Thursday, March 8, 2012

Splicd

I'll take the cue from George in the post below.  If you want to show a portion of a Youtube video, all you need to do is to go to Splicd and enter in the url as well as the starting and ending point and you can omit the rest of the video.  For example if George wanted to start the video below at 10 seconds and end it at 5:01, here is what it would look like. 

Socrates with Alain de Botton


Saw this on Open Culture and watched about 15 minutes. Kids might get a little bored after 5 or 6 minutes but I found it to be an excellent primer on Socrates and might even show 5 or 6 minutes of it next year when we do Greece. de Botton does a good job of explaining Socrates ideas in an unpretentious way.

ThinkBinder


Saw this on Not Another History Teacher and thought it looked pretty cool. It allows students to log into the site at a specific time designated by you and ask each other questions about an upcoming test. It's an online study group. Here is the site.

A Nice Definition of Social Studies (Science)


Above is a nice definition of social science (studies) I found at  Soomopublishing). 

Wednesday, March 7, 2012

Utzi was Lactose Intolerant and Had Brown Eyes

"...researchers have sequenced the complete genome of the iceman, nicknamed Ötzi, and discovered even more intriguing details. They report in the journal Nature Communicationsthat he had brown eyes and brown hair, was lactose intolerant and had Type O blood."

16 Century Amsterdam in 3D Animation

Open Culture put this on on their site and it's very interesting if you are studying the 16h century, which most of us are not right now. Nonetheless, it's worth checking out. The animation is amazing and the history is good. AP Euro teachers may especially like this.

History of Religion via Maps

One of my teacher-students, Jessica May, just pointed out the site mentioned below showing via maps how the history of religion has grown.  Believe it or not, it was one of my first posts back in 2008.  It details how the geography of religion evolved over the centuries, and where has it sparked wars. The map gives us a brief history of the world's most well-known religions: Christianity, Islam, Hinduism, Buddhism, and Judaism. Selected periods of inter-religious bloodshed are also highlighted. Want to see 5,000 years of religion in 90 seconds? Ready, Set, Go! Click here. There is also another map that has "The March of Democracy."

The Shiite-Sunni split

Great clip from the Today show a few years ago about the Sunni- Shiite split. Reporter Richard Engle outlines the basic differences in 3 minutes. I'm teaching Islam now and plan to use it. There is also an audio slideshow about the split at NPR here. My thanks to Frances Coffey for sending me the link.

Tuesday, March 6, 2012

App Sites for Android and iPhone


One of the questions I often get is where do I get my information.  Well I have a Twitter feed, iGoogle page and Google+.  One of my iGoogle feeds is the "Offical Google Blog" which today announced one place to get all your Google products called Google Play.  For example a few weeks ago I uploaded all 4023 of my songs from my iPod (it took two days on an old computer) and now I can get them on my phone, any computer or tablet on Google music (as opposed to using the iCloud which limits you to being used on Apple products).  But I digress!  If you go to Google's site for Android apps, you can find all of their apps and narrow it down by using the search engine.  Here is the site for Apple's iPhone apps. 

Autosummarizing

One of my teacher-students, Jerry Walsh, just told me about "autosummarizing" which literally summarizes a long passage.  This might work well if you have your students go to a Wikipedia page that has much more information than you want.  I, of course, do not want something downloaded on my computer like Microsoft Word, so I found Tools4Noobs which does the same thing for free. For example here is a Wikipedia passage on Campaign Finance and here is the Tools4Noobs summary. Obviously you would have to look at it yourself first to see if it kept your most important parts, but it's worth a try. 

More Great Summary World History Videos By John Green


John Green of Crashcourse is on an amazing tear through history (I have put up his other two videos).  Above is one on Mesopotamia, Ancient Egypt and Buddha and Asoka. 

World War I And Blackadder


Your kids will love this excerpt about World War I from "Blackadder Goes Forth" featuring Rowan Atkinson, Hugh Laurie and Tony Robinson. My thanks to Christine Ingeman for sending me this link.

Monday, March 5, 2012

Google Maps for Educators

Really cool clip showing how to use google maps. Shows you how to do a number of cool things like measuring the distance of a lake or a desert.

Friday, March 2, 2012

The Imperial War Museum

The Imperial War Museum in London has an absolutely amazing site with resources that cover both World Wars and the Cold war. And the really cool thing is the way it is organized--historical notes which provide an overview of key events, personal stories from key events, teaching activities for formal lessons and based on primary sources, and source packs with primary sources relating to one historical event or period. If you are teaching this period, you should take a look it. My thanks to my colleague Jeff Feinstein for sending me this excellent site.

100 People: A World Portrait

I'm sure that you've seen clips and stats on what the world would look like if it were only 100 or just 10 people. This site is a global education toolbox on a quest to find 100 people that represent the 7 billion of us through photographs, stories, videos and global issues. This video from the site is really cool and worth watching. And students would find these statistics amazing.

Roman Contributions



On Monday my world history students will be working on their Roman contributions project.  Above is a set of flash cards I found on Quizlet.  Quizlet lets students (and teachers) create flashcards to study for a test.  As my students finish their projects I will have them use this to see if they have learned everything before they take their own quiz.  Here is a Quizlet review for all of ancient Rome. 

50 Sites To Help Your Teaching

50sites ver3
View more presentations from David Kapuler
I will be going through this site soon, but again here is an amazing list of sites that could help you. 

App Search Engine for Educators

I found this from a Google+ post from Judy Arzt.  It is called APPitic and is a search engine for apps for education.  It has both free and paid ones as well as ones for Apple and Android products.  I will be going through here over time and featuring some of what I find, but if you want to beat me to the punch, have at it! 

Istanbul Not Constantinople: They Might be Giants


From they Might Be Giants (who also have a great song about the Mesopotamians) is this song about Constantinople. We are studying the Byzantine Empire and one of my students showed me this.

Thursday, March 1, 2012

Free online courses

Ok, maybe you don't teach philosophy. But you might teach Greece and the free introductory online courses from Open Culture look very interesting. And the links to other online courses from great college instructors look really cool. There are lectures about Hannibal from a Stanford professor and dozens of other history lectures. I'll definitely watch a couple this summer.