Ted Talks Manipulated For Your Classroom

I love looking at cutting edge ideas on Ted Talks.  By going here, I can take the Ted Talk, or for that matter, any video on Youtube and create a lesson with multiple choice and short answer questions to go with it.  When that is done you will be given a unique url which you can then give to your students.  The videos will then be aggregated into one social studies page.

Here is a Ted Talks video on why we vote on Tuesdays and when you go to it, you will see the video, multiple choice questions and short answer ones. By the way I learned about this idea on Edudemic. 

History Simulations

The HS "History Simulations" webpage just upgraded their page in time for your classes to look at their simulation on the Cold War.  If you like that one, you can also get one from each of the two world wars.  As everyone knows, one retains information better when one interacts with the information rather than just having it presented.  

Gilder Lehrman

The Gilder Lehrman website (and group) is a huge help for US history teachers.  The site has 60,000" 60,000 letters, diaries, maps, pamphlets, printed books, newspapers, photographs, and ephemera that document the political, social, and economic history of the United States."  There also have presentations, contests, etc. and even more benefits if your school becomes a member (and at $0.00, the price is right).

An overview of all of the great new resources and tools is available here. Some of the highlights of the new site include History by Era section, which includes podcasts, interactive features, online exhibitions, timelines and terms, primary sources, teaching tools, and content spanning all of American history. 

The new website also includes 10 Common Core units by 2009 National History Teacher of the Year Tim Bailey. For more literacy-based learning, you can also take a look at our new Featured Primary Sources, from the Gilder Lehrman Collection, annotated and accompanied by teaching guides and questions. Our Collection search.  Ten new short-videos, “Essential Questions in American History,” which features ten essential American history questions and in our multimedia section you can find nearly 40 under five minute video clips, great for use in the classroom!

More on the Dustbowl & CCC

The folks (actually it is just one hardworking person!) at EDSITEment likes to post comments when he sees a post for which their site has some lesson plans.  I really like their lesson plans as they are essentially webquests and have guiding questions, learning objectives, background, preparation and extending instructions.  Here is a GREAT one on the Dustbowl (it says grades 3-5, but for my money it can be used for much higher grades or amended for your purposes) and here is one on African-Americans in the Civilian Conservation Corps. 

Cloud Storage

So I have every single course and its contents and all my personal items in Google Docs and was only using 45% of my free space.  Now (as of a few hours ago) I am using Google Drive and have an additional 5 gigabytes (with more coming soon) so I have TONS of space.  But having said that there are plenty of other places where you can put your content such as Dropbox, Amazon (where Netflix stores all of its movies), the iCloud, Skydrive (Microsoft)  and two other lesser known ones.  Here is a very thorough account of all of them in today's WashPost.

The video above, from Dropbox, does a great job of explaining cloud computing.  

20th Century Heroes and Villains from the National Archives

My colleague, Jeff Feinstein, who teaches US and European history, sent me this awesome link to the UK's National Archives.  It deals with 20th century heroes and villains: Winston Churchill and the  bombing of Dresden, , John Kennedy and the Cuban Missile Crisis,  Joseph Stalin and the industrialization of the USSR,  Benito Mussolini  and the invasion of Abyssinia, Harry Truman and the atomic bomb,  Martin  Luther King and the civil rights movement. 

Click on each name and you'll find a treasure of sources, photographs, charts, graphs, and posters. The site's design is great and the sources for each individual are quite manageable for the kids.

I think that this site along with the curriculum sources  from Stanford are among the best for their ease of use in the classroom.

Civilian Conservation Corps & The Dust Bowl

Watch The Civilian Conservation Corps on PBS. See more from American Experience.

Watch Surviving the Dust Bowl on PBS. See more from American Experience.

Above is a PBS documentary on the Civilian Conservation Corps which you can watch in its entirety or in parts. Below it is the PBS movie on the Dust Bowl of the Great Depression.

Google Drive

Google just announced that you will soon be able to soon upload 30 different types of digital media into Google Docs.  You will then be able to manipulate and share them with others.  So, forget about having to e-mail large files as you can just share it in Google Drive.  Here are more details. You can also download the Google Android App (did I say that I am so glad I bought Android and not iPhone?!).  If you want to be e-mailed when you can get Google Drive, go here.

Finally WeVideo will be integrated with Google Drive so you can create your videos in the cloud and be able to share them with even more people using Google Drive.   Here are my posts on WeVideo.

Education Technology

Mohamed (Med) Kharbach, an educator and tech geek, has a great website with all kinds of technology for teachers. It includes goggle tools, video tools, organizing tools, search tools, and sharing tools. The site won't win awards for design, but its got a lot of good stuff and well-worth exploring. Thanks to Jeff Feinstein for sending me the link.

Six Examples of IPad Integration

Andrew Marcinek,an instructional technologist at Burlington High School, in Burlington, MA has a great article in Edutopia with six examples of IPad integration in the classroom. He includes an interesting lesson on the Enlightenment using blogs and also talks about flipping. It's a great story with great examples. Thanks to Alex Case for sending me the link.

Homework App That Has A Reminder Alarm

I have been looking for a homework app for my students which will set an alarm for them to remind them to do it (forgetting that most of them have also signed up for a text from me from Remind101.com).  Well, thanks to Android4Schools, I have finally found an Andoid App called Studious which does just that.  It also allows one to enter in each class as well as when they meet and then lets students set the time for each assignment and set the alarm. Unfortunately it is not yet available for iPhones.   The video below shows you how to use it.

Khan Academy: Best Posts

California teacher, Larry Ferlazzo has aggregated on one site all the best posts about Khan Academy. He linked about ten such articles, from the wrath of Khan Academy to the wonders of Khan Academy.

Outline Maps

Arizona State Universityhas a great collection of outline maps--physical, political, regional, continents, rivers, etc--that might come in handy for many units in both world and US history.

Study Blue Flashcard App

I have blogged about Quizlet before, but here is a new app called Study Blue which lets you do the same things as Quizlet except you can also speak the flash cards instead of just typing them out (as you can see above).  Also, it lets the card hang between front and back so you can ponder the answer (it that is any incentive!).  You can also add pictures which is important since so many state exams have lots of them.   Here is the Android app and the iPhone one.  I found out about the app on Mindshift. 

My Homework App

I have become an avid user of Evernote from everything for notes teachers give me in the hallway to   shopping lists from my wife.  It can be accessed from iPhone, Android and the web.  But for my students I think they need something that looks like their course schedule.

So today I noticed that NotAnotherHistoryTeacher had a reference to MyHomework.  So I checked it out! It, as you can see from the video, allows students to set up their classes with pertinent information (subject, place, etc.) as well as giving them a calendar to set the information (although I am still waiting for any group - even Evernote - to attach to it an alarm (can anyone help me) so, for example, the homework would go off to remind the kids (although I do use Remind101 to do this, but it doesn't come from their calendars).

At any rate, MyHomework can be accessed from an iPhone and an Android and when the kids are home they can look at it on their laptops.  The video shows one how to set up the app on one's phone.  There is also a blog - probably a feature more for the teachers, but it is nice for students to look at when setting up an account.