Study Stack
So first off, some of my tech ideas come from this site which is amazing an just won an Edublog award this year. The "study stack" site has allows you to help your students prepare. I have struggled with study guides for years and think this may be better than what I have done in the past. I am going to have my students create their own accounts and define each of their own words and then use it to review (or make them do part of the review guide) and then do a partner's review. The cool thing is that it allows the students to input the data and then see it in a variety of forms such as flash cards, crossword puzzles, true false, etc. Here is the US history page.

More Test Prep
If (and I am looking into this in relation to an online project I am working on) all the online questions could be brought together into one database, it would make for quite a test maker (and so what if the students could see some of the questions beforehand as preparing for a test IS what we want them to do). In Virginia, where I live, we have the Standards of Learning (SOL) exams and while there are a few differences from national standards, it is pretty much your standard US history course. So go here and click on some of the units and have your students review.

How To Use Movie Maker

View SlideShare presentation or Upload your own. (tags: movie_maker blog)

Movie Maker
This is the most fun your students will have all year and will learn to boot! Movie makers is on all Windows computers and is very easy to make. Your students can add music, video, pictures, words, etc. and make a very nice presentation.

The Wizard of Oz
In case you haven't heard the history behind the children's story, here it is. I find it a great way to have the kids remember many of the issues of the Populist and Progressive era.

How the Other Half Lives
Here are pictures from Jacob Riis who wrote "How the Other Half Lives" (entire text in the link)

A Good Way to Start/End the Year
Here is a citizenship test for those who want to be US citizens. Can your students pass it?

Everything Site!
This site has it all:

Outlines
Important Documents
Political Parties
Practice Quizzes
Biographies
Court Cases
Political Timelines
Topic Outlines
Unit Notes
Vocabulary

CNN Presidential Ranking
First off when you look at the ranking, notice that there are only 42 presidents. That's because Grover Cleveland is counted twice since his two terms were not consecutive. Also, not counted is John Hanson who was the president of the Articles of Confederation Congress. We were a country - shouldn't he count?! The CNN survey is also shows the categories that it used to come up with the list. Here is a listing of other rankings.

Another Quiz Maker
Now all we need is a test maker that teachers can access for free and then give their students. Short of that, this is another good one. http://www.triv.net/qmenu.htm is yet another one.

Online Quizzes
This four stemmed quiz bank allows a student to have as many as 35 questions per unit in US history and then gives the correct answers.

Nice Outline
This is billed as an AP outline, but it can be used for regular US as well. The challenge is how? Obviously it is a good starting point for review, especially for a midterm or final. Students could also use it to make detailed outlines as the year goes on. It is made by REA which, as far as I am concerned is the best AP US review guide out there. By going here, you can sign up for a free newletter from them with many teaching ideas.

Confederate vs Union States in Obama's Election

Above and here is a pretty interesting look at Obama's election. As the Washington Post states, "In every state that was part of the Confederacy, John McCain won a larger share of the white vote than he did nationwide" and he won all but three of the former Confederate states outright while Obama won all but two Union ones with the exception of Kentucky and Missouri. Those states, of course, were two of the four Union slave holding states. It would make for an interesting assignment to look at the Census data (or go here for quick state by state analysis) for the above mentioned states and try to see why these voting patterns might have happened given the current demographics of each state.

Check out this SlideShare Presentation:

Antebelleum Southern Society

View SlideShare presentation or Upload your own.

Powerpoints
I have been working with an online US history book (found here) to help create an interactive textbook site and this is part of what we are thinking of adding to the site. If you go here, there are some rather good slideshows (one is above) and after you see one, other related ones appear so while the original site has just a few entries you end up with many more. You can also change your Power Points into narrated movies.

Timeline and Narrated Geographical History of the US
I don't normally like to promote something that costs money, but this site has two great free maps. The first has a scrolling timeline which breaks US history into states, territories, presidents, society, Native American, world, science and culture. The second item is a narrated map which describes the major changes to the US. It also has smaller maps popping up to better explain the narration. You can also go to just one era if that is more desirable.

Good Source for Movie Titles, But Need More
Here is a source for movie titles for Reconstruction to the Present, but please leave a response to this entry if you know of more, especially earlier history. Of course two other entries (icue.com and howstuffworks.com) are great short films about many topics.