Countdown Clocks

Richard Byrne and I were teaching our third of three technology for the Social Studies classroom today when a teacher asked me how I keep my students on task in a flipped room.  One trick I mentioned is countdown timers projected on the front of the classroom.  Believe it not the kids sense the time restraints.  Like anything it isn't good to do it every day, but can be one trick in your hate. Here are several types and the one above is what Richard suggested.

• countdown clock
• sand dial
• timer
• egg timer

Teachable Moments: The New Deal

The Franklin D. Roosevelt Presidential Library and Museum has a You Tube Channel with short clips like the one above "that provide a quick overview of important topics and events from the Roosevelt Era."

Thanks to my collegue, Jeff Feinstein, for sending me the link.

Jamestown's New Mystery Box

As we know the colonists in Jamestown came after the Protestant Reformation, but just recently four new graves were found from the "starving time" and one included what it seems is a box put in Catholic burials.  It might be interesting for your students that Jamestown is still a live dig even though it has long been a recreated (since the real Jamestown is mostly underwater) site.  You can read the WashPost article on the dig here. 

National Archives: Flickr Account

Wow! You should see the photos and resources at the National Archives Flickr account. They already have over 9,000 followers.

Thanks to Ryan O'Donnell for tweeting the link.

The Zimmermann Telegram: Awesome Clip

Here's a terrific clip from BBC about the Zimmermann telegram.

Thanks to my collegue, Jeff Feinstein, for sending me the link.

British Pathé: 85000 Newsreels on You Tube

The cross-media company British Pathé, released 85,000 historic films onto its You Tube channel, in high resolution.

It's an absolute gold mine for both US and World history.

The two-minute clip above is about the first man in space, Yuri Gagarin. And here is the D-Day landing.

My thanks my collegue, Jeff Feinstein, for sending me the link to British Pathé.

How to Draw Using Google Drive

I have been having my students draw on a Google Drive document for the past few years.  Above is the video that I give my students to learn how. 

TodaysMeet as Alternative for Twitter

Richard Byrne and I started teaching a class together online tonight.  One of the things we spoke about what using Twitter in your classroom.  Several of the middle school teachers were understandably hesitant.  So I suggested something we also use at Hayfield called TodaysMeet.  The beauty about this site is that there is no login or password required for the kids.  You can also set the time paramaters and share the link only with your students.  It is can be used to have a discussion.  You could use it if you want the students to watch something at home and have a live chat. Alternatively you could use it so students could carry on a conversation during a portion of a movie giving them some active participation skills.  Believe me they are used to using two devices at once and will find this easy to do.

Above is a great tutorial about it. 

Google Chrome Split Screen Extension

I am slowly gearing up for having Chromebooks in my classroom this fall and will also be testing (since I haven't felt it was good enough until now) Google Classroom.  In that endeavor I found Alice Keeler's Chrome extension (her blog is also very helpful) to let you split your window so you can have your gradebook on one side and the student work on the other.  Of course if you don't want her extension, just watch my video video below on how to do it by opening up two windows.  

Primary Documents and Your Class

It seems that many of our students think that history is what is in our textbooks, when they need to be shown that they are the careful work of many historians and often have a distinct point of view.  So adding primary documents to your history class can provide some relevance and show how hard it is to write our past history.

For example, right now I am reading An Empire on the Edge: How Britain Came to Fight America .  It is different than most revolutionary stories as it tells it from the British perspective and argues that the war was essentially a long term prospect that could have been avoided, but once it started was already a lost cause for our colonial mother.

At any rate it mentions that Boston had five newspapers, when a city its size normally had one.  One of them was the Massachusetts Spy.  You can see an original copy here and blow it up large enough for you and your students to read.

Along those lines here is a WashPost article arguing that Southern writers have succeeded in getting textbooks to state that the Civil War was over states' rights and not primarily slavery.  Considering how our textbooks can sway people one way or the other this would be a great discussion to have in class. 

Who was U.S. Sam?

Today the NYTimes has a short article on Samuel Wilson was many suspect was U.S. Sam because of the U.S. he stamped on meat that was sent to troops in the War of 1812.  Here is an article on it from the History Channel.  He was drawn by Thomas Nast as well as James Montgomery.

Shift Happens

When I do in-services I used to start with Shift Happens, but then it wasn't updated for a while.  Well I just found s 2014 version of it which is still quite good, even if it is a bit old given how fast technology moves in a year.  If you haven't seen the series before, you will be somewhat amazed at the statistics for learning in the 21st century.