Thursday, December 30, 2010

Anne Frank


Anne Frank House Online
Here is a site where you can take a virtual tour of Anne Frank's House. You can also see some short movies about what life was like for Anne Frank as well as find out about the people who were living with and near her. As with the item below, I found this from a Tweet, this time from "ShellTerrell" who is a teacher I follow from Germany. Above is the only know video of Anne Frank.

Wednesday, December 29, 2010

Neanderthals cooked and ate vegetables


Researchers in the US have found grains of cooked plant material in their teeth.

The study is the first to confirm that the Neanderthal diet was not confined to meat and was more sophisticated than previously thought.

Read on BBC.com


Monday, December 27, 2010

Seven Billion People


This is a great short video by the National Geographic Society that looks at the ramifications of the world having seven billion people by the end of 2011 - from how quickly it has been growing, to the growth of mega-cities to  how much a small minority consume to how many have clean drinking water and toilets

Saturday, December 25, 2010

European Maps Every 100 Years

Here are the maps of Europe from 1 CE through the present with a different one every one hundred years.  Thanks to Larry Ferlazzo for the heads up (and his great Tweets and webpages).

Ancient Greece


LOST TREASURES OF THE ANCIENT WORLD: GREECE PT.1
Uploaded by Top-Notch112. - Arts and animation videos.
Above is a 16 minute "Treasures of the Ancient World" on Greece.

Wednesday, December 22, 2010

Tuesday, December 21, 2010

James Burke's Connections on YouTube


For those of you who have never partaken of these amazing, swirling journeys through time and space, welcome to James Burke's Connections! Almost magically, Burke weaves a story about the history of science that traverses the globe and spans the millenia. To top it off, Burke sports some of the hippest threads of the late 1970s in the first season and also tends to jump into the frame in an unexpected and often wryly humorous fashion.

Although I think the episodes are difficult to place within a single, high school, World History lesson, they may serve as tools for historical thinking or as extracurricular activities.
This is the James Burke Connections YouTube Channel, and here's a brief intro to the series. Also, this is another portal to a full set of YouTubed episodes for all three seasons. They will surely be a treat if you've never seen them before!

Saturday, December 18, 2010

Youtube Blocked At Your School?

I have been using Splicd.com to quickly show only the portion of a youtube video I want in class. It is great for schools where youtube is blocked.  But two others that you can use are ViewPure and SafeShare.tv which also give you a new url which will get you around the block your school may have.  I found these last two at a new blog I follow called "The Pursuit of Education Technology Happiness."

Pythagoras, a math genius? Not by Babylonian standards

Friday, December 17, 2010

Chinese Dynasties

We all like the Chinese Dynasties song, but we need more than that to teach our students.  Here and here are nice webpages giving many of the highlights of the Chinese Dynasties in one easy to use resource.

Edublog Winners

Every year I go here to see the Edublog Winners.  If you haven't done it, you will find some amazing new resources both in blog form as well as Twitter to add to your daily RSS feeds.

Thursday, December 16, 2010

Data dump

The US Census Bureau just released a whole slew of new data.  This link will take you to the New York Times lesson plans site, where you can find a lesson and an interactive map showing the distribution of different racial and ethnic groups.  If you click on the link for the related interactive map, you'll see a map of New York City.  You can use your mouse to drag the map to any part of the US you want to look at.  You can also zoom in and out to pick a smaller or larger area on which to focus.  An excellent tool!

Tuesday, December 14, 2010

Great Summary of Online Resources


Super Book Of Web Tools For Educators -
If you are a high school teacher skip to page 36.  There is also a section on ESOL teaching as well as online teaching. It is very definitely worth your time to go through this and see what you can find that is new to you.  Even with my great use of technology, I found it helpful.

Modern History Online Resources

This is a phenomenal resource from Fordham University to help you teach modern World History.  For each era there are a ton of documents that you can use in your classrooms.

Monday, December 13, 2010

History Nerds of the World Unite!

