by Larry Ferlazzo, Websites of the Day
- The Constitution Center has to be everybody’s first stop. It has a ton of resources. They are particularly known for their Interactive Constitution and lots of other online interactives and games.
- Here are collections of the online lessons I used in my United States History classes last year on the Bill of Rights and on the Constitution.
- The Constitution For Kids has three “levels” of explanations about the U.S. Constitution. An English Language Learner — from high Beginning to Advanced — can choose which one he/she finds most accessible.
- The History Channel has many multimedia features related to the Constitution.
- How Stuff Works has many videos related to the Constitution.
- Here’s an interactive “learning object” from the Wisconsin Online Resource Center on Amendments To The Constitution.
- The Henry Ford Museum has a short Constitution I.Q. test that would be accessible to English Language Learners after they have studied about the United States government.
- Here’s a bilingual (English/Spanish) glossary for the Constitution.
- Quiz Tree has some interactive quizzes on the Constitution.
- Celebrate The Constitution comes from Scholastic.
- Here’s an interactive on the Bill of Rights.
- Resources for Teaching the Constitution is a great feature at The New York Times Learning Network.
- The Weekly Reader has a nice interactive that provides audio support for the text.
- Here’s an infographic on the Constitution.
Welcome to HistoryBuff.com, a nonprofit organization devoted to providing FREE primary source material for students, teachers, and historybuffs. This site focuses primarily on HOW news of major, and not so major, events in American history were reported in newspapers of the time. In addition, there is information about the technology used to produce newspapers over the past 400 years. Our latest addition is panoramas of historic sites in America.
About HistoryBuff
Newspaper Collecting
Online Newspaper Archives
Newsletter Archives
Historic Panoramas
Reference Libraries
Primary Source Material
State Facts
Interactive Quizzes
Help By Email
The Ratzel Room Daily: Encouraging Kids to Think About Science in the Real World
A middle-school science and social studies teacher in Kansas produces a daily electronic newspaper for her students. Marsha Ratzel uses current events to connect her students with real-world examples of in-class lessons. For teachers who want to replicate her Ratzel Room 66 Daily project, Ratzel suggests going slowly at first and using a combination of technology and traditional teaching.
Check out the full story at Edutopia.org/Eric Brunsell’s blog
Below are my versions. I have been using it for a few months and find it quite helpful. It is easy, give it a try.
Technology Keys Daily: http://paper.li/cyndidannerkuhn This is Twitter feed of my following and followers.
The #EdTech Daily: http://paper.li/tag/edtech This one is generated from the Twitter Hashtag #edtech.
Preview American Experience’s Freedom Riders now at http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/americanexperience/freedomriders/watch and download the study guide written by Facing History and Ourselves http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/americanexperience/freedomriders/teachers-guide as well as a host of resources to teach about this revolutionary step in the battle for civil rights. From May until November 1961, more than 400 black and white Americans risked their lives – and many endured savage beatings and imprisonment – for simply traveling together on buses and trains as they journeyed through the Deep South. The program will air May 16 at 9pm.
150 Years Later: Primary Sources, Technology Bring Civil War to Life
Many schools are using technology and the Internet to incorporate primary documents and photographs into their teachings on the Civil War. Educators say the resources offer a way for students to better understand the causes of the conflict. “It gives students a different perspective. It’s not just this guy living in our time telling us about the war. This is a photograph, a diary entry, a map that one of General Sherman’s soldiers drew,” teacher Carole L. Parsons said. Education Week/Curriculum Matters blog
Read the full story in the The News-Times (Danbury, Conn.)
Thank so much to Michael Zimmer of In Pursuit of Technology Integration Happiness for sharing the links below on his blog this morning. Michael does a Weekly Core Subjects list and it is always rich with websites to explore. I always feel the need to share his resources with my students and readers. So thank you Michael for being such a powerful resource.
Newspaper Blackout. Students take a newspaper and black out all the words to create a story, poem, quote, or whatever. What a neat activity for English teachers. The link will take you to a “blog,” but in reality, this would be a neat classroom notebook to create. I could see this same format being used in other subjects when wanting to find the most important parts of an article/story. Great ideas Michael, and as a former journalism teacher, I love it.
Cummings Study Guides provides various study guides for Shakespeare, Edgar Allen Poe, and various other types of literature. There is a vast index worth checking out.
Capitonyms is a word whose meaning changes based on whether or not it is capitalized. .
The Basics of APA Style is a web-based slide presentation that also includes voice over. It does a good job of explaining APA formatting.
