History Articles | History Article

2010-07-12T14:12:00.000-07:00

Great Interactive Map Review

This site asks you a world history question and then the student has to answer it by finding the place on the map. Incredible! It also is timed so the student has to really know their stuff.

2010-07-03T14:13:00.000-07:00

Tiny Url For E-Mail To Text

If you ever have a long url and want to shorten it (say for a text), you can go here and it will be done for you. So what would you use this for? Well most of my students do not like e-mail. If you go here I have links for how to input their cell phone into an e-mail database. Then you could send them an e-mail message with the "tiny url" of your blog post and the kids could get the message (since texts can only be 140 characters long).

2010-06-23T19:53:00.000-07:00

Great Tech Resources
The booklet above is a short list (Google, Wikispaces, Skype, Titan Pad, Wordle, Blogger and more) and descriptions of items you can find on the Internet. I found it here. You can see a much longer list on my Twitter feed of "kenhalla". If you click on the book, you can turn the pages and the booklet will grow in size.

2010-06-23T03:30:00.000-07:00

Chinese Dynasty Song
With the Chinese dynasty names often hard to remember for our students, one of the sure fire methods is to teach them the song above.

2010-06-15T02:33:00.000-07:00

School's Out For Summer - But Not Here!

Believe it or not, my students are STILL in school until June 24th, but since I teach summer school, I plan on continuing to post blog entries all summer.

2010-06-14T02:25:00.000-07:00

Anne Frank House Online

Here is a site where you can take a virtual tour of Anne Frank's House. You can also see some short movies about what life was like for Anne Frank as well as find out about the people who were living with and near her. As with the item below, I found this from a Tweet, this time from "ShellTerrell" who is a teacher I follow from Germany. Above is the only know video of Anne Frank.

2010-06-11T03:17:00.000-07:00

Finding People on Twitter
I just got back from my grading for the AP exam where I spent some time trying to explain why I like Twitter so much. If you have never used it and want to find hundreds of resources, then watch the video above which explains how to find people and subjects. Also, if you type "Twitter" in my search engine on the upper left part of this page, then you can find some posts I have done on people to follow in education circles. I found about this video from a tweet from "larryferlazzo".

2010-06-11T03:08:00.000-07:00

US Navy Footage, 1915

If you want to talk about Roosevelt in 1907, you could use this footage, taken a few years later in 1915, to highlight the strength of the navy. This footage is clear and extremely interesting and is nicely broken up into segments that explain what you are seeing. I found it from a tweet from "KevinLevin".

2010-06-08T12:15:00.000-07:00

This past semester I used Edmodo in my AP class, and I thought it would be a great time to post about it on this blog since we are winding down/finshed with the semester and we now have time to explore ways to enhance our curriculum. Here is essentially a "review" of Edmodo.

According to their website, Edmodo is "a private social platform for students and teachers to share ideas, files, events and assignments." According to my students, Edmodo is a lot like Facebook for school (except it is unblocked!). According to me, Edmodo is awesome!

The process to sign up is easy and painless, and within 2 minutes you have created a class and have been given a code for your students (and only your students) to enter so they can enroll in the class you have created. From there you can send links, alerts, files, and assignments to all the students enrolled in the class. Here are some thoughts:

The Good:

Ease of use Edmodo is one of the easiest learning applications I have ever used. The students are familiar with the layout because yeah, it is a lot like Facebook and they can Facebook in their sleep. From a teacher's perspective organizing and publishing is also pretty easy.

Ability to stay connected with students From snow days, swine flu, extended absences, or just attending to a conference teachers are able to always connected with their students and give them new homework or remind them of homework that is due, or other upcoming events.

Its mobile Students can sign up to have alerts, notifications, links, or events sent directly to their cellphones. Also, Edmodo has a great interactive mobile site for iPhones and Droids (more on the Blackberry later).

It collaborative Students are able to post on the main message board for the entire class and have discussion about upcoming tests, assignments, readings, etc.

