ACTIVITIES USING THE STATISTICS CANADA WEB SITE

*** 15-20 minutes

GETTING STARTED

Searching The Daily:

Click on Daily News and click on an item of interest.

When done, use the BACK button to return to the "Daily" page. Now Search The Daily by clicking in the text box and entering the search "Canadian families" and note the number of "hits" produced. Try clicking on a number of these (former Daily publications) and explore the kind of information available. Look for the most recent Daily release from the General Social Survey called "The Daily, Tuesday, October 14, 1997" (or click here if you are having troubles finding the article). Answer the questions below:

1. What types of information did you find?

2. What course(s) would this be useful for and how would you see using it?

3. Skim the article "2001 Census: Marital status, common-law unions and families" and list two trends that you could use in your teaching:

i) _______________________________________________________________

ii) _______________________________________________________________

If more time is available, try another search of The Daily. Search for "youth smoking" or another term where current information on the Canadian scene would be useful and interesting.

Using the "Search" button and Canadian Dimensions:

Use the BACK button (2x or 3x) to get to the Statistics Canada home page. Click in the "Search" text box.  Enter a search, for example, "immigration".  Click on the first item.  Try out the buttons on the top left of the page (i.e. tables for various historical immigration patterns).

1. How useful is this information?

2. What type of instruction would you have to give to users of this search engine in order for them to get as much relevant information as possible?

Lesson Plans and Classroom Activities

Use the BACK button (several times) to get to the Statistics Canada home page. Click on Products and Services, and then click on Other services. This takes you to a selection with lots of materials for educators. Look at the section called Lesson Plans and Classroom Activities.

1. How useful is this to you or to your colleagues?

2. In your school who would find this most useful?

3. What would make this section more useful to your school?

Using the Links to other sites button:

Use the BACK button (4x or 5x) to get to the Statistics Canada home page. Click on the Links to other sites button.

Click on Other Canadian Government servers.

Click on Federal Organizations and bookmark the resulting page (an alphabetical listing of these organizations).

Click on N and then on National Library of Canada. At this site choose your language preference and then, under the heading of "sources of Canadian Information." Click on Digital Projects. Click on Celebrating Women’s Achievements to get a listing of links to various relevant documents.

1. How useful is this information?

2. What particular searching strategies would be important for uses of this site?

Teacher's Resources

The Teacher's Resource page is a collection of teaching tools, data, and information.  Click here to navigate through the web page.