Tuesday, March 30, 2010

Ancillaries from Glencoe
Textbook companies still are sticking to their model of using pdfs (and mostly old ones) for sale to schools and giving their ancillaries away free. I wonder with more and more students going online and away from textbooks and the very high prices we pay for those books, how long this model will be viable. At any rate on this site you can get chapter summaries. quizzes and more.

Thursday, March 25, 2010

World Civilization E-Book
This is a free book, complete with web links. It is a wonderful book that has the complete World Civilization text.

Friday, March 19, 2010

Smithsonian's Human Origins

This is quite a webpage of early human information and includes a great deal of pictures and explanations. It includes evidence, research, characterists, exhibits and more.

Friday, March 12, 2010

Flat Maps for the Classroom
I have to say "flat maps," since Google Maps are so great. But if you want to see traditional maps from every country in the world, you can go to Atlapedia. I found this site on Edgalaxy.
Twitter Contact List for Educators
Now that I have become a Twitter Disciple, I have been asked a lot, whom I follow. My simple answer is to look at my "kenhalla" feeds, but here is a link that I got today from MrTweet.com which has given me a long list of ed tech people to choose from. It feeds from my list and multiples it many times. It allows you to looks the Twitter Profile and then at several recent tweets to see if you like them. If you are new to Twitter, be assured that I like to follow people who can give me great links that will help me in the classsroom as opposed to knowing what people are doing.

Tuesday, March 9, 2010

Slave Trade Website
This site will allow you to expand beyond a few lines and a few pictures of the brutal slave trade. For example, here is a typical page that shows where the slaves were from, where they went, how many started (413) and how many made it there (374). There are also a lot of write-ups and ways to use the material to teach in class.

Wednesday, March 3, 2010

Paper Rater
Some of the teachers in my department are using Turnit.com this year which is a good way to catch students who have copied from other sources. However it works well AFTER the paper has been turned in. This site, however, allows students to turn in their papers BEFORE the teacher sees it. Number one, it tells the kids who has plagiarized. This is imporant for the kids who like to change just a few words rather than putting the information in their own words. But the site also tells a student about spelling and grammar mistakes (and yes so does Word and Google Docs) as well as telling them the level of their vocabulary and even if they should use different word choices. So I tried the site with some of my student's work and one nice thing it quickly showed was that the student had used the word "elite" three times in three sentences. When the student clicked on the word, it gave suggestions for new words. Finally the analysis ended up giving the level of vocabulary (average, above average, etc.). Thanks to FreeTech4Teachers for the tip.

Monday, March 1, 2010

Spark Notes
I wrote about Spark Notes about a year ago, but it has changed since then. It is a decent way for your students to quickly review before a test. It has a quick overview of every topic and review questions (some better than others).
Regents' Tests
If you ever want to supplement your own tests with good questions or give your students practice, here are the old New York Regents tests which are their cumulative exams given in June.