Its private Since you need an access code to sign up for the class, if you do not have one of those codes, you cannot participate in the class. This high standard of privacy has given me (and my administrators) great piece of mind and allowed for more leeway with allowing more social networking for classes.

Support The support Edmodo offers is amazing! I had a question, sent them a message and had a response within an hour. From what I hear this is true throughout their network.

The Drawbacks:

Student-student communication Students are not able to direct message each other unless you create specific groups that students can join. I can understand wanting to control this for younger students, but it should be an option for each class you created so older students could collaborate in real time on assignments by talking directly with each other instead of posting on the board for all to see.

Digital Divide Some students in our district do not have access to internet at home and do not have a cell phone (or with one text messaging) so being able to log on to check assignment becomes a little more difficult because they will have to access Edmodo from the school library.

Doesn't play well with Blackberry I have had a hard time navigating the mobile site on my Blackberry for whatever reason. It won't let me post/update from the browser. I hope they are able to change that soon so I can have the same accessability from my Blackberry as my students with iPhones and Droids do (I know, I know, fix the problem permanently by joining the iPhone dark side!)

The "Not Quite Explored Yet"

The Edmodo Calendar Ok, to be honest I have explored that a bit, but right now it seems a little too clumsy for me to do all my lesson planning in.

RSS Feed You can have an RSS feed from your favorite blogs fed right into your class page so the updates can be viewed by your students with ease. I am going to spend some time this summer looking for blogs to incorporate into my class sites.

Assignment Grading There is a feature that allows students to turn in their homework online. You can then grade it and score it right there online. The score will then show up on the students home page. A pretty cool feature that I look forward to exploring in the near future.

In closing, if you are looking for a great social networking site that is private, safe, easy to use for both you and your students check out Edmodo. If you already use it in class, I'd be interested in hearing from you and how you use incorporate it in your classroom. Feel free to comment below or contact me via Twitter @jjanczak

2010-06-05T09:26:00.000-07:00

More Ancient History
I just received an e-mail which told me about this page which looks at ancient history across the world. In fact I am going to be teaching a world history to the Renaissance next year and this site will give me lots of good history, pictures, video, etc.

2010-06-02T17:29:00.000-07:00

Ancient Egypt
Here is a site that tells you all about ancient Egypt (yes I know you aren't going to teach this until the fall). It has lots of pictures, geography, mumification, pyramids and much more.

2010-05-31T05:39:00.000-07:00

AP Summer Assignments

This is a summary of some of the summer assignments I found online. Most are in pdf format, so if you like it, download, go to pdftoword.com, upload it and in about two hours, you will have it in doc format and then can make it your own.

This one has vocab, geography skills, readings on pre-history and religion
This one is similar to the one above, but less work for the students
This one uses an embedded assignment (always like more helpful technology) and has the students fill out charts, maps and yes, vocab definitions of the early needs for world history
This may be the best of the first four (and uses Stearns).
Here is one for Guns, Germs and Steel and another and still another and one that talks about how to be a critical reader
Here and here are one for one of my favorite books History of the World in Six Glasses
This one allows you to choose from a list of books

To find these I used multiple searches: 2010 AP World Summer assignments, AP world summer assignments, AP World summer readings.

2010-05-31T05:34:00.000-07:00

Intro Video to AP World History

I found this video from a newer blogger out there who can be found AP World Guru on Twitter.

2010-05-25T02:54:00.000-07:00

Why Geography Matters
This is a nice video put together by the Google Earth crew that shows the many things you can do with Google Earth in the classroom. I found it on FreeTech4Teachers. Go here to learn about how to use Google Earth.

2010-05-12T05:23:00.000-07:00

Arial Radar Mapping of Mayan Cities
This is a very interesting article which details how two scientists mapped by aerial radar in two days what took other scientists two decades to do. The two used lasers to find the outlines of Mayan civilization. This certainly is an article I will use early next year in my classes.

