Author Archive
Text 2 Mind Map is an easy-to-use tool for converting an outline into a mind map. Students type in their outlines right on the site. After the outline has been created, they click on the “Draw Mind Map” button, and the outline is presented on the screen in mind map format. The map can then […]
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Four Reads: Learning to Read Primary Documents is a post on the teachinghistory.org website that outlines a four-step process for guiding students in reading primary documents. With all the emphasis on using primary documents to help students better understand historical concepts, it’s nice to have a post like this that clearly describes how to help […]
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Beyond the Bubble is a website created by the Stanford History Education Group to help students learn about history using primary documents. The site contains some fabulous assessments (click on the Assessment link on the top of the page) that use archives from the Library of Congress to assess students’ historical knowledge and critical thinking […]
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Snapguide is a website that allows anyone to create and upload a how-to guide describing how to do just about anything. The format of the guides is really nice — there are pictures with accompanying text. The guides that are available cover a wide variety of topics, including many technology applications and skills.
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Reading Like a Historian is a site created by the Stanford History Education Group that helps students to engage in historical inquiry. The site contains 75 lessons related to major events in history. Each lesson poses a question and offers a list of primary documents (at various reading levels) with opposing viewpoints to help students […]
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An Excellent Collection of Fermi Problems for Your Class is a collection of questions posted on the edgalaxy.com blog and written by Enrico Fermi that can be used in math classes. What I like about these questions is that they force students to apply deeper mathematical thinking. These questions help students to focus on the […]
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DocsTeach is a site maintained by the National Archives and the Foundation for the National Archives. In addition to allowing access to over 4,000 primary source documents, the site provides a tool for allowing teachers to combine documents into activities. These activities can be accessed by students through the DocsTeach website. What I like best […]
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Overlap Maps is an easy-to-use online tool for comparing the size of countries, states, bodies of water, etc. All you need to do is choose the two areas you want to compare, and Overlap Maps will lay one of the areas on top of the other to show the relative size.
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Eric Whitacre: A virtual choir 2,000 voices strong is one of my favorite TED videos. In this video, composer and conductor Eric Whitacre shows how he used the Internet to create a virtual choir of over 2,000 singers from around the world to produce a recording of one of his compositions. This video shows the […]
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Phil Hansen: The art of the imperfect is a TED video recommended to me by Deyana Matt. In this video, artist Phil Hansen talks about how to foster creativity and work around limitations. This short video has a powerful message about getting around the ‘brick walls’ that often get in the way of our aspirations. […]
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