Or read the latest press release about employment and unemployment from the Bureau of Labor Statistics . Also, the unified gateway to federal statistical agencies is comprehensive but a bit overwhelming. Find current Gallup Poll press releases and Gallup's explanations of how sample surveys work here . The abstracts of current medical research in the New England Journal of Medicine demonstrate that you must know some statistics to read medical literature. Choose a clinical trial and an observational study from the available abstracts, then ask students to search for them by subject and to write a description of the design, the explanatory and response variables, and the conclusions.
Applets deserve separate mention.
You can find a large number of attractive interactive animated simulations that demonstrate important facts about probability and statistics. We recommend these for class demonstrations as well as for student work, particularly if you are not using software in your course. Most are at university locations, and their URLs change often. Test applets on the machines your students will use to be certain that they will run. David Lane of Rice University has an excellent collection of Java applets, and also links to other similar sites.