Splicd

I'll take the cue from George in the post below.  If you want to show a portion of a Youtube video, all you need to do is to go to Splicd and enter in the url as well as the starting and ending point and you can omit the rest of the video.  For example if George wanted to start the video below at 10 seconds and end it at 5:01, here is what it would look like. 

Socrates with Alain de Botton

Saw this on Open Culture and watched about 15 minutes. Kids might get a little bored after 5 or 6 minutes but I found it to be an excellent primer on Socrates and might even show 5 or 6 minutes of it next year when we do Greece. de Botton does a good job of explaining Socrates ideas in an unpretentious way.

ThinkBinder

Saw this on Not Another History Teacher and thought it looked pretty cool. It allows students to log into the site at a specific time designated by you and ask each other questions about an upcoming test. It's an online study group. Here is the site.

A Nice Definition of Social Studies (Science)

Above is a nice definition of social science (studies) I found at  Soomopublishing). 

Fall of Rome DBQ on a Prezi

Fall of Rome DBQ on Prezi

Believe it or not, I still do sometimes do traditional assignments as, for example, students do need to know how to write (albeit on Google Apps).  So in fishing around for an essay topic I found the one above on the decline of Rome which Charlie Perryman did for his students.  Since I obviously didn't copy this DBQ for my students, I just made a video telling them how to manipulate the Prezi and be able to see it and your Google Document on which one could write the answers to the DBQ questions. 

Utzi was Lactose Intolerant and Had Brown Eyes

"...researchers have sequenced the complete genome of the iceman, nicknamed Ötzi, and discovered even more intriguing details. They report in the journal Nature Communicationsthat he had brown eyes and brown hair, was lactose intolerant and had Type O blood."

Read more at the NY Times.

16 Century Amsterdam in 3D Animation

Open Culture put this on on their site and it's very interesting if you are studying the 16h century, which most of us are not right now. Nonetheless, it's worth checking out. The animation is amazing and the history is good. AP Euro teachers may especially like this.

History of Religion via Maps

One of my teacher-students, Jessica May, just pointed out the site mentioned below showing via maps how the history of religion has grown.  Believe it or not, it was one of my first posts back in 2008.  It details how the geography of religion evolved over the centuries, and where has it sparked wars. The map gives us a brief history of the world's most well-known religions: Christianity, Islam, Hinduism, Buddhism, and Judaism. Selected periods of inter-religious bloodshed are also highlighted. Want to see 5,000 years of religion in 90 seconds? Ready, Set, Go! Click here. There is also another map that has "The March of Democracy."

The Shiite-Sunni split

Great clip from the Today show a few years ago about the Sunni- Shiite split. Reporter Richard Engle outlines the basic differences in 3 minutes. I'm teaching Islam now and plan to use it. There is also an audio slideshow about the split at NPR here. My thanks to Frances coffee for sending me the link.

App Sites for Android and iPhone

One of the questions I often get is where do I get my information.  Well I have a Twitter feed, iGoogle page and Google+.  One of my iGoogle feeds is the "Offical Google Blog" which today announced one place to get all your Google products called Google Play.  For example a few weeks ago I uploaded all 4023 of my songs from my iPod (it took two days on an old computer) and now I can get them on my phone, any computer or tablet on Google music (as opposed to using the iCloud which limits you to being used on Apple products).  But I digress!  If you go to Google's site for Android apps, you can find all of their apps and narrow it down by using the search engine.  Here is the site for Apple's iPhone apps. 

Autosummarizing

One of my teacher-students, Jerry Walsh, just told me about "autosummarizing" which literally summarizes a long passage.  This might work well if you have your students go to a Wikipedia page that has much more information than you want.  I, of course, do not want something downloaded on my computer like Microsoft Word, so I found Tools4Noobs which does the same thing for free. For example here is a Wikipedia passage on Campaign Finance and here is the Tools4Noobs summary. Obviously you would have to look at it yourself first to see if it kept your most important parts, but it's worth a try. 

More Great Summary World History Videos By John Green

John Green of Crashcourse is on an amazing tear through history (I have put up his other two videos).  Above is one on Mesopotamia, Ancient Egypt and Buddha and Asoka. 

World War I And Blackadder

Your kids will love this excerpt about World War I from "Blackadder Goes Forth" featuring Rowan Atkinson, Hugh Laurie and Tony Robinson. My thanks to Christine Ingeman for sending me this link.

Google Maps for Educators

Really cool clip showing how to use google maps. Shows you how to do a number of cool things like measuring the distance of a lake or a desert.

The Imperial War Museum

The Imperial War Museum in London has an absolutely amazing site with resources that cover both World Wars and the Cold war. And the really cool thing is the way it is organized--historical notes which provide an overview of key events, personal stories from key events, teaching activities for formal lessons and based on primary sources, and source packs with primary sources relating to one historical event or period. If you are teaching this period, you should take a look it. My thanks to my colleague Jeff Feinstein for sending me this excellent site.