I've been enjoying this blog for the past few weeks or so.  The women who write the blog are published authors of historical fiction (romance and novels, respectively).  I have a passion for historical fiction myself, and so was drawn to the site for obvious reasons.  I particularly enjoyed today's post on Anne Boleyn's shoes.  What caught my attention over the weekend was this post about a bequest left to the Library of Congress.  The LOC received hundreds of photos from the Civil War era and none of them were identified.  There's a link in the post to the album that the LOC posted on Flickr.  Using the photos would be an excellent way to put a face on people from the past - in the end, history is their story (we're still writing ours).  Some of the images are poignant, some are humorous, but they are all familiar.  For our students, perhaps giving history a face would allow them to see the drama of the past.

Sunday, December 5, 2010

Museum Box

Museum Box allows you to create a visual box of elements such as pictures, video, sound, files, links and text.  It would be a nice way for your students to create a box of memories of an era you are studying.

Saturday, December 4, 2010

Age vs. Income Over the Past 200 Years


If this isn't an incentive to your students to strive to do their best in school, I don't know what is.  This is a video showing life expectancy versus income over the last two hundred years. I suppose I should just put a link up to Open Culture since I have used it so much lately.

The Future of Computers


Okay, this is just pure fun - but for those I certainly hope it shows the future of our phones/computers (will there be a difference) and ipads.

Google Maps Mania & Google Earth


Here is a new blog I just found that shows how people around the world are using Google Maps.  I have used it with my students to show their own history and another person in my department uses it for "history trips."  You can add pictures and write about places (both today and historical) that you have your kids "go to."  So if you like using Google Maps, this would be a great new resource. Here is the blog for Google Earth which also would be helpful.  Above is a video explaining how you can use the new Google Earth which I found on the webpage.

Friday, December 3, 2010

History Travel Site


Historvius is a quick alternative to Google Earth for having students create a trip to different places and to find out different information.  You will get an up close look at the place (any era of time) as well as information and even pertinent links.  At the end it even creates a pdf file (say for turning into a teacher!).  Watch the easy to follow short video above to learn more. Thanks for this idea from a Tweet of "dandidie".

Thursday, December 2, 2010

Great Video of the Great Wall


While I'm on it, above is a super video of both the touristy part of the Great Wall as well as footage of a logn section that has never been repaired and yet is largely unvisited by people today.  It is well worth the four minutes of watching to show your students.

China Wall Project

We have a great techie librarian who likes doing webquests for us.  She likes to do it on wix.com.  Here is a great one she did on the Great Wall of China.  It has a word document with questions, links to a virtual tour of the wall, another one on Google Earth, as well as links, images, and even some short articles including that refutes the myth that the Wall of China can be seen from space.

The Titanic Above Water!


Yes, I like "Open Culture" a lot and the video above showing the Titanic in 1911 is one reason why.  It is the only known video of the ship BEFORE it sunk.

Google Translate Goes Audio


I have been using Google Translate to e-mail students' parents who do not speak English.  They usually write me back in their native language and then I tranlate it back to English.  Well now, if you want, you can listen to what was written.  I'm not sure the language teachers will like it, but it is still fairly cool.

Wednesday, December 1, 2010

Korean War in Pictures

Incredible Set of Korean War Pictures
I found this from a Tweet from "curosa." If you go here, you can find 60 pictures from the Boston Globe 60 years since the beginning of the war.

History of Europe in the 19th Century - Animated Maps

Animated Maps
I stumbled upon this great resource today. Not only are the maps animated, but they are also narrated. There are a series of maps beginning with the Congress of Vienna. There are also some animated ancient maps. The best part is - they are FREE!

This link (The Map As History) takes you to the actual website which has other helpful resources.

Monday, November 29, 2010

Split Screen on a Mac

So whenever I go to the mall (which is not often), I like to stop by the Apple store and play with the new gadgets.  While I prefer a Mac, I have never been able to easily (yes you can drag the windows and re-shape them) split the screen in half the way you can on a Windows based computer (go here if you don't know how).  Well (and I am getting no $ for saying this), but you can try new software (for a temp fix) or pay $7 to be able to easily snap (as you can on Windows 7) the screens in half on your Mac.  It comes from PC World, so I think you can trust it.

Saturday, November 27, 2010

Edit Google Docs From Your Phone


Last year one of my AP students actually did her entire assignment on a smart phone when her power was out.  I, of course, praised her, but now it is even easier to do from a phone, an ipad or if you have an Android, you can do write a document simply by speaking. 

