Tuesday, September 29, 2009

Twitter Feeds that Teach History
I wish I had time to twitter, but US History Blog.com found these 100 twitter sites that will help you teach.

Monday, September 28, 2009

Tenement Site
One of my neighbors went to NYC last weekend and saw the Tenement Museum. Among the great things it has are virtual tours and several games your students can play.

Saturday, September 26, 2009

More Practice Test Questions
Here are some new Pearson questions that I found. There are many many more here.

Wednesday, September 23, 2009

Downloading Video
There are many sites out there, but here is a site that allows you to download a youtube.com video.

Sunday, September 20, 2009


The Great Train Robbery Movie by Thomas A. Edison
Yes, one doesn't think of Edison as a movie maker, but he had 1093 patents which is 1092 more than most of us teach about. Above is the first part of a movie he made and when it finishes you will see parts 2 and 3. I found it off of the Social Studies Teachers Blog which I have linked on the right side of this page.

Saturday, September 19, 2009


Plymouth Colony
Most of you have probably already done this, but we only just finished our second week of school so it works for me. Above is a short clip with many of the major details of the colony.

Thursday, September 17, 2009

Great How Tos For Moviemaker
If you go here there are a bunch of how to connections for movie maker which I use to have my kids do a variety of assignments.

Wednesday, September 16, 2009

VA Constitution and the Declaration of Independence
In VA where I teach we have to look at the June 29, 1776 VA Constitution which was written largely by George Mason. When one gives all the credit to Jefferson for the Dec of Independence, one will be started to see how much of the two documents (published at almost the identical time) were. It's a great exercise for your students to do and then to look at the Bill of Rights and see how little the language changed even there.

Monday, September 14, 2009


Google Docs and Sam Adams
Okay, call me a little behind the times, but I only just started learning Google Docs recently. What is amazing is how easy it is to embed video (from youtube or your desktop, but no where else) and pictures, etc. You can also easily link to outside sources as I have done on slide one. I have two videos on slide two on Sam Adams (one a tribute and the other a that has a little about him from a short lecture. There are a bazillion templates for a PowerPoint and it can be shared with others online and you can download. Above is a very simple example that I did in one minute. Here is a video I made on how to make a Google Doc Presentation.

Friday, September 11, 2009



History of the Railroad in the US

The short video above cover the history of the railroad in the US. It is both on TeacherTube which is not blocked in school districts and has many useful videos and youtube.com.

Tuesday, September 8, 2009

Quizlot
This is a new site that allows you to make quizzes, flashcards, etc. It also allows you to share them with others (ie practicing for a test). It already has some questions up for history and government.

Friday, September 4, 2009

New Source for Videos
Here is a site that is still in the beta stage. The CEO sent me an e-mail and said that everything will be up soon. However the videos are already up now and are very professional and cover much of modern US history (world power, progressive era, WWI, 1920s, Great Depression, WWII, post-war years, Vietnam, Cold War, 60s). There are also teacher documents (transcripts of the video, vocabulary, activities, quizzes, etc.)

Wednesday, September 2, 2009


View Halla's Homes in a larger map

Google Earth Example

Tomorrow I am doing a presentation for some of my best posts and one I want to include is how to do Google Earth. I am going to use it this year for the American Revolution and the Civil War so my students will be able to locate key events, tag them and then write about them. Soon I will post a how to video that also shows how to embed it (as I have done above, although you are better off clicking here to better see the entire map and all the links) and to record and save the video on it. On the embedded one above click on one of my markers and then you can click on the "focus" link for a closer link.



How to Use Google Earth

This year my US kids are going to have to use Google Earth twice (or more) to 1)give short descriptions of key events in the US revolution and the Civil War. Here is a great page (thanks to FreeTech for the heads up) that has two videos (see above) which very clearly tells how to do it. The third video tells you how to embed a video into a blog. I have an in-service I am doing in a couple of days so look for my example soon.

Tuesday, September 1, 2009


How Stuff Works
This is a great site for many reasons, mostly because they have hundreds of short videos (on many things beyond the classroom). I have found it very good for both US and world history. Above, for example is the bombing of Pearl Harbor. The coolest thing is that the movies are 3-1o minutes, so if a student misses class, he/she can still see what you watched!