Great Site on Imperialism
This site has a number of links to European and US imperialism. A check of US imperialism, for example, ends us giving you links to pages on "the Age of Imperialismm," "War and Conflict of the US Navy," "The Great White Fleet" and much more.

End of the Year: Night at the Museum

There are some movies that work really well for history classes, and some that do not. After watching a Night at the Museum and Night at the Museum 2 this weekend, I put it in the category of works really well.

I did not find really any discrepancies with historical fact in either movie. The only non factual part I could think of would be the T-Rex acting as a playful pup. Sorry for those that haven't seen the movie.

I can see many possible activities to base off of the movie. Have students create a list of the people in the movie and the facts about them. Winner has the most information. For younger students the teacher can supply the list of characters. Or have students pick one interesting character and look up more information on them. Or if you are really ambitious, create your own museum. Have pictures of the different characters, students or groups of students will research them and have information by them. Then have a tour of your museum. You could also put the museum online.

Birth/Death Rates
This site, which I found here, gives the birth and death rates for any part of the world you run your cursor over. It also tells you how many have been born/died since you came to the site. It also has emission rates for each country.

Another Movie - on Mecca
Here is a 61 minute movie on the hajj to Mecca. Since it is a National Geographic one, you know it is good and if you have the time for a lenghty movie after your state exams that the students will find interesting, here is one you might want to show.

Blog Project using Blogs.mu

I have created a project for my World History class. I am assigning them a event in WWII and they are going to create informational blogs about the event. To make this work well I am using Blogs.mu to host the students' blogs.

On my classroom site I have more information about the project. In a couple weeks I will post links to the finished results of the student work.

I really wish I would have found out about this site earlier. I can see so many uses for blogs.mu in a classroom or school.

School's Out for Summer - NOT HERE!
Since I have students until June 18th, it is almost crazy to say this (but I know others are getting out this week), but I will continue to blog all summer so if you need some ideas or are teaching summer school (like me), come by for a visit. Thanks, by the way for visiting in general as we had 14,000 hits last month.

Summer Assignments for AP World

I always find it a struggle to give the perfect assignment over the summer. So, if you are the same way, here are what others are doing:

• Book Report - this is one that can work for any book and has a lot of good questions
  
• Book: Guns, Germs and Steel - lengthy questions on the book
  
• Book Reviews: Guns, Germs and Steel and Traditions and Encounters
• Books: Guns, Germs and Steel, Catastrophe, Plagues and Peoples and King Leopold's Ghost
  
• Books: Guns, Germs and Steel and Traditions and Encounters
  
• Book: This Fleeting World with lots of thought provoking questions.
  
• Review of Mesopotamia, Egypt, Indus Valley, Shang & Zhou China, Olmecs and Persians
  
• Book reviews: A Woman of Nazareth, Nervous Condition, Tree of Red Stars, Wild Swans, Monkey, Sundiata, Poisonwood Bible, Funny Boy, Tears of the Giraffe, Guns, etc, Genghis Khan, Kamala
  
• Book: Guns, etc. Epic of Gilgamesh, Biblical Account of Noah, Code of Hammurabi, Grily Assyrian Records of Torture and Death
  
• Vocabulary, maps and chart analysis
• Vocabulary (lengthy) and maps
  
• Vocab and review assignment
• Vocabulary
• more links to summer assignments
  

Online World History Newsletter
This has items such as DBQs, articles, book reviews, etc. and it is in a very easy to read format. It should prove a great resource for the classroom.

Twenty Part Movie on the Rise of China
The nice thing about this movie is that it is broken into 9 minute segments so you don't have to show the entire thing. It is on youtube.com so you might have to download it the night before if you can't access it at school. To do that go here.

So Many Blogs, So Little Time
There are a bunch of ways to follow your blogs. You can go to them every once in a while, have an e-mail sent to you or have a Google reader page set up for you which allows you to quickly see what has been updated, add as many pages as you want and to share the pages with others. Play the movie above to see it done - and it's very easy.

Dr. Seuss Went to War

Dr Seuss Went to War

Students see propaganda posters for WWII all the time. But this is a compilation of comics made by Dr. Seuss during WWII to raise support and money for the United States.

I would mention to students that a couple of the cartoons show racial stereotypes. However, Dr. Seuss' slant on raising support is very unique and worth checking out.

Geography Game
Do your students know where each of the countries are? This game above tests one's knowledge and is done under a time clock. Check it out.

A Great Class Teacher Site for AP World
This is a great site, especially if you are in the first few years of teaching AP World. It has nice overviews of each topic, review questions, links and even a section of how to write DBQ free responses.

Real Player

This is a follow up on the earlier post about embedding videos into a PowerPoint - if you use the new version of Real Player, it will allow you to download videos from sites like YouTube (or any other website that streams video). Real Player has a pop-up button that makes it very easy to download with one click - it's a neat feature that allows you to save videos from the web, especially since sites like YouTube are blocked by most filtering software in the schools. If you don't have Real Player, you can go here to see how to convert a youtube.com video.

Spark Notes
Here is another review site. You do have to sign in with an e-mail, but you can take a 30 question AP World test and it will give you the answers and tell you the areas in which you are weak.

WorldPress.Org
This is a very comprehensive news source for countries around the world. To begin with there are links to newspapers within each country, blogsites, cartoons and headlines. So for example you can get viewpoints of American actions from other countries written by the writers of Worldpress.org or go to newspapers from other countries for their view. Either way, this is a great view to expand beyond your town's newspaper or the WashPost or NYTimes.

WWI Propaganda Posters

There is something about propaganda posters that just intrigues students. They love to look at them and comment on them. This is great for me, because there is so much to be learned in the posters also.

This site has a lot of great WWI propaganda posters from the big countries involved in WWI. There is also a lot of other information about WWI on the site too. Overall, a great resource.

In addition, I have created a project for my students to create their own propaganda poster using Glogster. The link for my project is here.

Timeline + Google Search All in One
This is a one shot google site for history timelines. It has a rather comprehensive timeline and when you click on each era it then breaks it down into smaller segments that has links to images, searches, etc. For example for on the "1800" timeline, Toussaint L'Ouverture is one of the links. The first link for L'Ouverture has a bio on him. There are then three other text searches and three image links such as this one. A cool use for this site would be to make a "pop up" slide show such as I have here (albeit for my US history class).

Frontline
Here is an amazing array of videos from the show Frontline. Certainly not all of them are appropriate for world history, but some such as the crisis in Rwanda and Darfur will work. It is well worth your time to look at the choices.

Youtube War Maps
If you liked the maps a few posts ago, you might also like the videos above. The top one is a 6 minute map on WWI. The second is for WWII. All three are narrated.