Friday, November 26, 2010

Twitter


Several of my students have added themselves to my Twitter (kenhalla) feed.  When I tell them that I only put up content and technology links through it, they seem somewhat saddened that I don't put up anything personal.  That, is, of course, the same belief that many educators have of Twitter when I tell them how many resources I get on it.  If you want to get free information quickly, I'd suggest setting up a Twitter account, watch minute video above (taken from web20classroom on Twitter), go here for suggestions on how to get a group of people to follow (I started by plugging in "education," "social studies," "history," and other items like this.  You can also go to my Twitter list and look at the people I follow and follow the ones you like.

Use Gmail to Make Free Long Distance Calls

If you are like me then you are having to call many long distance numbers just to reach parents who, like their kids, are increasingly keeping their old phone numbers when they move.  My school district gives us a long code we can use for long distance numbers, but now I am going to use the new feature in Gmail as it allows people to call anyone's phone (be it a land line or cell phone) for free anywhere in the US.  I used it yesterday and it is as clear as a normal phone call.  Looking at the picture above, just click on the part on the left side of the Gmail where it says "call phone" and a key pad will appear on the left side of your screen.  Just type in the number, press return and the call will be made for you.  For those of you who have no land lines, this can also save on your minutes.

Wednesday, November 24, 2010

Simple "How To" Videos for Google Earth


Wow, these videos are tremendous, short and informative.  Learn how to make a short Google Earth tour, add video, recording options, add place marks, descriptions, embedding, etc.  Thanks for the heads up from a Tweet from "web20classroom." Above is a video on how to make a Google Earth tour.

Friday, November 19, 2010

Google Docs


I had a student tell me today that he was so happy I had helped him with Google Docs and that not only does he use it in every class, he can't imagine how he existed without it.  While this video is for Google Apps (the paid version), you can do almost everything in the video for free.  For example, I have the my kids' schedules on one of my calendars, my wife's on another and mine on the last one.  About the only thing you can't do for free is to e-mail or give access to every teacher in the school or district.  Beyond that you can do all of this. If you are into Google Docs or the power of cloud computing this 12 minute video is well worth it. I found this at FreeTech4Teachers.com , but I find most of my Google Docs info at the blog for it and in the upper right hand site of my account where it says "New Features."

Edublog Awards

So, in a sense this is a shameless plug that if you like this blog, you'll go here and nominate and vote for it for an Edublog Award.  It is quite an award to get and would be a nice reward for the hard work of my fellow bloggers.  If you want mine, I like FreeTech4Teachers as a blog and "ShellTerrell" and "web20classroom" on Twitter.

Tuesday, November 16, 2010

5000 Year of Middle East History in 90 Seconds

I found this on at Open Culture as well.

European History from 1000 to the Present in 5 Minutes


I found the above video at Open Culture.

Can you and your students fix the budget problem?

Felix Sockwell
This weekend's New York Times issued a challenge to its readers: you fix the budget problem.  Or at least, look at the various proposals and evaluate what you think would best fit in a new budget to reduce the deficit.  You can examine cuts to spending in the military, Medicare and Social Security.  You can contemplate raising the retirement age.  You can reduce earmarks (or keep them, if you like them).  You also have the opportunity to examine new tax proposals and see what they would do to the deficit.  There is an interactive version of the puzzle here, and a printable PDF version of it here.

Sunday, November 14, 2010

The annual Hajj is from November 14-18.  Here is a live feed of several places from Mecca that you can show your students.

How to Use Google Docs

I am presenting at the online Global Education Conference on Tuesday November 16th at 8 AM EST.  The conference has over 300 free sessions.  If you are interested, I will be doing a session on using Google Docs with your students and peers.  In a one hour session, you will be trained to create a create Google documents, Presentations (PowerPoints), drawings, folders and how to share them with your peers and how to easily grade your students work online.  To get to the session, click here and then put "Halla" in the search engine and when you get to my link, click on the Elluminate session.

Saturday, November 13, 2010

Video on Sanskrit

This video is just 4 minutes but gives a good overview of Sanskrit and the Aryans who brought it to India.

Sunday, November 7, 2010

Wiki Outline for AP World

Here is a very comprehensive outline for AP World.  It not only gives everything you need for the AP test, but it also has maps and pictures.

