Thursday, July 30, 2015

Countdown Timers

Richard Byrne and I were teaching our third of three technology for the Social Studies classroom today when a teacher asked me how I keep my students on task in a flipped room.  One trick I mentioned is countdown timers projected on the front of the classroom.  Believe it not the kids sense the time restraints.  Like anything it isn't good to do it every day, but can be one trick in your hate. Here are several types and the one above is what Richard suggested.

Wednesday, July 29, 2015

WWII: Clips from FDR Library

The Franklin D. Roosevelt Presidential Library and Museum has a series of very short clips, like the one above on the Holocaust, "that provide a quick overview of important topics and events from the Roosevelt Era."

Thanks to Jeff Feinstein for sending me the link.

Tuesday, July 28, 2015

The Zimmermann Telegram: Awesome Clip

Here's a terrific clip from BBC about the Zimmermann telegram. Thanks to my collegue, Jeff Feinstein, for sending me the link.

Sunday, July 26, 2015

Remind to Text Students


Students live on their smartphones.  Use Remind to reach them.  The video above explains all of it in four minutes. 

Remind to Text Students


Students live on their smartphones.  Use Remind to reach them.  The video above explains all of it in four minutes. 

Wednesday, July 22, 2015

British Pathé: 85,000 Newsreels on You Tube

The cross-media company British Pathé, released 85,000 historic films onto its You Tube channel, in high resolution.

It's an absolute gold mine for both US and World history.

The two-minute clip above is about the first man in space, Yuri Gagarin. And here is the D-Day landing.

My thanks to my collegue, Jeff Feinstein, for sending me the link to British Pathé.

Tuesday, July 21, 2015

Drawing a Map with Google Drive


I have been having my students draw on a Google Drive document for the past few years.  Above is the video that I give my students to learn how. 

Monday, July 20, 2015

Expansion & Demise of Ottoman Empire: Map

Rise and Fall of the Ottoman Empire 1300-1923 

Check out this map showing the expansion and demise of the Ottoman Empire.

Just click on it and it will take you to the interactive map.

 I saw it along with other great Mid-East maps on Vox.

Sunday, July 19, 2015

Cracking the Mayan Code: Nova

How did historians crack the Mayan code with no Rosetta Stone?

Nova explains in this documentary.

You can also find out in this slideshare by Sarah Macedo. It's based on the documentary.

Thanks to Michael Milton for tweeting the link.

Saturday, July 18, 2015

Voice of America: High School Videochats Bridge Religious & Cultural Divide

Use Face to Faith to help your students bridge cultural and religious divides.

Using videochats, Face to Faith brings together students from different cutlures and religions to facilitate better understanding on a wide range of topics including religious freedom, human rights, and religious festivals.

Voice of America
recently visited my class during a videochat with a school in Indonesia. Their feature story explains how the videochats work.

Friday, July 17, 2015

Remind to Text Students


Students live on their smartphones.  Use Remind to reach them.  The video above explains all of it in four minutes. 

Thursday, July 16, 2015

TodaysMeet as an Alternative for Twitter

Richard Byrne and I started teaching a class together online tonight.  One of the things we spoke about what using Twitter in your classroom.  Several of the middle school teachers were understandably hesitant.  So I suggested something we also use at Hayfield called TodaysMeet.  The beauty about this site is that there is no login or password required for the kids.  You can also set the time paramaters and share the link only with your students.  It is can be used to have a discussion.  You could use it if you want the students to watch something at home and have a live chat. Alternatively you could use it so students could carry on a conversation during a portion of a movie giving them some active participation skills.  Believe me they are used to using two devices at once and will find this easy to do.

Above is a great tutorial about it. 

How the Five Major Religions Spread


Thanks to my colleague Mary Shoukat for this great (and short) video showing the spreading of the major religions. 

