Featured 7-8-2014: Timeline World War 2 with Robert MacNeil

 

Timeline World War 2 is a definitive history of the Second World War, presented by broadcaster Robert MacNeil.

 

Timeline World War 2 for the iPad features a zoomable interactive timeline that dramatically alters how history can be viewed and understood, bringing to life the events of 70 years ago for a 21st century audience.

 

With more than a hundred films from the archives of British Pathé and US broadcasters, additional commentary by Robert MacNeil, over 600 still images, and 1500 written entries provide the viewer an insight into the events of WW2.

 

Timeline World War 2 key features:

• Search and filter the event timeline to focus on content that most interests you.
• A dynamic map of the war, showing invasions, occupations, allegiances, fronts and country boundary changes.
• The location feature on timeline items can be used to see where each event took place on the world map.
• Over 100 WW2 US and UK (British Pathé) newsreels from the declaration of war to the dropping of the atomic bomb.
• Choose from the original newsreel audio, or Robert MacNeil's commentary.
• Watch the films that interest you in the order of your choosing, either on your iPad, or on your television with AirPlay.

Timeline World War 2 is compatible with iPad and requires iOS 5.0 or later. It is available for $9.99 (USD) from the iTunes App Store.

 

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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.

 

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Featured 4-16-2014: Facing History and Ourselves

 

Facing History and Ourselves encourage teachers and students to think critically about history and to understand the consequences of choices.

 

Facing History and Ourselves provides ideas, methods, and tools in support of educators who share the goal of creating a better informed and more understanding society.

 

The goal of Facing History and Ourselves is to counter "racism, antisemitism, and prejudice and nurture[s] democracy through education programs worldwide.” With the aim of inspiring and innovating, Facing History and Ourselves works with educators around the world throughout their careers to improve their effectiveness in the classroom and their students’ academic performance, historical understanding, and civic learning.

 

 

Facing History and Ourselves offers educators resources, training opportunities, and professional coaching, and guidance for administrators. These resources include Holocaust and Human Behavior, Race and Membership in American History, Elie Wiesel's Night Study Guide, and Choices in Little Rock.

 

 View Face It - Facing History and Ourselves PSA

 

Founded in 1976, by educators who wanted to develop a more effective way to engage students, Facing History and Ourselves has grown from a single innovative course to an organization reaching classrooms across the US and around the world.

 

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Featured 4-9-2014: Today’s Document Mobile App

The National Archives has released their first mobile application called Today’s Document  based on the Today’s Document website from the US National Archives.

 

The Today’s Document app (available for both Android and iOS) is an interactive gallery that allows you to explore the holdings of the  National Archives through a collection of 365 documents and photographs from throughout history. Find out what significant event happened on any date, search the documents by keyword, or browse the full collection.

 

Featured documents have included popular documents like the Declaration of Independence and Emancipation Proclamation as well as lesser known documents like the Zimmerman Telegram, President Dwight D. Eisenhower’s 1961 Farewell address, and a handwritten draft of President John F. Kennedy’s 1961 Inaugural Address.

 

 

You can zoom in on the high resolution images to get a closer look, use the calendar feature to select a specific date, or select 'Surprise Me' to show a document at random. Learn more by tapping the Info icon to get background information on the document and links to related websites. Share documents by email, Facebook, and Twitter. Add documents to your list of favorites.

 

 See a demonstration of Today’s Document

 

The Today’s Document mobile app is currently available free in the Android Marketplace and the Apple iTunes Store.

 

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Featured 3-27-2014: AirPano

Created by a team of Russian photo enthusiasts, AirPano is a not-for-profit project focused on high-resolution spherical panoramas shot from a bird’s eye view.

 

AirPano claims to be the largest resource in the world (by geographical coverage, number of aerial photographs, and artistic and technical quality of the images) featuring high-resolution aerial 360° panoramic photographs.

 

During next two years, AirPano plans to create aerial photo panoramas and virtual tours of more of the most significant places in the world. They currently have nearly 2000 aerial panoramas showing over 200 famous locations, including the North Pole, Antarctica, the Mariana Trench, and even the view of the Earth from the stratosphere. New virtual tours are published every week.

 

 

A spherical panorama can give you and your students a sense of being on location, where you can turn completely around and have a closer look at every detail. This can be especially effective when viewed on a large screen such as an interactive whiteboard. You can zoom in closer and examine objects of interest, or "fly" to a new location by simply moving your hand.

 

AirPano offers most panoramas in several different resolutions to accommodate the viewer’s internet connection speed and computer hardware. There are even panoramas suitable for mobile devices.

 

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Featured 3-19-2014: Created Equal

Created Equal brings together four acclaimed documentary films on the long Civil Rights movement: The Abolitionists, Slavery By Another Name, Freedom Riders, and The Loving Story.

 

Each of the films presented in Created Equal tells remarkable stories of individuals who challenged the social and legal status quo of deeply rooted institutions, from slavery to segregation. The films document the efforts to bring about equality for all races through the Thirteenth, Fourteenth, and Fifteenth Amendments. Each explores a different time period, from the antebellum abolitionist movement through the post–Civil War transition period for African Americans, and into the late twentieth century.

