor Debate Simulation
3. Online Textbooks
4. The Civil Rights Documentation Project: May 5, 1964
5. Where the Hill Meets the Web: IQexpress
6. The Executive Branch: The President Has Fun
7. Postscript Information

1. WHAT'S IN THE WORKS? OUR WEB SUITE REDESIGN!

We have spent the past three months redesigning our Web suite—our third update of the entire suite (for our original site, CongressLink, we are on version 6.0).

With over 500,000 unique visitors and 50 million hits, keeping up with users’ expectations and new content is a continuous and exciting challenge for us.

Building upon user behavior, this year’s redesign aims to simplify navigation, improve searching capability within the suite of seven individual Web sites, create a platform to add more content, provide more accurate results for browsers, and observe basic Web-authoring standards.

The Dirksen Center site redesign is complete and CongressLink is next in line, with the other sites to follow. Take a look and enjoy!

Redesigned Dirksen Center Site - http://www.dirksencenter.org.

2. HOUSE FLOOR DEBATE SIMULATION

This unit will help teachers create a simulation of the U.S. House of Representatives floor debate process that can be adapted for use in a variety of middle school, high school, and college classrooms. In general, the simulation seeks to teach lessons about the various issues that factor into the decision-making process of a member of Congress. Some of the issues woven into the simulation include parliamentary rules and procedures, the role of constituents, competing demands for time, competing policy interests, the role of the press, and political concerns and institutional concerns. The materials include four different established scenarios, as well as resources to create a more customized case-study. The explanation and simulation would likely take place over two class periods.

Presented by Stephanie Vance, AdVanced Consulting, and prepared with a Robert H. Michel Civic Education Grant [discontinued program) -- House Floor Debate Simulation -- http://www.congresslink.org/print_lp_floorsim_intro.htm.

3. ONLINE TEXTBOOKS

As publishers begin to post textbooks about Congress on the Internet, we will post links to them on CongressLink. Take a look at what we currently have posted. Free to instructors, students, and interested others, read more about the online version of the American Congress -- http://www.congresslink.org/print_teaching_onlinetexts.htm.

4. THE CIVIL RIGHTS DOCUMENTATION PROJECT: MAY 5, 1964

On May 5, 1964, an important development occurred in the legislative history of the Civil Rights Act of 1964. In a surprise move, Senate Minority Leader Everett McKinley Dirksen offered scores of amendments to the pending bill. Predictably, this unexpected move angered civil rights proponents. And true, these early May negotiations represented a collapse of the Democratic leadership's original hopes that the Senate would pass the House bill without change, thereby removing all of the parliamentary dangers of House-Senate disagreement. But the mathematics of a cloture vote, plus Dirksen's principled refusal to accept the House bill as is, made compromise necessary.

Read more about the landmark civil rights law that still affects us today by visiting The Civil Rights Documentation Project: http://www.congresslink.org/civilrights/1964.htm#may.

5. WHERE THE HILL MEETS THE WEB: IQexpress

A portal site designed specifically for and used by Congressional staffers and offices of other elected officials. This site is updated daily with Congressional schedules, Congressional vote detail, White House news, daily news summaries from the Washington Post, and other top sources.

Find IQexpress -- http://www.aboutgovernment.org/print_usgov_legis.htm -- and link to information on major national events and hot issues.

6. THE EXECUTIVE BRANCH: THE PRESIDENT HAS FUN

Click on Show What You Know next to the red star to find a list of U.S. Presidents who threw out the first pitch at the baseball game in question. Can your students pick the President who was having fun at the ballpark?

First Pitch Presidents: http://www.congressforkids.net/Executivebranch_president_fun.htm

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