Featured 7-7-2014: Brown v. Board of Education

 

Brown v. Board of Education was a landmark case in which the US Supreme Court declared state laws establishing separate public schools for black and white students to be unconstitutional, overturning the Plessy v. Ferguson decision of 1896, which allowed state-sponsored segregation, insofar as it applied to public education. The unanimous decision handed down on May 17, 1954, held that separate educational facilities are inherently unequal. This ruling opened the door to integration and was a major victory of the civil rights movement.

 

 

The National Park Service, in support of the Brown v. Board of Education National Historic Site in Kansas offers a collection of lesson plans and curriculum units for K-12 on their website. Related Common Core standards for all the materials are specified.

 

 

The National Archives provides a compilation of documents related to Brown v. Board of Education  as well as lesson resources, standards correlations, teaching activities, a document analysis worksheet, a timeline, and biographies of key figures.

 

DISCLOSURE OF MATERIAL CONNECTION: http://cmp.ly/0

Featured 3-20-2014: Franklin D. Roosevelt Presidential Library and Museum

America's first presidential library is the Franklin D. Roosevelt Presidential Library and Museum  It is also the only one used by a sitting president, built under President Roosevelt's direction and opened to the public in 1941.

 

The mission of the Franklin D. Roosevelt Presidential Library and Museum is "to foster research and education on the life and times of Franklin and Eleanor Roosevelt, and their continuing impact on contemporary life.”

 

 

The education division of the FDR museum offers a number of both on- and off-site professional development workshops that take advantage of the rich resources and knowledgeable staff available there. Teachers can sharpen their skills, renew their enthusiasm, and earn PD credit by participating in a variety of workshops.

 

Comprehensive curriculum guides introduce students (ages 8-17) to key topics of the Roosevelt era. The guides are designed for use by teachers of civics, citizenship, government, economics, geography, fine arts, history, writing, and journalism. Included in the guides are primary source documents, photographs, study questions, and other resources from the library archives.

 

 

Franklin D. Roosevelt Day by Day is an interactive chronology documenting Franklin Roosevelt’s daily schedule as President, from March 1933 to April 1945. Here you will find digitized original calendars and schedules tracing FDR’s appointments, travel schedule, social events, guests, and more.You can search the chronology by keyword and date. Day by Day also includes an interactive timeline of additional materials from the archives of the Franklin D. Roosevelt Presidential Library and Museum to place each day’s calendar into larger historical context.

 

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Featured 3-4-2014: Historical Thinking Matters

Focused on key topics in US history, Historical Thinking Matters is a website  designed to help students learn how to critically read primary sources and how to critique and construct historical narratives.

 

Historical Thinking Matters supplies high school students with a framework for reading documents as historians read them. By developing these habits of mind, students will be able to critically examine historical sources and make reasoned conclusions about the past. Additionally, students can become critical users of the immense quantity  of historical content on the web.

 

Historical Thinking Matters introduces the site’s approach by exploring conflicting first-hand accounts of the 1775 Lexington Green skirmish.

 

Student Investigations focuses on five topics from the post-Civil War US history curriculum. Each investigation includes:

• An introductory movie framing a question of historical debate;
• Ten historical sources;
• Guided questioning that fosters historical thinking skills such as sourcing, contextualization, close reading, and corroboration;
• Text annotations and audio and video clips that provide additional commentary;
• An assignment that asks students to respond to the investigative question by drawing on their previous engagement with the sources;
• Directed explorations of virtual archives.

Teacher Materials offers educators classroom materials and strategies, examples of student and teacher work, and supplementary resources.

 

 

 Visit the Historical Thinking Matters YouTube channel

 

If you are a teacher educator, HTM for Teacher Educators offers resources on teaching historical thinking skills and on common mistakes new teachers make.

 

DISCLOSURE OF MATERIAL CONNECTION: http://cmp.ly/0

Featured: 2-17-2014 myHistro

Create stories that are displayed on maps and geo-located interactive timelines with myHistro.

 

You can watch and read thousands of user-created timelines at myHistro or create your own dynamic timeline mashup with text, video, and images.

 

 

Combine maps and timelines seamlessly into unique presentations, convert any public timeline into a pdf file, or export it into Google Earth format (kml) for offline storage. Completed timelines can be embedded into blogs and websites for sharing.   

 

Features of myHistro:

• Archive with several hundred historical timelines to choose from.
• Collaboration tools, ideal for class activities.
• Secure content management.

Three privacy levels to choose from let you decide what others will see. You can keep your timeline private, make it public, or keep it between you and those you choose.

 

  

 View a slide presentation: myHistro Basic Guidelines For Teachers

 

There is an official free myHistro application for iPad, iPhone, and iPod Touch with simplified functionality. In this version you can create new accounts, add new stories, add new events, and manage existing stories and events.

 

Currently myHistro supports YouTube videos and pictures in JPEG and PNG formats. It does not require Flash.

 

 DISCLOSURE OF MATERIAL CONNECTION: http://cmp.ly/0 

Extra: 12-23-2013 Problem-Attic

Problem-Attic makes a large body of questions available for free to the education community, for personalized learning and teaching. 

