The St. Louis Federal Reserve has a Summer School program for teachers. Two of the sessions deal with current events (banking crisis and jobs) but the third covers the data and primary source documents that bank makes available online (for free). These include the FRED and GeoFred websites.
GeoFred produces graphs like the one above showing economic statistics across the country. It can do it on a state by state basis, by county (as above), or by even more refined areas.
FRED plots graphs and even provides the data for economic statistics over time. The graph above shows GDP since they started collecting data in the 1940’s. It also has the times of recessions shaded in. The data in the graph can also be downloaded if you want to do your own analysis.
These seem to be handy little tools for teaching and for research projects, and are pretty easy to use.
The teachers’ training sessions are free though you have to get your own housing. They do provide breakfast and lunch. If you want graduate credit for them however, each three day session will cost around $306 and garner one credit.
