Monday, May 30, 2011

This Day in History


I just found this site on the History Channel that has a 30 second video of what happened on "this day" in history, both in the US and the world.  Adjoining the video is a written explanation. 

Thursday, May 26, 2011

Regents Prep Materials

Here is a very nice review page for the NY Regents exam including a ton of multiple choice exams.  Here are all the world history exams going back seven years with two each year.  They are fairly difficult multiple choice questions. 

Sunday, May 22, 2011

Chauvet Cave Drawings

If you follow this blog, you know we've done a number of entries on cave dwellings this year. As a high schooler, I was lucky enough to see the now closed Lascaux cave paintings. Yesterday I saw the new movie "Cave of Forgotten Dreams."  It is getting rave reviews, but I would say it is very repetitive and if you want to save your money, go here for a NPR interview w. the creator which gives interesting insights and here to see the main drawings of the Chauvet Cave which holds the oldest known cave dwellings.  The drawings are amazing. 

Tuesday, May 17, 2011

Flat Maps


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.

Tuesday, May 10, 2011

Glogster

One of my college track teammates is doing great tech things at St. Christopher's in Richmond, VA.  Here is a "newspaper" that their middle school kids put together.  What a great example of what can be done in the classroom with Glogster.It includes links, pictures, music and more.

Uses for Google Docs in the Classroom


The slide show above says it is for Google Apps, but everything on it can be done for FREE if you get a Google account.  After doing that, put "Google" in the search engine on this blog site and you will see links to be able to do pretty much everything above. It really has revolutionized what I do in the classroom. 

Monday, May 9, 2011

Anne Frank's House

This is a pretty cool site that shows the inside of the house that Anne Frank hide inside.  It has a narrated tour of each tour.  In the past I have also posted the only known video of Frank which happened to be taken from her looking out the window of the house. Here is the website of the Anne Frank museum.The first link came from a Twitter post from "shellterrell."

Syncing Your Desktop w. Google Docs


Some might call me crazy, but having read three books on the inner workings of Google, I am not at all worried about the company losing my files and have consequently not backed up one file I have made this year.  But for those of you who want to back up your files I just found out about Sync Docs from a blog I follow called The Pursuit of Technology.  What it will allow you to do is to upload an entire folder and from then on it will sync everything you do. The video that explains it is above. 

Mayan Civilization

My parents still use paper and so while I was over there for mother's day yesterday, I noticed their copy of the most recent Smithsonian magazine which has a cover story on El Mirador which was the capital of the Mayan civilization.  Not only is there a long story, but also a number of photos.  So, great you say, I am well past the Mayans.  Since I did not use a PowerPoint for this part of the year I am going to go back to the unit assignment and add these amazing photos and then will go and see work in the reading of the article.

Friday, May 6, 2011

North Korea


This is a short video about the Korean War which I found at FreeTech4Teachers.  I have put a number of these short videos on this site, but you can find them by either using my search engine or going to Youtube.com and looking for short videos on wars. 

Tuesday, May 3, 2011

Hiroshima 1946


This is a seventeen minute film of Hiroshima in 1946 made by the US Air Force. I found it on Open Culture

Monday, May 2, 2011

BinLaden


I like to constantly tie-in what we are doing to today's world.  To help me, I will probably use the Lede which I've mentioned before as it is "reporting on the spot" as it includes items such as the live tweeting from nearby during the attack on Bin Laden was ongoing as well as the raw footage just after it ended and much more of this event and others in the news. 

Medieval Period Website

I must say I am in a bit of a rush to finish for the year as our state exam is in three weeks so we are almost done (but this blog always continues through the entire summer).  Here though is a site that might help you if you do, as do I, world history from pre-history through the Renaissance.