Saturday, November 6, 2010

Wednesday, November 3, 2010

Global Education Conference

I am presenting at the online Global Education Conference on Tuesday November 16th at 8 AM EST.  The conference has over 300 free sessions.  If you are interested, I will be doing a session on using Google Docs with your students and peers.  In a one hour session, you will be trained to create a create Google documents, Presentations (PowerPoints), drawings, folders and how to share them with your peers and how to easily grade your students work online.  In a few days I will give you the Elluminate link and you can attend the session for free.

Tuesday, November 2, 2010

Rubric Maker

When I first became a teacher one of the hardest things I found was how to grade essays and presentations.  Well if you go here, all you need to do is fill in a few parameters and gives you a rubric for literally anything you need (essays, debate, play, brochure, letter and lots more).

Sunday, October 31, 2010

Google Docs on Youtube


There is now a youtube channel for Google Docs. Most people know about Google Docs (ie word documents) and Presentation (ie PowerPoint), but few know about charts and my new favorite - drawings which is better than Microsoft Paint. Above is how to make a Google Docs Drawing which I use for my map quizzes and tests.

Sunday, October 24, 2010

The Story of India


This website has many useful links to various aspects of India's history. While it coincides with the PBS series "The Story of India," it does have stand-alone videos and matching lesson plans and activities. There are some amazing interactive photos as well. Useful for India pre- and post 1500.


Trench Warfare Animation


This is a great interactive website I stumbled upon today. It allows students to click all over the image to learn more about various aspects of trench warfare. It has animated graphics, narration and sound effects.

Stearns AP World History Notes

Here and here are some great notes to go along with Stearns' AP World book.

Alexander the Great on Snagfilms

Watch more free documentaries
Learning.snagfilms.com allows you to see full length world history movies as well as cut and paste portions of them.  You can also get parts of each film and embed them on your blog or PowerPoint.

Saturday, October 23, 2010

World History Videos from KhanAcademy


This comes from Bill Gates' education website which has a ton of math/science videos.  Having said this, here are a bunch of videos for world history on the French, Haitian Revolutions and Napoleonic Europe.  Above is one on the French Revolution which, like the others, is about 15 minutes.  If you are like me and never like to show films that long, then you can go to spliced and put in the start and end section you want and it will create a new video you can link to or embed.

Presentation From Google Docs


We do a ton of collaboration at my school so I can tell you that I have added very little to the PowerPoint above.  But I did upload it into the "Presentation" mode (Google's name for PowerPoint) and since I my district requires us to use Blackboard, I just link it from there to my Google Docs file.  This then allows me to change my presentation without uploading.  For example I just added my name in hieroglyphics to one of the last slides and did not have to re-upload it into Blackboard.  I can, as you will see on some of the slides, insert video clips from youtube which is very hard (although possible) to do w. PowerPoint.  The nicest way is that you can share editing rights with your peers.  So if you find something new, as I did this morning, all the teachers in your professional learning community could benefit. Here is the site to be able to do the slide show above as well as documents and other things.  Here is a site that will tell you how to do it By the way, that is my family in slide number 10 as we had the great fortune of going to Egypt last April.

Write Your Name In Hieroglyphics

Above is my name in hieroglyphics.  It might be a quick and fun exercise to let your students create one with their own name using this site.

Friday, October 22, 2010

Big History and Scale of the Universe


I've been reading David Christian's Maps of Time, and I'm increasingly led to believe that world history could take this type of "universal" approach in the coming years. A less expensive and shorter version of Big History is Christian's This Fleeting World. I highly recommend both books.

BUT, the free online resource that I found that reminded me of all this is the Scale of the Universe. By providing a scalable look at the size of the universe, from the smallest bits of matter to the universe in its entirety, it effectively encapsulates the grand scale of a history of everything from the Big Band to the future. And the dreamy, hypnotic music doesn't hurt either.

Wednesday, October 20, 2010

Changing the Education Paradigm


This is a very interesting video that essentially (in a very entertaining way) describes how our schools were created for an industrial age and asks if we are preparing them for our current world.  I laughed at part of it as I thought of someone who this week complained that I was expecting my students to work too much online - as if they won't need it after high school!

