Tools for Teaching with FRED
FRED is the St. Louis Fed's data service, and Tools for Teaching with FRED includes tutorials, instructional guides, lesson plans and other FRED-related activities.
FRED lets users download, graph and track thousands of U.S. and international time series from more than one hundred sources. Create, save, update, and share your own custom graphs using current and historical economic data.
Lesson Plans and Activities for Teaching with FRED
Some examples include:
10 FRED Activities in 10 Minutes
Take a 10-minute guided tour of FRED. Simple step-by-step activities equip users to find and graph economic data. The guide also shows how to customize, save, and share a FRED graph.
FRED Data Dashboard for Educators
Teachers, check out this online data dashboard that provides the most recent data on Gross Domestic Product, Consumer Price Inflation, and unemployment to supplement your teaching.
FRED Activities for AP Macro
This package of 17 brief FRED activities aligns perfectly with the AP Macroeconomics curriculum. Easy-to-follow instructions guide students as they create basic and advanced graphs using FRED. Each activity includes questions about real data designed to reinforce students’ understanding of fundamental AP Macro concepts. Topics include output, prices, employment, interest rates, and the Phillips curve. Download the complete packet or pick and choose the activities in any order. As a bonus, students can save graphs to a dashboard linked to their free FRED account. Graphs can be retrieved any time and set to update automatically with the latest data.
Teachers: Find more Lesson Plans and Activities for Teaching with FRED here.
Lesson Plans and Activities for Teaching with FRED Maps
Some examples include:
Educational Attainment and Unemployment Rates by U.S. County
This lesson focuses on the relationship between educational attainment and unemployment. Students search for data on educational attainment and unemployment and visualize them in FRED. The goals are for students to observe patterns in mapped data, note differences across geographical areas, and hypothesize the reasons for those patterns and differences.
Life Expectancy at Birth and Net Migration by Nation
This lesson focuses on the relationship between life expectancy at birth and net migration. Students search for data on life expectancy at birth and net migration and visualize them in FRED. The goals are for students to observe patterns in mapped data, note differences across geographical areas, and hypothesize the reasons for those patterns and differences.
Teachers: Find more Tools for Teaching with FRED Maps here.
FRED Blog Reading Q&As
Some examples include:
Calculating the Value of Women’s Unpaid Work
The value of unpaid domestic labor is one economic contribution from women that’s often ignored. This FRED Blog post uses data from the Bureau of Labor Statistics, among other sources, to calculate the value of U.S. women’s domestic labor that goes unpaid. The dollar value of that unpaid labor is about the same as all the economic activity recorded in the state of New York.
Labor Force Participation Rates of Armed Forces Veterans
Between 2000 and 2020, the proportion of women veterans in the labor force was significantly higher than that of men. This FRED Blog post uses data from the Bureau of Labor Statistics to discuss the composition effect behind the fact that the average labor force participation rate across genders does not accurately reflect the experience of women veterans.
Teachers: Find more FRED Blog Reading Q&As here.
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