Using YouTube in Your Classroom

I found this great slide show on Crash Course for Educators which I found from one of the communities I follow on Google+.  Soon I will do a post on all the amazing new teacher and technology posts you can follow as they are growing quickly.  The video above is ten ways you can use YouTube to improve your classroom from ways to have stations, to flipping your class, to posting message to students and parents and more.

Monthly Most Hist Posts for the US History Teachers' Blog

Thanks to all of the new visitors to the three blogs (US, world and government) as we now have a new monthly record of 65,000 page views.  The most hit for the US history teachers' blog are:

• The Scourged Back: Photography and the American Civil War
• TED and Flipping Your Classroom (video on Eli Whitney is above)
• Amazing Collection of Flipped Class Items

Digital (US) History - Free Textbook & Resources

The Digital History page is awesome and proof that you can sometimes get away with even purchasing a history textbook if you are willing to do a little leg work.  Look above at the richness of the choices from a textbook which you can see above from the blue links to primary documents, events, people, multimedia and so much more.   This site has really improved in the last few years since it first appeared.  Also for those of you who might be preparing your students for a state end of the year test, you could easily use this resource to differentiate the learning amongst your students. 

AP Summer Institutes

The best summer institute I have ever attended starts on June 10th in Salt Lake City where I will be grading AP US Government exams, but I have gone to a number of great summer institutes (World, US, Comparative and US Government) over the years and always came away much richer for the experience.  They are great chances to get lots of assignments (I got tons this year for AP Comparative last summer) from both the presenter and others are the in-service, video clips, how to to understand free response and multiple choice questions.  Generally the presenters also make you go through and answer the multiple choice questions at night which is important as you have to get to know all of the released questions (essay and mc).  It is also a good place to make new friends and connections that can help your teaching in the coming years.In case you can still swing getting the money from your school district, go here and plug in the appropriate institute you'd like to attend. 

Evolution of Immigration to the US

Here's an interesting graph from the Washington Post showing the changes in immigration to the US from 1900 to the present. You can see a larger version of this graph here as well as charts that show where the different immigrants settled in the United States.

Redstone Misslie in Grand Central 1957

Here is a 1957 Redstone missile model that was installed in Grand Central by the US Army & Chrysler to awe New Yorkers. Presidential historian Michael Beschloss tweeted it last night.  He tweets great historical images almost on a daily basis.  You can follow him here: @BeschlossDC 

Follow us on Google+ and Twitter

If you want to follow the blogs other ways, I also post all of them on my Twitter ("kenhalla") and Google+ (also "kenhalla") accounts which you can follow by going to the links.  What is also nice about Twitter is that you can see who I am following and follow them as well if you choose.  In Google+ you can create your own circles and start following lots of people.  I have lots of explanations for Google+ and Twitter on this blog to explain how to use them. 

This Blog Continues All Summer

Virginia does two things that I'd love to see changed.  1) We have our state end of the year exams several weeks before the end of the year and 2) Our state legislature (both parties) consistently say they are for "education first," but refuse to let schools start before September because businesses want the high school kids to work after the college kids have left for school.

At any rate while schools around the US have already started closing for the summer (and while we are on it should we even be wedded to an agrian calendar?), my kids still are going to the 18th  of June (and yes they are done with their AP and state exams).   This is a long winded way of saying that this blog will, as always, will continue posting all June, July and August.   After all I have a new crop of students to teach this summer and need to find some new things for them. 

Military Records by War

Fold3 has an awesome collection of primary documents about military records by war. For the War of 1812, for example, you can search Pension Files,  Prize Cases for the Southern District Court of New York, and Service Records.  In addition to the War of 1812, Fold3 has a Revolutionary War collection, a Civil War collection,  and a Viet Nam War Collection, to name just a few. My colleague Jeff Feinstein, who teach US History, sent me the link and plans to use it next year. You can register for free, which gives access to most of the documents, which total over 390 million.