Tuesday, October 19, 2010

Paleolithic Humans Had Bread Along With Their Meat

Starch grains found on 30,000-year-old grinding stones suggest that prehistoric humans may have dined on an early form of flatbread, contrary to their popular image as primarily meat eaters.
Read the full article @ the NY Times.

Thursday, October 14, 2010

Addenda to the Mesopotamians post

This site has the lyrics for the song.

Catchy Song on Mesopotamians


This is a cute short film that will help the kids remember the different Mesopotamian groups.

Fertile Crescent Drought

Here is an interesting story from the NYTimes detailing the drought in the fertile crescent and the fact that much of the farmland has been drying up.

Sunday, October 10, 2010

More statistics

I posted earlier about using Gapminder in the classroom to give students a visual when it came to statistics.  (See that post here.)  Well, NPR's Planet Money team has posted a video from one of the site's creators that gives a lecture about some of the site's statistics along with the visual.  Yet one more way to teach stats - have someone else do it!  (kidding, just a bit).  You can find the video by clicking here.

Friday, October 8, 2010

3D Virtual Tour of the Sistine Chapel

So while the kids are watching their Friday night movie, I am having fun finding new things for the classroom.  Here is a virtual tour of the Sistine Chapel. Amazing!

Ghandi Talks!


This is a video of an interview with Ghandi.  Amazing stuff and again from the blog site Open Culture.

High Resolution Images from the Renaissance

Another item I found on the Open Culture blog (mentioned below) is this set of Renaissance era paintings which have been placed online using high resolution and you can get very close for your students.  They include paintings da Vinci, Botticelli and others.

Coronation of Czar Nicholas II


This is pretty stirring to be able to see this - the coronation of Czar Nicholas II.  I found it at FreeTech4Teachers.com, but it was originally placed online at another interesting site called Open Culture.http://www.freetech4teachers.com/

Pictures of Mali

Here are some great pictures of Mali today.

Thursday, October 7, 2010

Outline of the Stearns AP World Textbook
If you make your students outline a textbook, be careful since you have seen from this site that many of the outlines are now available online. As proof, here is the entire one for the Stearns AP World textbook.
Did you ever want to show only part of a video.  Well go to splicd and you just enter in the start and end times as well as the url and you will be all set. Here is a how to video. It only takes one second to make your new video and you even both a new url and code to embed it. I found this bit from this ed tech site.

Sunday, October 3, 2010

Khubilai Khan and the Yuan Dynasty

The New York Met has a huge online exhibit on Khubilai Khan with an amazing number of pictures (which increase in size as you can see from mine above) and descriptions on religion, art, daily life, textiles and making connections.

Saturday, October 2, 2010

Interview People via the Web

I have been looking for a free service for a while to interview people via the computer.  The most I have found is ones that allow a free month.  But thanks to "ShellTerrell" whom I follow on Twitter (from Germany), I found Wetoku.  All you do is give a link to the person you want to interview and get online at the same time and push "start."  Immediately you have a link and embedded code to put on a website.  The only disadvantage is that it is not as good quality as some of the other paid ones, but for the price it is excellent.

How to Use Google Docs

Yes, there are some videos (go to the browser to find them), but the item below is for those who prefer reading to know how to work Google Docs.

Google Docs - Tipsheet and Resource Guide

Friday, October 1, 2010

PBS Video on Conflict btw Spain & Central America

This is a new PBS video which you can watch in its entirety or in its parts. It looks at the conflict that occurred when Spaniards came to Central America and the impact it has had.

Monday, September 27, 2010

Wiki for Tech Tools

This is one of the nicest assortment of tech tools I have ever seen and since it is a wiki, it is only going to improve over time.  Some of the categories are presentation, collaboration, video, slideshows, audio, drawing, quiz, file storage and more. Each page of tools has a description and in many cases, a video explanation.  I found this from a tweet from "tbris101."

Sunday, September 26, 2010

Movie on Mesopotamia


This is a nine minute movie on Mesopotamia.  It may be old, but it is quite good.

Saturday, September 25, 2010


Splitting A Computer Screen
Last year my department piloted an online US history e-book.  This year it has grown to 18 schools and several different books.  Kids say that they don't like online books because it is hard to look at them and do their assignment.  The video above should help if you are promoting e-books in your school. 

