Archive for category Social Studies

NY Times – Inside the Olympic Action

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NY Times – Inside the Olympic Action:

The New York Times has good collection of videos and audio slideshows designed to take you ‘inside the action‘ of Winter Olympic events. The videos will take you down a luge run at 90mph, through a snowboard half pipe, and down the men’s downhill ski course. Along the way athletes and coaches explain intricacies of each event and how the athletes maneuver through their events.

Applications for Education

Inside the Action could be a good resource for learning about Olympic events from an ‘insider’s perspective.’ You might want to use these videos in conjunction with a Google Maps Street View tour of the Winter Olympics.”

(Via FreeTech4Teachers.com.)

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Free Technology for Teachers: A Brief Timeline of FDR’s WWII Decisions

A Brief Timeline of FDR’s WWII Decisions:

“Yesterday, while exploring Time’s website I came across this timeline featuring the key decisions made by President Roosevelt during World War II. The World at War is an interactive timeline in which you can click on any of the key decisions listed to learn more about those decisions. The decisions interspersed amongst other key events of WWII. None of the events are terribly detailed, but the timeline does provide a nice general overview.

Applications for Education

The World at War could be a good introductory resource or review resource for US History teachers and their students. Teachers could have each student in a class select an item from the timeline to research and teach to their classmates. ”

(Via FreeTech4Teachers.)

TIME Magazine Interactive World at War Timeline

TIME Magazine Interactive World at War Timeline

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Google Living Stories

Google has introduced a new way of searching news stories that provides a timeline of the story against the articles that have been posted around the web called Google Living Stories. Right now its limited to New York Times and Washington Post stories, but that will grow over time. Really looks to be an exceptional way of researching the background a current news story.

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Fun Free Math Multiplayer Games for K-5

Arcademic Skill Builders_ Online Educational Games

Defend your space station from incoming meteors by solving multiplication problems or drag race your friends through division. AcademicSkillBuilders.com has a number of great math games covering Multiplication, Division, Fractions, Addition, Subtraction, and Integers. The games run great under any web browser and are quick to start and easy to play. All of the games are research based, and aligned to state standards.

Arcademic Skill Builders - Verb Viper

Theres also a selection of language arts games focusing on spelling, vowels, verbs and Social Studies games focusing on State Capitals and countries. Now I better close the window so I can get some work done…

Arcademic Skill Builders - Captial Penguin

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Daylight Saving Time Explained

Daylight Saving Time Explained:

“Last night most of us in the US turned our clocks back by one hour. Why did we do this? The CBS Fast Draw team explains why in the video below.

Applications for Education

This video provides a succinct explanation of the rationale for Daylight Saving Time. If you don’t plan to show the video to your students, it’s still worth watching as a refresher for yourself. “

(Via FreeTech4Teachers.)

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Playing History: Your Source for Historical Games

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Playing History: Your Source for Historical Games: ”

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Looking for a way to spice up your social studies or history class? Check this out! Way back in July, Richard Byrne blogged about this site: ‘Playing History.’ I loved it and tagged it, knowing I’d want to share it here. Finally had a chance to check it out, and yep – it’s worth a closer look!

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Basically, http://playinghistory.org/ is a site that aggregates games about history as submitted by people all over the web. A tag cloud is featured prominently as a the main interface for locating games but you can also search. Here’s a shot of the American History collection:

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A handy rating system allows you to quickly see which of these games were popular (or not).  Then you are only two mouse clicks away from the actual game, located somewhere on the Internet. Drilling into the listing yields a detail page with lots of helpful information:

Quality of the games can vary widely, however. I started playing ‘Do I Have a Right?’ and couldn’t stop! It was terrific! A few others I clicked on were more like interactive websites than games, but, it’s easy to make those determinations.

I like this site because it’s easy to use and helps you locate engaging activities tied to your curriculum. And, of course, the site itself and the games located are free!”

(Via NCS-Tech.)

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Learn About The Nobel Prize

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Learn About The Nobel Prize:

“As you’ve probably heard by now, the Nobel Peace Prize for 2009 has been awarded to President Barack Obama. This announcement will undoubtedly create good conversation in current events classes. Your students will probably have questions about the Nobel Peace Prize. The Nobel Foundation has created a Nobel Peace Prize fact sheet to help visitors learn more about the history of the prize and to address some frequently asked questions. The Nobel Peace Prize website also offers videos of lectures given by past recipients of the prize.

The Nobel Foundation has an educational games site designed to help students learn about the work of past Nobel Prize recipients from a variety of fields. For example, there is a game for learning about Pavlov’s dogs.”

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(Via FreeTech4Teachers.)

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Free Technology for Teachers: The Only Existing Film Images of Anne Frank

The Only Existing Film Images of Anne Frank:

“The video is believed to contain the only film images of Anne Frank. The video was uploaded to YouTube by the Anne Frank Museum.

Applications for Education

The video could be valuable for anyone teaching lessons on WWII and the Holocaust. The film, recorded in 1941 according to the Guardian, represents the time in Frank’s life before going into hiding. One simple activity you could do with this video is ask students why recording this film wouldn’t have been possible later in Frank’s life.”

(Via FreeTech4Teachers.)

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AP Images Now Available

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Thanks to the DuPage ROE we are pleased to offer access to staff to AP Images. The service provides access to web quality photos taken by Associated Press affiliated photographers. The site is a great resource for current event photos ranging from world news to sports and more.


Access the site here.

Username: dupage
Password: dupage

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Ansel Adams at 100

Tetons by Ansel Adams

Tetons by Ansel Adams

I’ve always been a fan Ansel Adams and his stunning landscape photography. He turned 100 in 2002 and to commemorate that event the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art launched an exhibit “Ansel Adams at 100.” Unfortunately, living in Chicago very few if any of us (or our students) would have been able to attend.

Now however, the Museum has decided to recreate the exhibit online with interactive content including photos, audio interviews, and video with the artist. Its incredibly well done and really a must see in my mind.

This site is a great resource for middle school photography units, or art appreciation at the elementary schools. Outside of Art this would be a great place to see stunning photos of the American wilderness in Social Studies, or to gather information for a bibliography project.

Hats off to Free Tech for Teachers for finding this great resource.

San Francisco Museum of Modern Art: Ansel Adams at 100

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