Playing History

Playing History        http://playinghistory.org/

I haven't been paying as much attention as I should to resource collection, This collection of games appropriate for many social studies classes. Plus, I am happy to find an online Oregon Trail.

Classroom idea: Use these as a opener for study or a review.   Students could use these as basis for creating their own game.

Simplebooklet

simplebooklet http://simplebooklet.com/index.php#
I like to consider new ways of presenting student information.  I like this tool for two reasons :

1. The clean lines.  The ability to  create multiple pages allows for lots of information to be presented, but not overwhelmed.
2. The booklet ( one of  multiple options for presenting) allows for "story" or narrative.

Classroom idea: Create a catalog of  items for sale from the time period of the novel being studied.

ZooBurst

ZooBurst http://www.zooburst.com/index.php is an online pop up book creator. This tool  lets the creator of a story  present images  and text in a timed and spatial manner.  The basic free license allows  speech bubbles as well as story text.

Classroom idea - Students create books that present a tour through history, or a tour of a every day life in a country, using native language.

A Holiday Card From Google

 http://www.google.com/logos/
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052748704774604576035500936272100.html

Google celebration logos always are of interest. The one on December 23, 2010 was a loose recreation of "Google"  with a number of interactive  images that approximated the standard Google colors of each letter. The images also led to a search  on the theme of that image.

Classroom idea : Easier version of this idea : Using Glogster ( would work best I think), Moodle , wikis or Prezi,  gathers a collection  of images to  create a collage of a word or concept, with the images somehow relating to  the word.. ,  The magic of linking or "pathing" would allow the image to be linked to a presentation about that aspect.

Disunion

Disunion  http://opinionator.blogs.nytimes.com/category/disunion/
From the New York Times, "One-hundred-and-fifty years ago, Americans went to war with themselves. Disunion revisits and reconsiders America’s most perilous period — using contemporary accounts, diaries, images and historical assessments to follow the Civil War as it unfolded."


Classroom idea: Have students peruse these sources, and then do research to presenting primary source  with explanation.

Mapping America: Every City, Every Block

Mapping America: Every City, Every Block http://projects.nytimes.com/census/2010/explorer

The New York Times offer these maps, based on 2005-2009 Census Bureau's American Community Survey.

Classroom idea:  These would be great for Civics and Economics classes, discussing voting patterns as related to other factors.

Brain Games

 http://www.proprofs.com/games  Easily created embeddable crosswords, etc

Classroom Idea.  These are easily embedded into Moodle or another website and could be used as vocabulary refresher. A language class could build multiple crosswords based on theme - weather, home life, etc.

WolframAlpha widgets

WolframAlpha widgets. Fun and interesting. I love the historical weather ones, too.

http://developer.wolframalpha.com/widgets/gallery/featured/ Widgets

Trulia Hindsight

Trulia Hindsight http://hindsight.trulia.com/map/#lat=38.342&lon=-95.273&zoom=4&mix=0.500

  Here is a site that allows visualization of how cities actually developed.  

Classroom ideas -  I can see using this in history and literature classes. How developed was Long Island in Jay Gatsby’s day? What was pre-war Los Angeles like?

Tubechop

Tubechop  http://www.tubechop.com lets you select start and end points on youtubes so you don’t have to show entire video.

Gapminder

Gapminder http://www.gapminder.org/ From their website “unveil the beauty of statistical time series by converting boring numbers into enjoyable, animated and interactive graphics.” Visualize statistics and data.

Classroom idea:  Great for  comparative studies. This site has a learning curve, but the presentations you can make really bring data to life.

Video Ant

Video Ant http://ant.umn.edu/ Video annotator – analyze and annotate videos you and students find (or make). Works on flv files.

Classroom idea : Give students step by step critiques of video projects.

360 Cities

360 Cities http://www.360cities.net/

Great source for panoramic views of cities and sights
Yellowstone Old Faithful Inn External View in USA A nice feature is when embedded for noncommercial use, no ads are attached.

Lesson idea: I like the idea of exploring why a city is where it is. This tool can give a visual to rivers, mountains, etc.that contributed to a city's founding or growth.

Fair use

The History Chef!

http://lincolnslunch.blogspot.com/

What a great idea for bringing history to life.

http://ankisrs.net/
A great flashcard maker that works on iphone and ipod.  I like this one, because it also works well on a plain old computer.

Screenjelly

Screenjelly http://www.screenjelly.com/ another really easy to use screencast tool.

Jaycut

Jaycut http://jaycut.com/

I just used Jaycut to make  a simple movie. If you have used Windows Moviemaker, or Photostory, the learning curve will be easy.   This is free, and while a tiny bit slow, I liked it.    Easy to import an existing video. I needed to learn a dance and words to a song, and I the  options Jaycut gave me for adding text were just what I needed  Here is the video . If you are interested in the Cool Water Hula Event go here http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JdEJpiELgYc&feature=related .


What I really like is using Jaycut may make  the biggest problem I see in using MovieMaker go away.  Students often  don't save their collections  of images on the same computer they make their movie.  Jaycut is all in the clouds and thus  everything imported into the project is available everywhere.

Noodletools

Noodletools  http://www.noodletools.com/ is one of the best values for schools out there.  They offer a free citation maker  that  produces correct citations. ( Some citation makers don't, alas).  Their subscription product has a wonderful notecard  module  that gives studnets a way to save their research and also make it their own.  Another great feature is the "sharing with teacher" whereby the teacher can make ongoing comments on a research project.

Glogster revisited

I have been using Glogster as a way to present pathfinders for student assignments. I like the customizable background

The edu version has a class management feature. I wish there was a mass uenroll and unenroll, but I like the resulting projects.

Memorize Now

I see so many students using flashcards to memorize. While reading Demo Girl , I came across an online flashcard maker I like, as it adds a little extra memorization tool. It deletes words from phrase to allow gradual a few clues, but still lets students think and memorize. It also has a first letter tool that just shows the first letter of the words to be memorized. I thought this would be useful for all those mnemonics people use to remember

http://www.memorizenow.com/



Classroom idea:
Have students enter the words, phrases concepts and start memorizing.

Going with Geography

Richard Byrne at Free Technology for Teachers is a great blog to read. I get so many ideas and inspirations from his posts. He wrote about Geo Coded Art recently. I liked this tool for showing landscape paintings and the actual inspiration for them via Google maps
Classroom ideas:
1)A class studying a country could use this gathering of art and geography to personalize the study.

2) Create your own class database of Geo-coded studies. Chemistry classes doing element study could Geo-code the elements.

Google Earth ideas

Don't want to lose this great resource for using Google Earth
Thanks to Richard Byrne at Free Technology for Teachers
Google Earth Across the Curriculum -

Vidinotes

Vidinotes http://www.vidinotes.com Gives you the tool to create a printable summary from your video

Jane's E-Learning Pick of the Day is once again my source for this tool.

So many times I will create a screencast of a web 2.0 tool, only to hear , "Can I have something in print?" With some more effort, this tool will transform any video into a print tutorial.

Classroom idea: Lesson on "The Main Idea". Have students use this tool on selected video clips, producing a visual and written synthesis of what was presented. .