“The Favorite Poem Project is dedicated to celebrating, documenting and encouraging poetry’s role in Americans’ lives. Robert Pinsky, the 39th Poet Laureate of the United States, founded the Favorite Poem Project shortly after the Library of Congress appointed him to the post in 1997.”
Knowing Poe is an interactive website designed to share about Poe the Person, Poe the Write, and Poe’s Library.
Check out the Math, Social Studies and Science resources, Click Here
Larry Ferlazzo always shares wonderful resources. Check out his extensive list of Civil War resources.
http://larryferlazzo.edublogs.org/2011/04/06/good-civil-war-resources/
I now have an iPad2 and am in the process of getting things set up. So far, loving it. Screen quality is considerably better, and much lighter. I have the pink “cover” and it is cool, but worry about protection. Anyway, I am excited to have to new version. So on to Apps for this week.
Mac|Life’s weekly App|Life review:”Take note, Apple. This is how it’s done. Apple’s iPad is certainly capable of replacing every notebook you’ll ever need, but let’s be serious — 
nothing about Apple’s Notes app is going to entice any fence-sitters to ditch their trusty pen and paper. Ginger Labs’ Notability, however, just might.”
**iPad 2 launch sale. 80% off! Limited time only!** Only 99 cents!
“Notability is the perfect companion for iPad in education.” – EdReach
Notability is a powerful app for typing, organizing and recording your notes on iPad. It improves your productivity in lectures, meetings and interviews when you need to work fast, and also afterward to organize, review, edit and share your notes.
CAPTURE EVERYTHING
Notability provides all of the essentials for taking notes fast — typing, drawing and recording. And so much more.
- Quickly type notes and outlines.
- Bullet lists and number lists are fast and easy to create.
- Each note can include multiple fonts, colors, styles and sizes.
- Both the onscreen and external keyboards are well-supported.
- You can draw colorful figures and write with your finger or stylus. You can add photos and web clips with the text automatically wrapping around them.
- Make audio recordings. Recordings are automatically linked to your notes so you’ll always be sure to get the point. And recording continues even when using other apps on iPad.
REVIEW AND EDIT LATER
Edit notes by adding colors to the text, easily edit a figure, or add a photo or a web clip. Hide the keyboard to see more of your notes.
STAY ORGAN
IZED & SAFE
The Library makes it easy to organize notes into your subject categories, to sort them, and to find them via search. You can easily share and backup your notes in a variety of formats via email, or upload them to Dropbox, iDisk or a WebDAV server. iTunes File Sharing is a fast way to send notes to your computer for further review and edit.
EDIT NOTES ON A COMPUTER TOO
iMovie & GarageBand
iMovie for iPad Tips and Tricks from Mac
Mac|Life: Unlike the first iPad, you can edit short films with the iPad 2, thanks to iMovie. But editing by touch involves a lot of gestures and without knowing what they are, you could end up being frustrated by the whole process. So we’ve compiled a few tips to help you hit the ground running.
- Tip 1: Shot Duration
- Tip 2: Name That Film
- Tip 3: Split Up
- Tip 4: Shorten Titles
- Tip 5: Clip Rotation
- Tip 6: Jump and Zoom
GarageBand for the iPad
GarageBand turns your iPad into a collection of Touch Instruments and a full-featured recording studio — so you can make music anywhere you go. Use Multi-Touch gestures to play pianos, organs, guitars, drums, and basses on your iPad. They sound and play like their counterparts, but let you do things you could never do on a real instrument. Enjoy a full range of Smart Instruments that make you sound like a pro — even if you’ve never played a note before. Plug an electric guitar into your iPad and play through classic amps and stompbox effects. Use the built-in microphone or a guitar to record, or capture any performance. Then mix up to eight tracks to create a song you can share.
- Play your iPad like a musical instrument.
- Sound like a virtuoso with Smart Instruments.
- Create a song anywhere you go.
- Share your songs.
History Apps
Manual for the United States of America….$2.99
Whether you need to cram for a History final or just got a new job leading a world superpower, having America’s founding documents close at hand is essential. We combined our free copies of the Constitution and the Declaration of Independence along with several other important references into one easy to use iPad/iPhone/iPod Touch application.
Included:
- Declaration of Independence with notes, images, and information about the signers
- Articles of Confederation
- U.S. Constitution with notes, images, and information about the signers
- Federalist Papers
- Anti-Federalist Papers
- Bios of Supreme Court Justices
- Washington’s Farewell Address
- Emancipation Proclamation
- Lincoln’s 2nd Inaugural Address
- Gettysburg Address
- United Nations Charter
- Censure of Joseph McCarthy
- 1963 Nuclear Test Ban Treaty
- 1964 Civil Rights Act
- Indian Bill of Rights
- 2001 Patriot Act
- American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009
- How Our Laws Are Made
- Opinions from selected landmark Supreme Court cases
- List of U.S. Presidents with bios
- List of U.S. States
- Elected President, Senate, House, State Governors info
- US Flag Code and image/measurement guide
- Set text size preferences in Settings app
Oregon Trail…99 cents
Westward, Ho! Your favorite pioneering adventure game is back and takes you to an exciting, historical side-scrolling adventure entirely rethought to fit the Touch experience of your iPhone / iPod touch.