Saturday, July 11, 2015

Google Chrome Split Screen Extension


I am slowly gearing up for having Chromebooks in my classroom this fall and will also be testing (since I haven't felt it was good enough until now) Google Classroom.  In that endeavor I found Alice Keeler's Chrome extension (her blog is also very helpful) to let you split your window so you can have your gradebook on one side and the student work on the other.  Of course if you don't want her extension, just watch my video video below on how to do it by opening up two windows.  

Diigo for Bookmarking & Class Groups


Long ago I stopped putting my bookmarks on Explorer, Chrome, etc. as I didn't not want to be married to one laptop.  Think about it.  Your school laptop is re-imaged probably once a year and each time you have your bookmarks deleted.  There is a way you can suck in your Chrome, Mozilla or Explorer So Diigo is a great way to save your bookmarks on the cloud.  You can set up your own account or login using Google, Twitter, Facebook or Yahoo.

Below this is a video explaining how to sign up and above is one showing how you can use groups in a class.   If you use it with your students they do not have to have a Diigo account nor even share their email (although that allow them to be updated with alerts). 

Diigo for Bookmarking & Group Projects


Long ago I stopped putting my bookmarks on Explorer, Chrome, etc. as I didn't not want to be married to one laptop.  Think about it.  Your school laptop is re-imaged probably once a year and each time you have your bookmarks deleted.  There is a way you can suck in your Chrome, Mozilla or Explorer So Diigo is a great way to save your bookmarks on the cloud.  You can set up your own account or login using Google, Twitter, Facebook or Yahoo.

Below this is a video explaining how to sign up and above is one showing how you can use groups in a class.   If you use it with your students they do not have to have a Diigo account nor even share their email (although that allow them to be updated with alerts). 

Friday, July 10, 2015

London Blitz: BBC Retrospective

St Paul's Cathedral survives the Blitz, December 1940 (© IWM)
BBC News Magazine has a great pictoral review of the Nazi bombing of London from the autumn of 1940 to the spring of 1941.

It's the 75th anniversary of the blitz which killed over 43,000 people as the Germans tried to gain air superiority over the British.

"The Germans tried to disrupt imports of food - and docks in places like Plymouth, Liverpool, and Belfast were targeted," according to the story."

The Imperial War Museum also has a good retrospective in association with Horrible Histories.

My thanks to my colleague, James Dahlgren, for sending me the link.

Monday, July 6, 2015

Zafar: The Last Mughal Empeor

He was the last Mughal emperor. He came to the throne with nothing "of the power and wealth of his ancestors." He was at the center of the Great Uprising against the British in 1857 and was arrested soon thereafter.

Nonetheless, in the eight-mintue clip above, William Dalrymple, author of the The Last Mughal, notes that Zafar created a literary renaissance in Dehli.

According to Dalrymple, Zafar's court "did for Urdu poetry what Queen Elizabeth's court did for English poetry."

The renissance was accomplished because of Zafar's example. He was a poet, an artist and writer himself.

Thursday, July 2, 2015

The Atlantic Slave Trade in Two Minutes: Animated Graphic

Slate Magazine developed a terrifc graphic that shows the ever-increasing number of slave ships between Africa and America between the 16th and 19th centuries.

Here's the way it works:

"This interactive, designed and built by Slate’s Andrew Kahn, gives you a sense of the scale of the trans-Atlantic slave trade across time, as well as the flow of transport and eventual destinations. The dots—which represent individual slave ships—also correspond to the size of each voyage. The larger the dot, the more enslaved people on board. And if you pause the map and click on a dot, you’ll learn about the ship’s flag—was it British? Portuguese? French?—its origin point, its destination, and its history in the slave trade. The interactive animates more than 20,000 voyages cataloged in the Trans-Atlantic Slave Trade Database."

Wednesday, July 1, 2015

Shift Happens


When I do in-services I used to start with Shift Happens, but then it wasn't updated for a while.  Well I just found s 2014 version of it which is still quite good, even if it is a bit old given how fast technology moves in a year.  If you haven't seen the series before, you will be somewhat amazed at the statistics for learning in the 21st century.