How to Use Google Hangouts

I am starting to feel as if Skyping is an old fashioned way to communicate online.  If you have a Gmail address you can Hangout with up to nine others (and more are coming as Google employees can already do up to 40).  At the bottom of the screen are the people not talking and the one who is will be in the main part of the page.  You can also share your screen and, if you use Google Drive, show your documents and even work collaboratively with the others in your Hangout.  You can also post a link to a Hangout in case you want others to watch in which case you can also have it saved to your YouTube account.  Here is everything you need to know to be able to have a successful Hangout.  Thanks to Matthew Faber for the heads up. 

Primary Documents to Study Lincoln

Amy Jackson of the Abraham Lincoln Presidential Library Foundation just wrote me with her great site called Under His Hat: Discovering Lincoln's Story from Primary Sources. It is the life behind Abraham Lincoln's public one.  For example this link shows you what was on his deak with pictures of each items and links to them.  Here is his Cyclopaedia and above is the desk upon which he wrote his first inaugural address.  It is the life behind Abraham Lincoln's public one.  For example this page shows you what was on his desk with pictures of each item and links to them.

This link is of an effigy doll (see below) that was used to mock Lincoln.  Shown in 3D it tells how beneath the face is a second one that is black as in the reference to his being a "Black Republican" which was how his enemies referred to him.  There is also a podcast with an historian talking about the doll.  There are many other items you can see which tell how the Lincolns made it through their daily lives, letters written and more. 

31 Charts That Will Destroy Your Faith in Humanity

The Washington Post has a series of charts that they say will destroy your faith in humanity. The one above shows trends in armed conflict. Another in the Post shows global democracy and autocracy. There are 31 charts but not all are political. Some show life expectancy, firearm deaths, global poverty,even the rate of electrification in US homes. 

The First Rosa Parks

I have long been interested in what gets people to make historic steps knowing that history has not judged them and lots of people might be against them.  For example Mary Beth Tinker only wore her armband for a few hours and no one has reported that after coming back to school she (and the others punished) wore black clothing for the rest of the year to get around the armband "rule."

But one story I have told for years, but had no name until Tinker mentioned it, was the one of the "first Rosa Parks."  Her name is Claudette Colvin and she was only 16 (Parts was in her 40s) when she was arrested for the same "infraction" as Parks.  Her case made it all the way to the Supreme Court (Browder v Gayle), but the Montgomery NAACP did not push her case forward since she became pregnant soon after being arrested and the group did not want her adolescent pregnancy to be the issue.  The video above is excellent, both with the interview but also revealing that Parks was the THIRD African-American person to be arrested for refusing to give up her seat.

Here is a NYTimes story on the case and above is an interview with Colvin above.  In 2010 Phillip Hoose won the National Book Award for youth literature for his book on her. 

NEA Story on This Blog

The NEA just put out a piece on our blogs and will have another one later in the summer on ways to use different devices in the classroom.  The picture above is from a week ago.  

The Tinker Tour For Your School

Today we had the pleasure to have Mary Beth Tinker come speak to our seniors about first amendment cases and her own Tinker v. Des Moines case.  She wanted teachers to know that this, now part time nurse, is willing to come to your school - anywhere in the US to spread her message of empowering students.  She spoke and answered questions for 90 minutes.  Among the interesting items we learned were that her three siblings also wore arm bands at the same time and two (the ones in elementary school) were not suspended, but that her brother and three others were not part of the sensation of the case.  Tinker's school newspaper printed a story about the about to happen protest which was then picked up by the Des Moines Register and  shortly after that the ACLU approached her and offered to help her sue the school district.  Twenty-five years later the same school board invited her back as a V.I.P.! 

If you want her to come to your school go to her website.  If she comes she will also bring some interesting primary documents such as hate mail the then 13 year old received.  If you live in the D.C. area you can see her armband at the Newseum.   If she can't come to your school above is a recent interview she did at the Newseum.