FDR and the Packing of the Court

Right about now I assume most of you are getting ready to teach the New Deal and will touch upon FDR's "packing of the court" where he tried to add six judges to the US Supreme Court.  To teach it you might want to use this Smithsonian article on the events. 

Editing in YouTube

Believe it or not, but a fellow chair asked what we are doing for our end of the year project.  Some of my students will be looking at an immigrant in their family and writing an original essay on that person, but they also need to have a narrated video on the person.  So I am toying with them using YouTube to edit it since they now have access to accounts in it.  Above is a video explaining how to use it. 

Saving Twitter & Other Websites on Storify

So I am sitting in a library trying to finish the third editing of my book and dealing with a peer review comment that asked how we can save Twitter.  So to show that I too can learn new tricks, Frank Franz mentioned Storify to me and instantly you can drag in the Tweets you want as well as any website and create a story you can refer to later.  I must admit I am the kind of teacher who goes to an in-servicest and immediately comes back to my classroom and sift through the notebooks taking out only what I want to keep.  These items I scan and put in my in-services' folder on Google Drive (yes I am a minimalist and my classroom only takes 30 minutes to pack up each summer!).  So what I like about Storify is that I can essentially do the same, but even better I can delete items I do not want later.  You can collect Twitter, YouTube, Google+, websites, etc. to your hearts desire and create a storybook that you can edit later.

Above is a how to video.  If you are like me and try lots of sites online, you might want to consider having a "trash" e-mail for everything.  If I need the site to email me I can easily go to the trash site, but that way any extra email I might get because of signing up for so many things goes to the aforementioned site.  

Remind101 Adds Attachments

If you follow this blog, you know I use Remind101 every day of the week to remind my students about their homework.  Simply put it is has greatly improved my students ability to complete homework, but also to communicate with them, especially this year when I had to put up with eleven snow days and ten delayed openings.

Above is a video giving you the highlights and below is one teaching you how to use it.  The latest addition to the service is that you can now text an attachment.  Of course you can use Tinyurl or Bit.ly to shrink a link to a Google Drive document which is what I often do. 

The College Application Process

This post is a little different than normal as it deals with the college application process.  But all of us are involved in it whether it is in writing reference letters, giving grades, talking to our students, etc.  The video above and this WashPost article that goes in depth on the college admittance process is very revealing and might even help you counsel students in the future.  

80 Ways to use Google Forms in Classroom

This is a great slideshow of ways to use Google Drive forms in the classroom and includes links to examples.  Thanks to @rroysden for the Tweet on it. 

PBS & The Great Depression

It is remarkable that so many PBS films can be found in their entirety on the PBS site.  With a LCD and cheap speakers there is no need to even get the films anymore.  If one of your students is out, you can always direct them to the portion of the film you want them to see.  Here, for example, is the Great Depression film from PBS.  But there is much more than that such as an overview of the depression. a timeline, and articles on the time period and key players.   

The Wizard of Oz as an Allegory

I have done a few posts on how the Wizard of Oz is a great allegory for the late 1800s in the US.  I use it for my students to help them remember such items as the silver and gold standard, Populism, industrialism, westward movement, William Jennings Bryan and much more from the era.  Here is the best explanation for the allegory of the Wizard of Oz.  

Snagit & Screen Cast for Chrome

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Google just released Snagit for Chrome and the really cool thing about it is that it has a screencasting feature. Although the feature is still in beta, it works very well and allows you publish you video to YouTube. The video clip above shows you how to enable, but first you want to install both the app and the extension, both of which you can get at the Chrome store.

Every time you capture a picture with Snagit, you can share it and Google deposits the picture in your Google drive.

The Final Day of Franz Ferdinand

So this may be for your edification since it is on NPR and only something you can listen to, but it is a fascinating five minutes of the final day of Franz Ferdinand.  You probably know he survived an attempt on his life in the morning, but the proceeded on his published journey that day.  But did you know there were seven assassins looking to kill him that day and that Princip should not be one of them as the security team had decided to change the Archduke's path, but had forgotten to translate for the drivers who only spoke Czech or that they were turning around and had stopped right in front of Princip as they tried to go to a different path.  This is a great interview for history geeks! 

The Final Day of Franz Ferdinand

So this may be for your edification since it is on NPR and only something you can listen to, but it is a fascinating five minutes of the final day of Franz Ferdinand.  You probably know he survived an attempt on his life in the morning, but the proceeded on his published journey that day.  But did you know there were seven assassins looking to kill him that day and that Princip should not be one of them as the security team had decided to change the Archduke's path, but had forgotten to translate for the drivers who only spoke Czech or that they were turning around and had stopped right in front of Princip as they tried to go to a different path.  This is a great interview for history geeks! 

Trench Warfare Video

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I was looking for images of trench warfare and came up with this video from the Battle of  the  Somme.  But it not only has that, but actual footage of the trenches (including some dead soldiers) as well as interviews with British soldiers who were there.   You can quickly drag the circle to show your students some highlights, but it beats explaining what a trench looked like. 

Kahn Academy - SAT Partnership

Time will tell if the SAT is being dumbed down or going to become a much better reflection of learning in high schools today.  Either way if kids want to do well on them, they need to use Kahn Academy's site which you can find here.  But since the changes won't occur until 2016, here is where you can find tutorials for the SAT today from Kahn.   Above is the announcement about the SAT-Kahn merger. 

World War I Propaganda Posters

What can a picture tell?  Where here is a link you might want to consider to show your students American involvement in WWI through the use of its propaganda posters.