REMEMBER AMERICA’S CULTURAL ICONIC GAME
- All of the decision-making and problem-solving fun of the original game.
- Prepare for your departure: Select the members of your party, choose your departure date and purchase supplies.
- Fun and educational! Historical references through real locations and famous characters from the past, plus historic facts perfectly explain the perilous journey of pioneers.
A WILDER EXPERIENCE THAN YOU’VE EVER PLAYED BEFORE
- 8 skill-based mini-games, including 2 accelerometer-based challenges: hunting, fishing, river crossing, rafting, wagon repairing, telegraph, berry picking, and gold panning.
- Random events (disease, bandits, hitchhikers, etc.) faced by real pioneers increases the challenge.
- Side-missions add more excitement to your journey, affecting your westward trek.
- Refreshed with modern, colored graphics in a cartoonish style.
Civilization Revolution…..$6.99
Build. Discover. Conquer. Rule the World!
Lead your civilization from the dawn of man to the modern age and beyond in Sid Meier’s Civilization Revolution. Go head to head with history’s greatest leaders as you wage war, conduct diplomacy, discover new technologies, inspire your nation and build the most powerful empire the world has ever known.
For nearly two decades, the Sid Meier’s Civilization® franchise has been the benchmark for strategy gaming. Now the greatest strategy game of all time arrives for the Apple iPhone™ and iPod® touch with Sid Meier’s Civilization Revolution™.
- LEAD YOUR PEOPLE TO GREATNESS: Choose your victory path: military, cultural, economic or scientific. However you choose to lead your people, there’s a way to win.
- CHOOSE YOUR CIV: Choose from 16 Civilizations throughout history (including America, Spain, China, Japan and Germany) to lead to victory.
- INTENSE COMBAT: Triple your strength by combining up to three units into one powerful army and destroy your enemies. Level them up through military victories to gain additional strength and new abilities.
- TOUCH BASED CONTROLS: Completely new interface designed for gesture-based controls. Zoom in with a pinch, move your units with a drag and scroll across the map with a flick.
- ACCESSIBLE TO ALL: Multiple difficulty levels, an integrated tutorial and friendly advisors are all here to help newcomers and seasoned Civ veterans alike.
- SAME GAME, SMALLER SCREEN: Sid Meier’s Civilization Revolution for iPhone and iPod touch has all the same civilizations, gameplay and scenarios from the award winning console game. It’s all of the goodness of Civ right in the palm of your hands.
- GLOBAL DOMINATION TO GO: Conquer the world whenever you want, wherever you want, on your time. Save whenever you like, or just use the autosave feature if you get a call.
On this day…FREE
….historical events and birthdays for any day of the year.
On this day…” is a stylish calendar that lets you view historical events, birth and death dates on your iPhone and iPod touch.
FEATURES
- Display Events, Birth and Death dates
- Quickly select a specific calendar date
- Shake your device to reload the current day
- Open entries in the Articles Wikipedia App or Safari
Dr. Marty Levine, Professor Emeritus of Secondary Education, California State University, Northridge (CSUN), has gathered lesson plans and resources from the Internet which social studies teachers will find useful. These materials are presented in the table below. http://www.csun.edu/~hcedu013/index.html
- Lesson Plans and Teaching Strategies
- Online Activities
- Teaching Current Events
- Other Social Studies Resources
- National Council for the Social Studies
- Newsgroups and Mailing Lists
- Social Studies School Service
- Educational Standards and Curriculum Frameworks
- What’s New This Month
This seems to be a pretty good resource, although some of the sites need to be updated, so if you find a resource link that does not work, just go to the next one.
The CNN Freedom Project: Ending Modern Day Slavery” is an excellent multimedia resource on human trafficking. Wow is is startling, and would fit right in to many units of study. The first one that comes to mind is when we study the Civil War. As Americas, we just assume the Civil War ended slavery. Well, did it?
Here is the link to Larry Ferlazzo’s Websites of the Day Blog resources for more things to hlep in your unit of studdy or lesson plan: The Best Resources For Learning About Human Trafficking Today.
