Monday, January 31, 2011

History of Wikipedia (10 Years Old)


This is a nice history of Wikipedia by its founder, Jimmy Wales. 

Prezi











Friday, January 28, 2011

Make Your Own Maps

This is a pretty cool site as it allows one to create your own maps.  In other words, you can select a region of the world and then decide what you want the kids to label. Once you have made your decision, a map made exactly to your specifications is created as a word document.  Thanks to a tip from Edugalaxy.

Wednesday, January 26, 2011

The Civil War in Four Minutes

This is about the best film summation of the Civil War one can find.  Play it and see how much your students remember. 

Monday, January 24, 2011

Antietam Qwiki


Ok, Qwiki now lets one embed code into a blog or even to take a link even if you aren't part of the pilot.  In other words, you could put this link for Antietam on your student site and have your students answer questions.  Above is the embedded Qwiki search for it. 

Sunday, January 23, 2011

Qwiki

Qwiki is getting a lot of buzz as a new type of search engine. For me, it is a good idea for a taking off idea for students to create their own.  Quiki creates a "qwik" movie on any subject you can think of.  Here is one on MLK, Jr.  It is only in the "alpha" stage which means you can sign up to get permission (it takes a day) and then show your students whatever you want.  To see my MLK link, you need to be logged into the account (which, again, you can get in under 24 hours), but otherwise, here are some examples. 

Saturday, January 15, 2011

Jeopardy, Wheel of Fortune and other Review Games

I got this first tip from one of my readers, Marchelle Conway.  This is a site that lets you enter in your questions and answers for jeopardy and it instantly creates the game for you.  You then store it on their site and can see what others have developed. Here are other games you can use like Who Wants to Be A Millionaire, Wheel of Fortune and $25,000 Pyramid.

Monday, January 10, 2011

Virtual Tour of Monticello

Here is a virtual tour of Monticello, both the entire house as well as the grounds. I found it at freetech4teachers.com.

Wednesday, January 5, 2011

Prezi


Monday, January 3, 2011

Bit Torrent


One of the fastest growing companies on the Internet is BitTorrent.  It allows you and others to download huge files very quickly.  This would allow your students, for example, to work on a video together that one of them uploaded onto say Youtube.com.  The video above explains it.  The downside is that you (or your students) will have to download a small file and not all schools allow this without permission.

Sunday, January 2, 2011

Battle of Shiloh

Here is the Battle of Shiloh in ten short descriptions, each with a map showing troop movement.