Sunday, February 28, 2010

Tectonic Plates and the Earthquake in Chile
Certainly if you have current events' discussions in your class, these links will help. But if you are trying to relate the earthquake in Chile to your content, here is a video and article with a discussion of tectonic plates. For very current updates go here.

Friday, February 26, 2010

Animated Atlas History of Africa
This has a changing map over time from 1879 to 2002 that shows territory names, changing boundaries, imperial rulers, violent conflicts, economic and demographic trends.
Textbook Links
If you look to the side of this post you can see some textbook links I found in the past two years, but here are more. Even if you don't have the books, they are worth a visit for short topical videos, quizzes, primary source documents and more. I found them all here.

Social Studies

Glencoe

Holt Reinhart Winston Online Learning

Houghton Mifflin

Macmillian McGraw Hill

Harcourt

Holt Reinhart Winston

Houghton Mifflin We the People

Scott Foresman

Monday, February 22, 2010

Cave Drawings Have Similarities in Far Flung Pages
This is an article detailing how there are many similarities (beyond just straight lines and circles) from prehistoric cave drawings from different continents (see picture above). The article argues that it points to the drawings as a form of communication. This is from another tweet, this time from "historytweeter".


Make Your Own Geography Games
This is a pretty creative geography game. It does take a little work, but you can save it for later and add or subtract to it. I found it from a Tweet (I can't say enough about great tweeting is as a teaching resource) from FreeTech4Teachers

Sunday, February 21, 2010




This Traveler IQ challenge compares your geographical knowledge against the Web's First Travel Journals' other 5,173,186 travelers who have taken this challenge as of Monday, February 22, 2010 at 02:18AM GMT. (TravelPod is part of the TripAdvisor Media Network) 
Geography Games
How well do you know your world (see above), but go to here and you will see flags of the world, US geography, continent knowledge and more. Again, thanks to Bally Blog (see below). 
King Tut Revealed
This video from CNN a few days ago says that scans of King Tut's remains reveal that his parents were related, he had a fracture in one of his feet and that he suffered from malaria.  Play the video above to read more.  Thanks for the tip from a very helpful website The Bally Blog
Check out this SlideShare Presentation:
Narrated Slide Shows for European/World History
I found this post at Mr. Beach's SlideShare website. It contains, by section, a complete narrated AP European History class. However, since it is broken up so nicely, if you teach AP or regular world history, it will also be very helpful. It would be ideal if you have a student who has missed a great deal of class.

Tuesday, February 16, 2010

Seafarers Go Back 130,000 Years
Certainly this won't be on any end of the year student test - yet, but read this article about artifacts found on the island of Crete. They appear to be 130,000 years old and point to the oldest known seafarers ever. Above is a picture of some of the artifacts.

Monday, February 15, 2010


Why You Should Use Google Apps - Google Does!
Yes, everyone working at Google "drinks the cool aid" and it's free. You can use it alone or for your classes or even your school. It includes items such as Gmail, Google Docs, Calendar and more. Look at the clip above for more reasons.
Geography Quiz
This is a fun site as your students can simply drag the names of the countries to the map and it will instantly tell him/her if they are correct. 

Friday, February 12, 2010

WWII Before and After Images
Through Google Earth's historical images, you can look at maps before and after different events. For example. here is a piece looking at towns that were bombed during WWII and what they look like today.  Above is Stuttgart Germany after bombing and today. 

Find more videos like this on My History Network
History of the World
I found this very nicely done history of the world here. It takes seven minutes to show. 

Tuesday, February 9, 2010


Ernest Shackleton's Whiskey
Ernest Shakleton was a famous explorer of the Heroic Age of Antarctic Exploration who was on the Endurance and an explorer of the South Pole. Above is a video from the Lede (NYTimes) showing how explorers just found some of his whiskey 101 years after he left it in the South Pole. If not appropriate for your class, it is certainly very interesting as a short video.

I can't say enough for Twitter for a way to find teacher resources quickly. It will only take you a week or so to find (there is a search engine) resources and then you will be amazed how helpful it is.

Sunday, February 7, 2010

Fleur-de-Lis
Win or lose the Saints' log has some historical legacy that might be a nice way to start the week with your students as you can see in this article.

Tuesday, February 2, 2010

Artifacts in World History
This is from the BBC (and I found it at FreeTech4Teachers). You can see historical artifacts and a short or long piece on each. It could be a great addition to any PowerPoint you have or a way for students to explore artifacts.
Da Vinci's Resume
This (and above) is an actual resume that Leonardo da Vinci wrote at age 30 trying to get a new gig! It is a very interesting historical piece, but also gives good advice in that it was tailored to the job he wanted to win rather than just what he had done.

Monday, February 1, 2010

Lost Roman Code Found
To quote from the source: "Part of an ancient Roman law code previously thought to have been lost forever has been discovered by researchers at UCL's Department of History. Simon Corcoran and Benet Salway made the breakthrough after piecing together 17 fragments of previously incomprehensible parchment. The fragments were being studied at UCL as part of the Arts & Humanities Research Council-funded "Projet Volterra" – a ten year study of Roman law in its full social, legal and political context."