 

 

The thematic content presented by these documentaries can be used to address Common Core Literacy standards in Reading, Writing, Speaking, and Listening. Students have the opportunity to participate in discussions of the central themes of the civil rights struggle and then engage in writing activities built on the primary evidence they saw in the films. The Common Core writing standards for history are very specific and detailed regarding the presentation of evidence in order to express an argument or conclusion.

 

 See a video overview of Created Equal: America's Civil Rights Struggle

 

As part of the National Endowment for the Humanities’s Bridging Cultures initiative, Created Equal encourages people to revisit the history of civil rights in America and to reflect on the ideals of freedom and equality that have helped bridge racial and cultural divides in our country.

 

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Featured 3-5-2014: Teaching Kids News

Teaching Kids News produces daily, timely, relevant kid-friendly news articles for kids, classroom educators, and parents. A new article, based on what is actually happening in the world, is offered every day (except holidays).

 

Every story is in kid-friendly language and is appropriate for kids in grades 2-8. As well as accessible vocabulary, Teaching Kids News provides context for everything in each story, so students can understand what’s going on, and why.

 

In the Curriculum Connections, students are encouraged to think critically about the story and also about the way the story is presented. Does the story exhibit a bias? How might the story be written differently by another journalist?

 

Teaching Kids News strives to "teach balanced literacy in a meaningful way.” Teachers have a current events resource that can be used for shared, guided, and independent reading lessons. At the bottom of each article are Writing/Discussion Prompts, Grammar Features, and a Reading Prompt that will enable you to connect with your students and solve real-life issues.

 

 

The articles are intended to work well in a classroom setting, in small groups, or for individual students. Each article can be a nearly complete lesson plan.

 

 See a video introduction to Teaching Kids News

 

Teaching Kids News has a sister site, Getting Kids Reading, with tips, activities, games, websites, research information and ideas that will help you get your kids reading.

 

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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.

 

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Featured: 2-20-2014 Timeglider

Timeglider is a flexible time-based visualization tool that can be utilized for a variety of applications.

 

Timeglider can quickly enhance your experience of the past, present, and future. It has been used by thousands of teachers. Students can easily create timelines, helping them understand the history of an event.

 

Timeglider is a data-driven, interactive timeline application. You can drag the timeline left and right, zoom in and out to view centuries at a time or a few hours. You can create event spans to see durations and how they overlap. 

 

 

Timeglider lets you collaborate and share easily. If you choose to make a timeline publicly accessible, a URL will be created with which to share your timeline. You can use that URL inside of an embed code, as well, for placing on blogs and web pages.

 

 See how to sign up for and use Timeglider

 

Individual students can open a free Timeglider account that provides up to 3 timelines. A basic teacher account that allows up to 30 student users is $5 US monthly ($50 US annually). School accounts are also available.

 

 Timeglider is not Flash-based. It uses HTML-5, so it functions on an iPad and other iOS devices through their browser.

 

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Featured: 2-19-2014 Timerime

TimeRime is a web application that allows users to create, view, and compare interactive timelines.

 

TimeRime timelines can be interactive and multimedia, incorporating text, music, YouTube movies, Google Maps, and so on.

 

 

The TimeRime online community allows people from all around the world to view, create, and compare timelines about anything that relates to time. For instance a timeline about a scientific development, or an historical event.

 

 

Visitors to the website can register for a free account allowing them to create timelines. Timerime Edu Standard offers the following additional features for an annual fee of €149 (about $200 US):

• Your own TimeRime environment with restricted access.
• Access for all students and teachers in your school.
• Unlimited number of timelines.
• No advertisements.
• Teachers have admin rights that allow them to view, edit or delete timelines of students, and to grant and deny access to students.
• Timelines can be saved as pdf.
• Smartboard compatibility.

 Watch a screencast showing how to use Timerime

 

Timerime is available in English, Dutch, and Spanish. Flash is required.

 

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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.

 

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Featured: 2-11-2014 Quandary Game

Quandary is a free, online, award-winning game for players aged 8 to 14, that engages students in ethical decision-making and develops skills that will help them manage challenging ethical issues in their own lives.

 

 

Quandary presents situations relative to building a new colony on the planet Braxos. Players must make decisions in situations that have no clear right or wrong answers but do lead to consequences for themselves, others in the colony, and to the planet Braxos. Players must consider facts, opinions, and solutions as they interact with other settlers in the colony, 

 

Playing Quandary can help participants develop such skills as critical thinking, perspective-taking, and decision-making. The game provides a structure for approaching ethical decision-making without telling players what to think. 

 

 

Quandary is a digital card-based game with three scenarios. Each takes about 10-30 minutes to complete, depending on the speed of the player. 

 

 See a video showing how teachers and students can use Quandary in the classroom

 

 Read a PDF that shows how Quandary correlates to the CCSS for English Arts

 

The game and supporting materials are all free. Quandary will work on any web browser with the latest version of the Flash player plug-in. 

  Quandary is also available as a standalone app for Android and iOS tablet devices.

 

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