2010-05-11T05:59:00.000-07:00

Statistics on the World
This site has an a large number of statistics that you can show your students such as unemployment rate, agricultural land, children in school, epidemics rates and and a total of 430 different categories. You can also download the statistics and there is a page for teachers.

Video Chat with Author Pat Hughes

2010-05-07T17:41:00.000-07:00

Today my 8th grade American history classes in Liberty, Missouri participated in a live video chat with Pat Hughes, author of Guerrilla Season. Guerrilla Season is a book with a focus on Clay County (the county in which we live) in the years just before the Civil War. We used G-mail video chat - free - to visit with Pat from her home in Philadelphia.

I also used a Flip cam to record the conversation for students who missed it and wanted to watch it. Pat spoke with us from her sun room and then took us upstairs to show us her office and shared some of the resources she uses to write books about Civil War era Missouri.

Pretty amazing that this all took place today with no technical glitches at all and we were able to have a great conversation with an author 1,200 miles away! Why aren't classrooms doing more of this?

2010-05-05T07:03:00.001-07:00

Podcast #210 - Update on 365 Photo Project

2010-05-05T07:03:00.000-07:00

Hello. Today's podcast is an update on my 365 Photo Project for 2010. I am taking a picture each day this year and posting it on Flickr. You can check out my photos so far this year below on the slideshow.

Click to subscribe to the Speaking of History Podcast at i-Tunes here

Direct link to Podcast #210 - Update on 365 Photo Project

Press PLAY button below to listen to podcast on this page.

2010-05-04T02:18:00.000-07:00

Computers for All Students
Certainly the aim of this blog is to get to have students using computers much more often in the classroom. If you think about it, the interconnectivity that computer bring, the ability to create and the chance to meet students in their own world (as opposed to the worksheet one) is a great reason to go online. Above is a nice video from PBS on a school in NY that was turned around with a visionary principal and the use of computers.

Podcast #209 - Review of "The Monuments Men" by Robert M Edsel

2010-04-28T19:42:00.000-07:00

Hello. For the past couple of weeks I have been reading "The Monuments Men" by Robert M Edsel. This books tells the fascinating story of American troops racing across Europe to find and save the priceless art work taken by Hitler and the Nazi war machine.

This podcast is my quick review of this novel and how it could be implemented into an interdisciplinary lesson in the classroom.

"The Monuments Men" by Robert M Edsel

Official Monuments Men Foundation Site

The Greatest Theft - Lesson Plans and DVD Set

Robert M Edsel's Blog

Follow Robert M Edsel on Twitter (RobertEdsel)

Click to subscribe to the Speaking of History Podcast at i-Tunes here

Direct link to Podcast #209 - Review of The Momuments Men by Robert M Edsel

Hit Play button below to listen to Podcast

2010-04-28T07:56:00.000-07:00

Great Review Site for AP World
This teacher has a site for both AP World as well as regular world history. However, the better site by far is the AP World one which includes "how to" sheets as well as links to five books' ancillaries, review sheets and more.

2010-04-27T02:17:00.000-07:00

Ways to Use Youtube Videos in the Classroom
Ever had a youtube video of yours blocked in the classroom? For one, you can upload your videos to TeacherTube, but that won't solve your problem for other videos that aren't yours. Watch the video above as is it give you three sites which can a) allow you to copy and move any youtube video to another site very quickly so you can access it at school b) cut any youtube video down to just what you might want in the classroom c) create a storage area of your own where you can quickly copy and store videos from youtube. Thanks to "web20classroom" for the tweet that told me about this.

2010-04-22T18:07:00.000-07:00

50 sites

View more presentations from dkapuler.

50 Digital Sites in 60 Minutes
Thanks to Technology Tidbits for this amazing set of technology ideas. You can blow up the screen to view the slide show or click on anyone of the links to go to the different pages.

2010-04-22T17:32:00.000-07:00

History of Religion in 90 Seconds

I've run this one before, but it is a super video and a nice way to review the spread of religion.