Instructify

BY CHRISTOPHER PANNA

“You have to do more than memorize facts! Show me that you can analyze and connect these ideas!” How many times have we said things like this to our students? In the quest to develop higher-order thinking skills, The Flow of History can provide some visually captivating help.

Flow charts are the main attraction here. There are more than 200 in all, covering a lot of the most common topics in world history. The site’s creator sought to highlight cause-and-effect relationships, and The Flow of History does that beautifully. The charts use color and visuals to show the progression of events that led to, say, the rise of Greek democracy or the British conquest of India. And the design of the diagrams is as varied as the stories they tell. Sometimes events are shown in a linear way, but more often they double back into cycles, diverge into separate branches, and unite several events into one result. There is also a reading to go with each flow chart, so students can use the chart to help understand the reading, or vice versa.

There are plenty of possibilities for using The Flow of History. After seeing a few examples, students could create their own flow charts. Or, as the site’s creator suggests, they could focus on the big picture by summarizing a chart in one sentence. For some students, a visual model like this can turn a scattered mess of events into a sequence that makes sense.

The Flow of History

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BY CHRISTOPHER PANNA

It’s surprising how many teachers either don’t know about textbook companion websites or don’t bother to check them out. These are websites that publishers offer to accompany the material in a textbook. They vary in quality, but if you have a good one, your students can access some really useful supplemental material. Check the first few pages of your book and see if there’s a web address. Your companion website may have some of these features:

Summaries

A fantastic tool to improve comprehension or help with review. Summaries may take the form of outlines, slideshows, or even MP3s (think audio books). Your students can download audio summaries to their smartphones or iPods, and while they won’t start rocking out to physics or world history, they’ll be able to listen anywhere and anytime.

Interactives

Whether maps, diagrams, timelines, or games, these activities can be used in the classroom or for students to review at home. They’ll most likely be organized into the same sections and use the same vocabulary terms as your book.

Quizzes

The online medium makes quizzes more engaging, as they may have sounds, graphics, or extra factoids after each question. But the most useful feature is score reporting via email, which allows students to send their quiz scores to you. My students take the quiz after they read and only send me their score once they achieve 100%. That might mean doing it several times, but they always come out with a better understanding of what they read.

So take a look online — there could be a powerful resource waiting for you. I’ve only described some of the tools your companion website may have. I’d also recommend spending a few minutes of class showing everything a companion site offers. If your students like what they see, they may start using it even when you don’t ask them to.

Photo credit: wohnai on Flickr.

BY KEVIN HODGSON

There’s a saying that if you want to understand the times, read the advertisements. What companies are selling, and how they are selling it, is an indication of the beliefs, values, and prejudices of a society. Certainly, this philosophy often forms the heart of many media studies classes. Adflip is a site with an abundant number of advertisements from various decades, ranging from back to the 1940s all the way up to the present.

Just a glance at the advertisment posters from the 1940s demonstrates a country still pulling out from the Great Depression, with smiling faces selling products designed to let you forget about your troubles. There are also plenty of car advertisements, and car parts, and it’s interesting to note how the ads change and stay same over time. The site has a free component, but it has its limitations, and the paid component lets you go deeper into the Adflip archives.

In the classroom

Adflip provides one avenue for examining the rhetoric of ads from across the last 50 to 60 years in the United States. This might be done by choosing a general topic, such as automobiles, and picking apart the use of image, word choices, and other advertising strategies that also connect to the zeitgeist of the times. In addition, one thing that popped out at me is how some ads are clearly targeted for men, while others, for women, and I imagine that is still very true today (such as in Car and Driver magazine as opposed to Glamour magazine, for example). Students who examine these rhetorical stances more closely may become better attuned to the times when their own demographic and gender are being targeted by companies.

Adflip

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BY CHRISTOPHER PANNA

Teaching about the Supreme Court? PBS has a set of interactives covering everything from the Court’s history to its role in everyday life. With this collection at your disposal, you can teach about almost any aspect of the Court. Want to show the symbolism behind the Supreme Court’s seal, its building, and the justices’ robes? There’s an activity for that. Or maybe your students would like to put themselves on the justices’ bench. There’s an interactive that presents the two sides of a classic case and lets them choose the winner.

There are nine activities in all, so your best bet is to take a look yourself. One of the most interesting is called “A Day in the Life.” It takes you through an average day at school, stopping along the way to ask questions about Supreme Court rulings that pertain to student life. You’ll see how the Court has ruled on issues like backpack searches and school internet censorship. Another one, “Supreme Inspiration,” is great for building cross-curricular connections to language arts. It highlights famous literature that was quoted in Supreme Court opinions. Writers like Plato, Shakespeare, Mark Twain, and George Orwell have all made it into the justices’ writings; the activity explains how and in what context.

More broadly than teaching U.S. History, these activities have plenty of implications for Government and Civics, all centered on that document that’s gotten so much press lately: the Constitution.

Supreme Court History Interactives via PBS.org

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BY BILL FERRIS

Human history has long been documented in cartoon form. From the earliest cave paintings to today’s heavy-handed editorial cartoons, ink and paper (or cave walls) have recorded many of the watershed events in human history. Illustrator Jon White carries on this fine tradition at Today’s Document by making cartoons inspired by our country’s various historical happenings. White himself sums it up best:

“Our National Archives, here in Washington, DC, publishes a handy, educational RSS feed called “Today’s Document.” From those Documents, you’ll see me make drawings here. Some of them have cows.“

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BY KEVIN HODGSON

Not all of history has to be ancient. Much of the technology that has become the center of how we communicate, game, and find information has developed over time, although it seems as if the advancements have accelerated in the field of technology. Vintage Technology is a site that seeks to showcase the evolution of devices in our lives through the archiving of old advertisements from the 1950s.

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BY KEVIN HODGSON

10.10.10 is almost here. Are you ready? A project known as “One Day on Earth” seeks to document the ways in which people live and work and play on a single day when our calendar points to the 10th day of the 10th month of the 10th year in the millennium. