Monday, January 31, 2011

Wikipedia


This is a nice history of Wikipedia by its founder, Jimmy Wales. 

Prezi


Saturday, January 29, 2011

Egypt Explained


Chances are you won't want to get into this kind of depth, but if your students ask this is an informative interview which goes into the reasons behind the riots and who are the groups in Egypt and who holds the power (other than Mubarak)

Friday, January 28, 2011

Geography Maps

This is a pretty cool site as it allows one to create your own maps.  In other words, you can select a region of the world and then decide what you want the kids to label. Once you have made your decision, a map made exactly to your specifications is created as a word document.  Thanks to a tip from Edugalaxy.

Wednesday, January 26, 2011

Holocaust Pictures

This site has 130,000 images of the Holocaust.  Also, you can go to its Youtube.com site as well.  

Ancient Greece Website

This site pretty much has it all from myths (and a "family tree" of the gods, to architecture, arts, Olympics, wars, people, culture and geography.  Pretty much everything for your Greece unit. Of course another place to go is the Wikipedia entry or for a quick visual go to the Qwiki movie or finally go to Fotopedia for lots of images of the period. 

Up to Date World Videos


If you ever want to bring your world history students up to date, one of the ways to do so is the Lede from the NYTimes.  They get people to e-mail them video from hot spots around the world.  Above is one from the 25th of January of protests in Egypt.  The end of the video, for me, is interesting as once the protesters move on, it is back to the normal beeping and erratic driving which I witnessed when I was in Egypt last spring. 

Tuesday, January 25, 2011

Greek Myth


Ok, so I am on a Qwiki kick this week.  But after you look at it, you will see it has links for multiple resources in addition to it, including a great Wikipedia link.   

Monday, January 24, 2011

Qwiki Embed


So Qwiki now allows you to embed, email or tweet your "findings" for each search.  Above is the parthenon.  

Saturday, January 22, 2011

Qwiki

Perhaps I am jumping a bit ahead, but Qwiki is about to go to the alpha phase, meaning if you go to their site, you can sign up to work them on the early stages.  Quiki is getting a lot of press and basically will be a search engine that will make a quick movie on whatever you want to know about.  So here is a quick movie on the Great Wall, Machu Picchu and the Taj Mahal.  It is pretty cool - even if it is done in metallic "computer speak." 

Saturday, January 15, 2011

Jeopardy, Wheel of Fortune and other Review Games

I got this first tip from one of my readers, Marchelle Conway.  This is a site that lets you enter in your questions and answers for jeopardy and it instantly creates the game for you.  You then store it on their site and can see what others have developed. Here are other games you can use like Who Wants to Be A Millionaire, Wheel of Fortune and $25,000 Pyramid.

Search Results According to Reading Level

Google now has a function that allows you to view our search results according to their reading level. For more info, click here.

French Revolution Cartoon

I stumbled upon this video while grabbing the latest This Day in History. I wish I had found it before I taught the French Rev! Once you have viewed the video, if you click on "Watch similar videos" to the right of the video, there is also a cute one on Napoleon.




History.com is actually populated with an abundance of short, well done videos. You can access them from the main page by clicking on the Videos link at the top of the page.

Sunday, January 9, 2011

Greek Antiquity as Filmed in 1940


The film above was filmed in 1940 and while not in color shows many of Greece's ancient wonders.  I found it at Open Culture.

Seven Wonders of Ancient Greece


Above is the first of five parts of the "Seven Wonders of Ancient Greece," which I am starting in a week (yes I am behind some of you, but we don't begin our school year until September.

Friday, January 7, 2011

CIA Factbook

One of the best country overviews has long been the CIA factbook which has a map, facts, pictures, etc. for every country in the world.  I hadn't checked it out in a while and can tell you that it is vastly improved and very easy to manipulate.

Wednesday, January 5, 2011

Prezi


Tuesday, January 4, 2011

Why Study History?

I have a sign in my classroom which asks why students should study history and it is one of the first exercises I ask my students to ponder.  But I have never been able to vocalize it as nicely as AP World guru Peter Stearns does here.  Included in his reasons are because it provides identity, allows us to analyze evidence, is good citizenship, helps us understand morality and more.

Monday, January 3, 2011

Common Craft Assignment


Most of you have seen the Common Craft how to videos online by now that explain how various items work on the Internet.  Above is a great example from Mr. Kulowiec whose class had to create a "Common Craft" how to video on Islam.  You can see other example at his class link.

Bit Torrent


One of the fastest growing companies on the Internet is BitTorrent.  It allows you and others to download huge files very quickly.  This would allow your students, for example, to work on a video together that one of them uploaded onto say Youtube.com.  The video above explains it.  The downside is that you (or your students) will have to download a small file and not all schools allow this without permission.

What Did DaVinci Look Like?


It is interesting that we do not know for sure what Leonardo DaVinci looked like. But watch the video above and it will give you some pretty convincing idea that we do have proof of what he looked like.  I like it not so much because we care what he looked like, but rather because it shows are students how historians have to make educated guesses. I found it at OpenCulture.

Sunday, January 2, 2011

Secrets of Stonehenge

Watch the full episode. See more NOVA.

Here is a newish (Nov) video of Stonehenge from PBS.  The best part is that you can move quickly to the parts you want.