Demographic Chart e-book

Last year I was visited by the author of this site which posts demographics of every decade of our nation's history.  There are also a number of ancillaries attached to each decade. It is well worth looking at as I imagine it will also be improved as the author is retired and seems to have made the site a labor of his devotion.

Learn Boost

I have gone paperless and have most of my students that way as well.  So, when I saw a rather "busy" desk of one of the teachers in my dept. this morning, I suggested he try an online lesson planner (since that and a dictionary were two of the items on his desk).  Well after a little research I found LearnBoost which not only has a planner, but also a gradebook, attendance and a calendar and all for free. 

Greensboro 4

This comes from my wife who knows the producer of this film which is 46 minutes long. It is on the Greensboro 4. 

AP US History Quizzes

Here is a great site I wrote about three years ago when I started this blog (1100 posts ago!!). It has a ton of short quizzes on each section and a bunch of ancillaries on the home page. 

Triangle Shirtwaist Fire

This is one of the many reasons why I will have to fork over $15 a month to read the NYTimes online starting next week.  Fortunately all of you will not as any link I put on this blog site can be read whether or not you have gone before the 20x monthly visits that will be allowed starting next Monday.  This is a page that has one blog post after another on the Triangle Waistcoat Fire of 100 years ago.  There are plenty of pages on different memories from the horrific fire as well as items to connect it to today such as the video above.

The Cold War

I doubt you are to the Cold War yet, but when you do, above is a nice short video on the Berlin Wall (and there are many other great ones at the History Channel).  Here are more links that I found here. 

Geography Quiz and More

This site has a timed quiz on US geography, but it also has information on climate zones, colonial life, Native American tribes and more. 

Install or Update Multiple Programs At Once

One of the reasons I can hardly wait for the new version of Google CR-48 to come out this summer is that I can purchase a cheap computer and keep everything on the cloud. Until then I will have to deal with viruses as I did with both of our family laptops last weekend.  Thankfully there is a quick way to install multiple programs of your choosing and not have to sit around waiting for each to follow.  Go to Ninite and look at the long list of most, if not all of what you want.  Thanks @cuevash (who was a teammate of mine in college) for the great tweet. 

The Roaring 20s

Here is a site that is completely dedicated to the 1920s and includes links on art, literature, styles, the military. cars, dance and a bunch of others.  As with the link below, this is another one that could be used as for a webquest.  It also is affiliated with a blog with is actually pretty interesting as it is written as if the 1920s are currently happening. 

Comments in Google Docs

Almost all of my AP students now submit their essays to me via Googel Docs.  I love it because since they now are using the platform for a number of their assignments in school, they look to see when I have graded the assignment (which is easy since it bolds the title in their portfolio) and really take the time to look at my comments (which has not always been the case in the past).  But now as you can see from the video above the teacher (or the collaborator) can leave a comment and another person can respond (or more if there are several people working together on a group project) and then the comments can be deleted when the issue has been resolved.  For me this is an ideal way to improve a students' writing ability. 

Women of the Progressive Era

I have been doing a number of webquests recently and this site on women in the Progressive Era would be perfect for such an assignment.  All of the links are a page long and include lots of pictures.  Some of the links include: Hull House, Women's Christian Temperance Movement, Status of Women, Women's Suffrage and much much else. 

Fakebook

I have followed @russeltarr for a while on Twitter and his adaption of Facebook is one of the many great reasons to follow him.  If you go here, you will get a free Facebook like template which you can have your students work on. They can save their products and even edit them later or e-mail you the finished url to grade.  

CSPAN Winner

When I get down because my students aren't as technologically in tune as I am, watching a video such as the one above makes me think ALL kids can do great things with technology. Also, more importantly, here is the CSPAN page for teachers which will give you a treasure of information for your classes.

Identify an Image

So each day I give 5 questions for review for our state exam and on it I include simple questions, maps, multiple choice and even items to identify an image.  One of my students was having difficulty which led us to see if one could a search of an image and figure out what it was.  Voila! Tineye.com does just that for any image that is currently on the internet.  Also if you are curious about the questions for my students they are here and done on Google Docs, so I can add new ones every other day.

History of the US

Above is the history of the US in 50 seconds and here it is in two minutes. 

Digital US History

Digital History is a site that allows you to look up US history topics and find a myriad of online resources.  For example, here is the Progressive Era which has presidential results, time lines, fact sheets, women's suffrage and suggested readings. 

A Nice Short Explanation of Longitude and Latitude

Facebook

It is interesting the county where I teach has a Facebook page, but I am not allowed to use it with my students even though it would be a great way for kids to communicate at night to help solve their questions.  Watch this video and you will understand why I hope we can use it one day before my students completely stop using e-mail and I have not way to communicate with them. It would be great if I could create a classroom where the teachers and students could not see each others' pages, but anything on the classroom wall would show up in their individual pages.  One day perhaps!

Ancillaries

Ancillaries for US History Teachers
The book I use, The Americans, uses this site for many free ancillaries. There are games, primary documents, review, etc.