Wow, Awesome Library organizes the Web with 37,000 carefully reviewed resources, including the top 5 percent in education. This is a really cool site and worth checking out.
http://www.awesomelibrary.org/
Seven million free images are available to teachers and schools.
In spring 2009, Edutopia.org and Life.com offered our visitors the chance to choose an educational theme for a photo gallery created by the curators of Life’s newly released online library. You voted, and here’s a link to your winning choice: Civil Rights: Teachable Moments. And be sure to read how Life.com deputy editor Ben Cosgrove put together this gallery.
These and seven million other images of American history and culture are available on Life.com. The relaunched site — accessible to everyone but especially useful to educators — makes the entire archives of photo giants Life magazine and Getty Images available free. Users can view galleries curated by the site’s editors or search the library by names, dates, subjects, and locations. The archive chronicles current events, too, with daily news galleries and the addition of 3,000 new Getty photos a day.
English/Language Arts
50 Places to Find Free Books Online is a list of sites where students and teachers can find books online. For schools with a 1:1 programs in place, these types of sites are great additions to the curriculum and becoming a necessity in tight budget times.
Wordfaire it’s a free live blogging platform that anyone can use…….writing/blogging/publishing platform. The site advertises that as you write, it is published to the web. There is no waiting for the post to appear.
Mathematics
WOW Math is a personal teacher website for a math teacher who teaches Algebra 1 and 2, as well as AP Calculus. He has aYouTube videos as well on his personal YouTube channel with hundreds of math videos.
InterMath is a professional development effort designed to support teachers in becoming better mathematics educators. It focuses on building teachers’ mathematical content knowledge through mathematical investigations that are supported by technology. InterMath includes a workshop component and materials to support instructors.
Science
The Institute of Physics has a great YouTube channel of videos to share in physics classrooms. Easy and free access to online video is a game changer for the classroom.
Sun Motions is a Flash based interactive that allows users to see the angle of the sun from months, latitudes, and times of day. You can play an animation of the motion of the sun as well to help students see how the sun acts through certain time periods.
Explore Biology is a resource for teachers of high school biology and especially AP Biology. lecture notes, blogs, handouts, activities, labs.
Planet Foss is a Science Photo Sharing site. iLearn Technology blog has a great write up about the site.
2011 is the International Year of Chemistry has excellent resources for Chemistry teachers.
Social Studies
The History Teachers Channel on YouTube takes popular songs and changes the lyrics to teach various content in history.
THIS DAY from Nikon provides an image from history for the day you visit from various years in history. Free Technology for Teachers had a post about this site. Very informative.
Miscellaneous
PsykoPaint is a web based software that allows you to create and paint amazing art from photographs. Wow, this is just very cool.
DrawIsland is a free online version of Microsoft Paint. Easy to use.
Graphic Organizers.If you need a good online graphic organizer tool, here is a list of 30 to choose from.
Thanks to The Pursuit of Technology Integration Happiness by Michael Zimmer for sharing these resources on his blog.
What Works in Education
“Our fifth grade students have been studying the American Revolution. This week we began comparing events in Egypt with what we are learning about the American Revolution: protester demands, protester actions, government actions. Also tying into economic and media issues: effect on businesses and consumers, communication among the protesters.”
Check out the details, CLICK HERE
The National Archives’s YouTube channel offers twenty playlists of archival footage covering everything from the Great Depression to WWII to NASA’s space exploration to the Olympics and much more.
For Example: National Archives at Kansas City
The National Archives also has free apps. And the Today’s Document mobile app from the US National Archives is an interactive gallery of 365 documents and images from the National Archives. Today’s Document RSS feed includes the same stuff. With the mobile app you can select any day of the year to find out what significant things happened in US History on that 
day. You can also choose “random” to have a random document or image appear.
The mobile app provides the same background information that you can find online.
Thanks to Richard Bryne, Free Technology for Teachers for sharing these resources.
by Kevin Zimmer, The Pursuit of Technology Integration Happiness Kevin has a great selection of resources for Core Subjects. Check them out.
Math Web Based Resources – General, Algebra, Geometry, Calculus, and Trigonometry
English Web Based Resources – General, Reading, Writing, British Literature, and American Literature
Social Studies Web Based Resources – General, History, Government, Economics, and Geography
Science Web Based Resources – General, Earth-Space Science, Biology, Chemistry, Physics, and Anatomy
Electives Web Based Resources – Foreign Language, Special Education, Art, Agriculture, Business/Marketing, PE/Health, Music, Practical LivingCroe Subject Resources
In honor of African American History Month, we’re giving away a bundle that includes Madeleine Sackler’s film, The Lottery, Edutopia’s School-To-Career DVD, and Jonathan Kozol’s book The Shame of the Nation: The Restoration of Apartheid Schooling in America (a value of $55.00)! Enter today for a chance to win!
