Recommendations
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Item (linked) |
Rationale |
Listservs or
Forums
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http://groups.yahoo.com/group/civil-war |
This group includes over 200 members,
and is meant to serve as a forum for discussions about the American Civil
War. The site is not restricted to educators, and therefore there
are a lot of opinions mixed in with a lot of facts. Looking back
at past posts, and reading some current discussions, I've read discussions
on everything from crackpot theories about northern conspiracies to assassinate
Jefferson Davis, to educational discussions on how much an impact the tariff
issue had on causing the war. It's been interesting to see how die-hards
for the north or the south have interacted as well. I have gotten
some excellent recommendations on books to read, especially on the Andersonville
Camp and on the Gettysburg Campaign. I have read some excellent political
discussions about Supreme Court cases and state's rights/privelages that
I can use in my classroom discussions. I would recommend this site
for teachers looking to see a wide range of opinions on the topic, and
those who are also looking for discussion topics to use with their students. |
| http://groups.yahoo.com/group/worldwar2 |
This is another general listserv group from
Yahoo! that is very non-restrictive in its discussions, which allows me
to be involved in a broad range of opinions on many topics. Discussions
have ranged from the effectiveness of the atomic bombings of Hiroshima
and Nagasaki, to some very interesting discussions on the economic
impact of WWII on the US and how we needed the war to get out of the Great
Depression. Did we allow Pearl Harbor to happen to get into the war?
I don't think, but I was pointed to a few web sites that really did a nice
job of bringing up the debate. Great fodder for classroom discussions.
I would absolutely recommend the site to other teachers looking for an
open forum on all topics related to WWII. |
| http://groups.yahoo.com/group/teachingworldhistory |
This is a rather recent addition to the Yahoo!
listserv family, but nevertheless a good one. I've only read a few
of the postings so far, but I have gotten some excellent resource recommendations
for my unit on Egypt (everything from books, movies, magazines, and web
sites) that I can use immediately to help prepare lessons for next year.
I was really amazed that in such a short span of time, and with only a
handful of postings, the amount of resources I got from the site.
Hopefully the site will expand and include more educators in the near future. |
Telecollaborative
Projects
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http://njnie.dl.stevens-tech.edu/curriculum/drainproj/ |
This telecollaborative project asks participants/students
to enter the amount of water that they use each day over the course of
a school year. Students are participating from all over the world,
in every type of geographic region of the world. With the date collected,
students can compare water use around the world. This project fits
nicely into Geography Standards 2-4 that ask students to develop ideas
about the relationships between humans and their environments, and looks
at how humans adjust to and respond to their environment. By
studying world geographic regions (desert, polar, etc.), and looking at
the data collected, students can begin to see how humans in different parts
of the world adjust to the availability of water in their region (ie. desert
participants will probably use less water than the US). Highly recommended
project. The site also includes reference materials and teacher instructions,
as well as links to the National Standards included in the lesson. |
| http://njnie.dl.stevens-tech.edu/curriculum/genproj/index.html |
This telecollaborative project is based on
human genetics and the idea of the evolutionary development of different
dominate traits in people from different parts of the world. Students
are asked to enter their dominant physical traits and then hypothesis on
why certain traits appear in different parts of the world. This is
an excellent opportunity for teachers who teach evolution and the idea
of how humans adapt to their surroundings to have their students look at
different physical adaptations of people from around the world. Why
do people have different skin pigmentation's, or why do certain people
of remote parts of the desert regions have a certain trait? These
are just some of the things that can be analyzed and researched during
this project. Again, teacher materials, reference materials, and
links to National Standards covered are included. |
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Search Tools
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www.newsblip.com |
This is an excellent source of current events
news. It includes the major events of the day in the areas of World
News, US News, Sports, Business, Technology, Science, and Entertainment.
By clicking on any of the events, you are taken to sites such as CNET (Business),
Yahoo!News, BBC News, and USA Today. The best feature is a search
engine that allows you to type in a topic from a broad range of historical
topics (politics, economics, etc), and have related articles listed by
date from as recently as yesterday, to as far back as 10+ years.