Friday, September 24, 2010

Another e-Book
This is probably the easiest book to navigate of the e-books available.  It, though, is only ancient world history.
e-World History Book
Well here is an entire e-book of World History.  It has all the categories and then you just click on the one you want.  The only problem (if there is any) is that it is set up by eras rather (chronologically) rather than by the topics you normally teach.
Online Movie Maker
Most Microsoft based computers have Movie Maker, but go here and you will see an online movie maker that allows photos, movies and then can be downloaded to a variety of other places such as youtube if you prefer.

Wednesday, September 22, 2010

Watch & Simultaneously Chat About Videos w. Friends Online
If you have students creating a video online or using clips from multiple sources, this might be helpful for you. Here is a site to explain how it works, but basically if you put the word "social" right before ".com" for any video in youtube.com, you can then e-mail that link to other people and a new screen will appear for all of you. You will be the moderator (ie only you can start and stop the video) and you can write comments on the side (much as you can in Google Docs) that your fellow video viewers can see as well. So students could "talk" online and decide what captions to put in the video as well as which clips to use. Pretty cool! Above you can see the Common Craft video I cited below and see my comments on the side between two different people.


How Great is Wikipedia?!
I am going on a limb here, but I actually do like Wikipedia and go to it all the time when I have questions. I know this bothers English teachers in my building, but they have never seen the Common Craft video above which essentially says that all entries must have be verified and unbiased (thanks to freetech4teachers.com for mentioning a similar video).

Tuesday, September 21, 2010

Visual Statistics

This site is quite possibly the coolest one I have ever seen. (Thanks to FreeTech4Teachers for the link) Gapminder has tons of statistics that you can show your students in a visual format.  Rather than dry charts and graphs, your students can see animated charts that show whatever statistic (that they have available) and the change over time.  For instance, if you're interested in which country in the world has the most number of internet users per 100 people (it's not the US), you can choose this graph.  They have several graphs already made, with such topics as income, education, access to healthcare, etc.  There is a special section for teachers that has lessons for classroom use as well. You can change the information displayed on the X and Y axis for a comparison of just about anything.  This is a fantastic tool, and I can't wait to use it in my classroom!

Saturday, September 18, 2010

Facebook and Twitter
Right now I am struggling to find a way (pls. leave a post if you know how) to make Facebook acceptable to use in the classroom. There is Edmodo (read earlier post) that looks exactly like Facebook, but then the kids have to look at it and they are ALWAYS on Facebook. I have figured out that I can create a new organization in Facebook and then the kids can see my posts, but then I could also see their sites, which I don't want to be able to do. In the meantime I have found this post which allows one to post items from Twitter directly onto someone's wall. So the kids could sign up for your school Twitter feed and see it as a "status update" on their site. The problem would be that all of your kids couldn't ask everyone in the class questions (as they could in a Facebook organization) and therefore while it would be a great way to reach the kids, it wouldn't let them work together to answer their own questions. Thoughts on solving my dilemma would be much appreciated as a post or e-mail (kenhalla@gmail.com)

Wednesday, September 15, 2010

Can't get to the museum? Bring the museum to your kids!


Many museums these days have excellent online presences.  I particularly like the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York, which has a great section on their site that's a timeline of art history.  You can search by time period, region of the world, or even by thematic essay topic.  Perhaps you're interested in teaching about Chinese Buddhist sculpture, or Byzantium.  Sending your students to this site can give them a window into these cultures and many more.

Monday, September 13, 2010


More Pictures from Lascaux
Yes it just so happens I will be discussing cave paintings in a couple of days (and you can see a virtual tour in this post), but above are unpublished pictures from Lascaux including the pictures of the couple who first opened the cave.

Saturday, September 11, 2010



New Changes to Google Docs
My new students just turned in their first papers via Google Docs. It was fun to watch some of them in class as they found out how they can collaborate and have a free suite of docs, excel, PowerPoint, picture editor and survey monkey. If you follow this site, just go to the search engine and type in "Google Docs" for some of my other posts or for now play the video above to see the new improvements.