 

Tens of thousands of questions from a variety of sources including the NY Regents, state assessments, NAEP and TIMSS, and three NC math contest organizations can be found at Problem-Attic.

 

 

All of the questions are in a database, organized by topic, and individually selectable and re-formattable. They can be inserted into all kinds of new documents: tests and quizzes, worksheets, flash cards, and slides. 

 

 View Welcome to Problem-Attic!

Problem-Attic is a product of EducAide Software, which has a long history of developing question banks and other teaching/testing tools. 

DISCLOSURE OF MATERIAL CONNECTION: http://cmp.ly/0 

Featured: 6-27-2013 Macaulay Library

The Macaulay Library is the world's largest and oldest scientific archive of bird, animal, and other natural audio and video recordings.

The Macaulay Library's mission is to "collect and preserve recordings of each species' behavior and natural history, to facilitate the ability of others to collect and preserve such recordings, and to actively promote the use of these recordings for diverse purposes spanning scientific research, education, conservation, and the arts."

Teachers can use the accurate depictions of nature from the Macaulay Library to illustrate the natural world and create exciting interactive learning activities.

Lessons for elementary, middle, and high school use rich media including sounds and videos from the Macaulay Library to spark student interest in understanding biological adaptations. Teachers can download individual lessons or units addressing science standards about waves, forces, and motion.

 Watch a sampling of Macaulay Library video

The Macaulay Library provides training, equipment, and resources to help document the diversity of nature with sound and video. Field techniques and the technical knowledge required to record the behavior of birds and other animals in the wild are taught through workshops and informal training sessions.

DISCLOSURE OF MATERIAL CONNECTION: http://cmp.ly/0

The Rearview Mirror 2/9/2013

For those of you who may have missed an EDge21 featured post or who didn't have the opportunity to look at some of them during this past week, here's a second chance.


Monday

Homework Help provides after school math support to students in grades 7-10 (aged 12-15) when teachers or parents are unavailable to help.

Tuesday

Writing Roadmap™ is an online writing tool from CTB/McGraw Hill that provides an effective way for students in grades 3–12 (aged 8-17) to practice and improve their writing, as well as for teachers to measure and track writing proficiency for students.

Wednesday

The mission ofThe Math Board Game™ is “to help teachers and parents effectively educate their students and children in math by engaging them with a fun and unique learning tool.”

Thursday

Today, two tools for creating disposable web pages are featured. Why disposable web pages? Often you need to publish info to the Web for just a limited run. You only need it for one class or a single day, then you won’t use it again. These two tools will let you create quick one-off pages that you can throw away when you’re finished with them.

Featured: 11/29/2012 Lincoln Archives Digital Project [History]

The Lincoln Archives Digital Project is providing access to the fragile historic paper records of the administration of President Abraham Lincoln.

The Lincoln Archives Digital Project is the first project to scan the entire contents of a president's administration. When complete, the approximately 14 million federal records housed within the National Archives, including all documents, maps, and photographs from the Civil War era, will be available online. The period of time covered by the project is March 4, 1861, through April 15, 1865.

The Lincoln Archives Digital Project is supplemented by related maps, photographs, newspaper articles, essays, and video podcasts to provide a broader picture of this period in American history.

The Lincoln Archives Digital Project  also includes several documents, signed by Abraham Lincoln, that have never before been cataloged.

The Lincoln Archives Digital Project is a private enterprise.  The project receives no federal funding and is supported by memberships.

DISCLOSURE OF MATERIAL CONNECTION: http://cmp.ly/0

COD - 8/15/2012 - Old Maps Online [Social Studies]

Old Maps Online is a user-friendly gateway to historical maps in libraries around the world. Old Maps Online is for anyone interested in old maps and what they can tell us about the past.

Old Maps Online aggregates information about digital map images from different libraries and host institutions in a universal search interface. You won’t need to know where a map is held to be able to locate it. Find maps held by different institutions showing the same geographical area so you can better decide which is most relevant to your needs.

Search Old Maps Online by typing a place-name or by clicking in the map window, and narrow the results by date. The search results provide a direct link to the map image on the host institution's website.

Old Maps Online is a free, open-access search portal with no need for downloading, registering, or subscribing.

OldMapsOnline is a collaboration between The Great Britain Historical GIS Project and Klokan Technologies GmbH, Switzerland. It succeeds a project lead by the Moravian Library in the Czech Republic between 2008-11. The portal is based on the MapRank Search technology originally developed for the Kartenportal project in Switzerland. 

DISCLOSURE OF MATERIAL CONNECTION: http://cmp.ly/0

COD - 5/24/2012 - Fold3 [History]

Fold3 believes that it is the web's foremost collection of original military records, providing convenient access to US military records, including the stories, photos, and personal documents of the men and women who served.

Original records at Fold3 help you discover and share stories about America's everyday heroes, forgotten soldiers, and the families that supported them.

Fold3 is a redesign and rebranding of a site previously reviewed here, Footnote.com, as part of a move to focus on creating the premier website for military records.