This is a great way for students to trace the evolution of a current event
back to it's beginning, in any topic. |
| www.theindex.com |
This is a very broad search engine
that scours the entire net for topics and sites related to the keyword
that is entered. Typing in something like Columbus reveals almost
a thousand sites. Youcan narrow or broaden your search in the keyword
section as well. What I really liked about this site is that it does
not provide links to personal pages, pornography, or to sites based on
simple commercial interests. This will hopefully cut down on the
amount of time researchers will have to wade through the junk to find some
decent sites to use. |
| www.asque.com/atlasnav |
I chose this search engine because it focuses
on just about every conceivable geographic topic that could relate to any
country in the world. What to know the current population of any
country? Easy. Pick the country, and it will give you maybe
four sites that discuss the population, and may then provide further links
that discuss why the population has gone up or down. Want to visit
any country of the world? This site will help you plan the trip from
travel tips to accommodations to sites to see. If you want to know
the current events of what's going on right now in any country of the world,
you can do it here. Further, some of the current events discussed
will have links to the history behind the current news event. You
can find information about the governments of countries of the world, their
foods, religions, and also see the latest political maps of the world as
well. |
Lesson Plan
Sources
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http://ofcn.org/cyber.serv/academy/ace/soc/high.html |
The Organization For Community Networks is
an Ohio non-profit corporation which has been established to be a central
repository for information dealing with Free-Nets/Community Networks. There
is a collection of documents which have been supplied by various systems
to share with new and existing systems. The lesson plans found on this
site have been submitted from all over the country and the world, including
England, France, and even Russia.
I found almost one hundred ready to use history lessons
on this site, and besides a handful of lessons, all were aimed at high
school grades 9-12. Some lessons were single day activities, while
others were mulit-day lessons. I found a nice variety of lessons
on each of the social studies content standards for Delaware (history,
economics, geography, and civics). Each lesson was laid out very
well, and gave information on the suggested grade to be applied to, specific
objectives that should be reached at the end of the lesson, resources used
to gather the lesson's information, a step-by-step guide to using the lesson,
and even simple evaluations. Most of the lessons that I looked at
either already applied to our state standards, or could be applied with
some simple modifications. All of the links that I tried were in
working order as well.
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| http://www.askeric.org/cgi-bin/lessons.cgi/Social_Studies |
This site had a lot of lessons that cold
be used by history teachers of all grades and ability levels. What
I found to be very helpful is that the individual disciplines within history
were all represented and organized here, including lessons on sociology
and anthropology. The site was very easy to navigate through, and
all of the links that I followed worked. The lessons were submitted
from all over the country, though most were dated from the early nineties
still. Since standards have been developed after many of the lessons
were submitted, you should be aware that some modifications will have to
be done to make some of these lessons applicable today in Delaware.
The lessons were submitted by a teachers from the mid-west who each went
through a specific training regime to create these lessons (CEC Workshop),
so they are very similar in format. Each lesson is nicely laid out
in an easy to read format, and includes lesson objectives, step-by-step
instructions, resource lists, and evaluation tools. Some lessons
are project oriented, and some are multi-level cognitive tasks. |
Data Sets or
Online Tools
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http://www.getty.edu/research/tools/vocabulary/tgn/index.html |
This is a very easy to use tool that calculates
the exact longitude and latitude of any city in the world. It could
be helpful when students are doing simple map work to meet the geography
standards based on place and location. Students could use this tool
during a history unit on Exploration, in which they could chart the voyages
of the explorers they study. |
http://www.oanda.com/convert/classic
http://www.oanda.com/products/fxpense/ |
An excellent site for anything related to
economics and finance. This site has a simple currency convertor
that allows you to convert one form of currency to any other in the world.
This could be useful in any economic units that look at the interdependency
of world economies (if exchange rates drop or rise, what is the effect
on the economy of both both countries? Do tourism slow, and what
is the effects? etc.) Another online tool that this site provides
is a travel planner that enables a traveler to plan their entire trip (from
flying to eating breakfast to seeing the sites), and calculate how much
it will cost in US dollars and the currency of the destination. This
could be used to teach towards the economic standards based on personal
finance. |
| http://www.census.gov/main/www/popclock.html |
This neat little online tool gives you up-to-the-second
updates on your Desktop about the population of the US, and/or the World.
Using data collected from news sources around the country or the globe
(mainly birth and death reports), the Population Clocks estimate the population
of the US and/or the World at any given minute. You could use this
tool when discussing urban growth, the allocation of human resources dependent
upon numbers and the availability of resources, and city planning. |
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