Prezi Adds Live Collaboration to its Presentations
Prezi lets you build a multidimensional PowerPoint all on one slide so that you merely need to move the screen up, down, left, right, etc. Here is an example of the seven wonders of the ancient world. Here is a great way to have students present geography with pictures, maps, etc. The presentation has pictures, video, graphics, links and even a worksheet all on one slide. Above is a video describing how you can create a Prezi PowerPoint with other people on other computers anywhere in the world at the same time - much as you can do with Google Docs.

Thursday, September 9, 2010

Interactive World Religions Map
This map allows you to look at all religions from 5000 BCE to the present and then click on a location to find more details.

Tuesday, September 7, 2010

Teaching about Buddhism?

This site from National Geographic is interactive, and shows some wonderful pictures of the giant Buddhas that are found near caves Dunhuang, China.  Dunhuang was near the ancient Silk Roads.  In the early 20th century, archaeologists made an incredible discovery in these caves - according to the British Library, thousands of Buddhist artifacts have been found here.  The caves vary in size, and the National Geographic site allows you to virtually travel from one end of the caves to the other, taking a peek into some of the grottoes.  You can see gigantic Buddha statues, as well as murals and other paintings.  For more about the caves, you can also see the article on the National Geographic site by clicking here.

The International Dunhuang Project is working toward making many of these artifacts available free online.

Monday, September 6, 2010


Tut the Product of Brother/Sister Pairing
It almost is too hard to believe, but the National Geographic details here how they used DNA to show who Tut's mother and father were and the relationship between them. Here is a interactive family tree. It will make for some interesting discussions when you get to ancient Egypt. The video is three minutes and explains how Tut's death was determined. I found this from a tweet from "rmbyrne"
E-Pals From Different Countries
This is something I am going to have my World History I students do this year. This site will allow you to connect to students in most countries of the world and collaborate using technology.

Saturday, September 4, 2010

Cobo Cards
I have blogged about Quizlet and Study Stack (which gives you a lot of categories for social studies) which are online flash cards. The advantage of Cobo Cards is that you can add pictures to your flash cards.

Friday, September 3, 2010

Interactive World Map
Can you tell I am getting back in the swing of school (our students start on Tuesday)?! This link has every country in the world and shows their rank in terms of populations, infant mortality, GDP, industry, services and more. By the way I discovered it from a tweet by "kyteacher".

You Were Born a Second Ago
If the history of the world were one year long, man was born one second ago. This is an interesting video that would be one that precedes the ones below.

History of the World in Seven Minutes

Thursday, September 2, 2010

New Blogger! Free Historical Thinking Poster!



Hello all! My name is Christopher Lee, and I am one of the new contributing bloggers here at World History Teachers Blog.

I figured I'd start my time here with something FREE!

"Free? Did someone say free?" So goes the teacher's mantra year in and year out. And this freebie poster is all about history and from the very reputable National History Education Clearinghouse. Just follow the link, and fill out the form to get this very useful classroom tool.

Using A GPS Device to Teach Longitude and Latitude
Above is a video explaining how you can teach your students longitude and latitude without paper and pencil in a real world setting. I found it here.
Google Spreadsheets
Click here to see a video I found on this blog that shows you several useful ways to use Google Docs (surveying kids on several field trips, seeing how well students learned information on a unit and more).

Tuesday, August 31, 2010

Best Sites For Teaching
Tomorrow morning I am doing three in-services for our county's social studies teachers. One of the in-services will be "The Best of the Teacher Blogs." If you go here, you will see what I will be going over. Here are the individual topics on the attachment:
E-mail to Text
Free Computer Access
Google Docs
Organizing Using Technology
Social Networking
Student Mastery
Teacher Mastery
Making Student/Teacher Blogs
Just yesterday one of the teachers in my department was asking me about how he could make student blogs for his kids' writing assignments. He believes that making them "live" will motivate them more. I use blogspot.com (hence the name), but there are wordpress.com is also excellent. A cool new find (discovered at freetech4teachers.com) is BlogBooker which allows you (or your students to covert a blog into a pdf document. You can also use Pdftoword.com to change a pdf into a word document. Finally the problem with blogs is that you do not want to have to go a different url for all of your students. I use an "aggregator" which allows me to have all of the sites in one place. The best one for teaching is Bloglines.com which allows you to see when each student has updates their blogs. For more on HOW to do this go here (to a short sheet I created and will highlight later today) and look at social networking.