English
TES English provides and publishes printable and editable teaching resources, worksheets, lesson plans and ton of resources for secondary English teachers.
Paper Rater or Paper Grader paste your paper into the site. The software provides detailed reports of word choice, grammar, spelling errors, and more. No sign up is necessary and it will be “graded” in real time.
Mathematics
Microsoft Mathematics 4.0 has a graphing calculator that plots in 2D & 3D, step-by-step equation solving, and useful tools to help students with math and science studies. It is down-loadable software for students.
Math247 provides links and resources to various math screencasts and math videos. There are videos for all ages and grades and several are submitted by students.
Touch Trigonometry a simple Flash product that hopes to help math learners of all ages get an intuitive understanding of trigonometry. It aims to do that by letting you just play with the trig functions, with no buttons to get in the way.
Science
Homespun Science Tunes The following songs are parodies. I grabbed the musical nature of the song and created my own lyrics. They are all created for guitar….acoustic, electric….you name it. In my classroom, I have a “Guitar of Science” for playing such tunes. Sometimes students like to sing along and sometimes they don’t, but they are always smiling….and learning scientific concepts along the way. A couple of these song were written with the help of another science teacher Mr. Youngs. By writing and singing these tunes, I hope that I’ve struck a different “chord” in the students’ brains to help the realize there are many ways to learn new things!
The Virtual Lab from the ChemCollective provides interactive science experiments that will go through the steps of various science experiments.
Practical Biology provides teachers of biology at all levels with experiments that demonstrate a wide range of biological concepts and processes. Each practical may be used alone or as a starting-point for open-ended investigations or enhancement activities, such as clubs or open-day events.
Practical Physics is a website for teachers enabling them to share their skills and experience of making experiments work in the classroom.
Practical Chemistry is a website that provides all teachers of chemistry with a wide range of experiments to illustrate concepts or processes, as starting-points for investigations and for enhancement activities.
Physics Demonstration Films from the National STEM Centre provides 8 videos explaining various physics concepts.
Open Science Resources is an educational community that provides various resources for teachers. You will have to sign up for an account before being allowed access, but once you have an account you will be able to visit the repository which includes numerous educational materials (images of exhibits and scientific instruments, animations, videos, lesson plans, student projects and educational pathways with guidelines for interactive museum visit experiences).
Social Studies
An interesting video on the reading of the Gettysburg Address. Worth sharing with students, because the reader does it with some passion.
From the New York Times is an interesting “Times Machine” where you can have access to New York Times newspapers from Volume 1, Number 1 of The New-York Daily Times, on September 18, 1851, through The New York Times of December 30, 1922. Choose a date in history and flip electronically through the pages, displayed with their original look and feel.
Thanks to Kevin Zimmer for sharing these resources.
International Holocaust Remembrance Day is on January 27th.
Auschwitz After 65 years-Photo Essay-Time
Holocaust Remembrance Multimedia Presentation from Glencoe
Lesson of Auschwitz Interactive from CBS News
Holocaust from How Stuff Works
Holocaust Remembrance Day is recognized internationally on January 27th. Breaking News English lesson provides audio support for the text on that day.
ESL Holiday Lessons | International Holocaust Remembrance day (kinda of a game)
Life in the Shadows; Hidden Children and the Holocaust
Online Holocaust ExhibitionsFlight and Rescue: Journey of Survival
Hilters’ Rage from Thinkquest
From TeachersTV, This classroom resource contains six Key Stage 3 history lesson starters on the Holocaust, featuring archive footage, personal testimonies from survivors and other material.
They all support Google Maps for you to easily find the place you are interested in. They all have Google Earth integrated for you to get the location 3D view and they allow users to upload old photographs of any geographical locations.
HistoryPin
Historypin is a global project created by the social movement We Are What We Do, in partnership with Google. The site works as a digital time machine, allowing people to view and share history online. According to the site creators, its mission is to get families back together to share memories and organize them using the site.
LookBackMaps
LookBackMaps is another (less fun than History Pin, but cool too) way to visually organize, explore and engage in historical photographs through web.
The collection stored on the site was started by mapping the “millions of historical photos available through public libraries and private collections on the web”. However, the creators do need help and do allow users to help them make their collection larger.
SepiaTown
SepiaTown lets you view and share “thousands” of mapped historical images from around the globe.
The site has a huge collection of photos (with carefully cited sources for each one):
The NOW/THEN link switches to Google Street View to compare the historical place with how it looks now. Each photo has notes with some historical and geographic information on it.