The site's name, Fold3, comes from a traditional flag folding ceremony in which the third fold is made in honor and remembrance of veterans who served their country.

DISCLOSURE OF MATERIAL CONNECTION: http://cmp.ly/0

Catch of The Day - WorldCat - 8/3/2011

WorldCat is a large global network of libraries dedicated to providing access to library content and services where most people begin their searches for information, on the Web.

Search the collections of libraries in your own community plus thousands more world-wide. Through the efforts of librarians and information professionals around the world, WorldCat grows more powerful every day.

With WorldCat, you can search for books, CDs, and DVDs as well as discovering many new kinds of digital content, such as  audiobooks and music files. You may also find research materials such as article citations with links to their full text, documents and photos of local or historic significance, and digital versions of rare items not usually publicly available.

Once you find an item you want, WorldCat helps you locate a library near you that owns it. Usually you can link directly to the item's record on that library's website. What you can do next will vary from one library to another. It may be possible to check it out, reserve the item, get on a waiting list, or perhaps even have it delivered.

WorldCat results often include a link to an "Ask a Librarian" or some similar help feature on a library's website. Also, many WorldCat resources are available in diverse languages.

DISCLOSURE OF MATERIAL CONNECTION: http://cpm.ly/0

Catch of the Day - HistoryBuff.com - 7/7/2011

HistoryBuff.com is a website providing free primary source material for students, teachers, and other American history buffs.

The primary focus of HistoryBuff.com is on the way news of events in American history were reported in the newspapers of the time. HistoryBuff.com's online newspaper archives cover the period from 1700 through 2004.

HistoryBuff.com contains two kinds of primary source material:

• Transcripts of original newspaper articles about major events in American history
• Articles written by "everyday people" about events or eras in American history

You will also find information about the technology used to produce newspapers over the past 400 years.

Guided panoramic virtual tours of American historic sites are a new feature of HistoryBuff.com. To see an example, click here.

Visitors to HistoryBuff.com can subscribe to the free newsletter

DISCLOSURE OF MATERIAL CONNECTION: http://cmp.ly/0

Catch of the Day - NBC Learn - 9/30/2010

NBC Learn makes the global resources of NBC News and its historic film and video archive available to teachers, students, schools, and universities.

Original video content produced by NBC Learn is engaging, innovative, and helps make learning fun.

NBC News Archives on Demand (K-12) is a collection of NBC News videos, primary source documents, images, and resources specifically intended for use in the K-12 science, social studies, language arts, health, and business classrooms.

• Search and download thousands of resources
• Video content aligned to standards
• Regularly updated current events
• Personalized playlists for teachers and students
• Free interactive webinars

NBC News Archives on Demand (Higher Ed) is tailored to the needs of college students and instructors. The 26 collections include Biology, Psychology, Forensic Sciences, Environmental Sciences, U.S. History, Business, Economics, Urban Studies, Women's Studies, and many more.

What's Your iCue? is NBC Learn's competitive video trivia game that pairs challenging questions with NBC News video to create a fast-paced trivia game.

DISCLOSURE OF MATERIAL CONNECTION: http://cmp.ly/0

Catch of the Day - CriticalPast - 8/9/2010

At CriticalPast, you can freely view nearly 60,000 historic videos and 7 million photos in one of the Web's largest collections of royalty-free archival stock footage.

CriticalPast was created by a team of archival research, film, and Internet professionals, working together to build one of the largest privately held online sources of archival footage in the world.

The CriticalPast collection is compiled largely from US government sources. The media in the collection can be licensed without the clearance issues often experienced when using many stock footage sources.

Full-resolution video can be downloaded on demand in most formats in minutes. Still photos are available for download, or you may have prints delivered directly to you. The cost to download a JPEG still image is $2.97(US). Video clips in .m4v or .wmv formats can be downloaded for $3.97(US). Placing an order for videos or photos is simple and straight-forward.

You can browse the CriticalPast collection by decade and year, or it is easily searchable by keyword with advanced search features available.

DISCLOSURE OF MATERIAL CONNECTION: http://cmp.ly/0

Catch of the Day - Footnote - 8 Jan 10

Today's tasty catch is Footnote, a history-related site

Footnote helps you find and share historic documents including many never-before-seen documents through partnerships with The National Archives, the Library of Congress and other institutions.

Footnote Home Page

Footnote provides the tools to share your historical interests and connect with others. Footnote members can contribute to existing pages and even create new pages from scratch.

Original Documents Index

The free Footnote basic membership allows you to ...

• Access free images
• Create your own Footnote pages
• Search and browse all images
• Spotlight images and documents
• Upload images to your gallery
• Annotate member images.
• Upload, annotate and print your own images
• View and search member images

There is also an All-Access membership available for $79.95 annually.

Popular Footnotes Pages

Using a patented digitization process, Footnote is bringing more collections to life on the web everyday. Currently at Footnote you can view over 60 million original source historical documents.

DISCLOSURE OF MATERIAL CONNECTION: http://cmp.ly/0

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