Saturday, December 31, 2011

So You Want To Use An E-book...


I am heading up a group that is doing our county's in-services at the end of January.  Since we are in the first year of using county wide e-books (fortunately we have been doing it for several at my school), I put together a Screencastomatic to show teachers (and you if you are interested in seeing what can be done) the amazing number of "extras" that can be done with the Patterns of Interaction e-book.  Here is the activity (meant to take at least a 90 minute block of class) that utilizes the e-book as well as several Internet resources I found.  Both the video and the lesson are for the Byzantine Empire. 

Friday, December 30, 2011

Carl Sagan Introduces the Library at Alexandria



Carl Sagan mentions some of the great contributors to the Library like Euclid and Hypatia in this interesting four minute clip. There is also a nice written history of the Library at this site.

Thursday, December 29, 2011

Mapping History

My colleague, Jeff Feinstein sent me this mapping site developed by the University of Oregon. It provides “animated representations of fundamental historical problems” or events. I particularly like the modules on Greece and Rome and even developed a couple of web quests based on them. One of the Greek modules focuses on Greek colonization and the other focuses on the origins and movement of Greek intellectuals. The Roman module focuses on the process of Romanization in Italy by mapping the growth in citizen numbers.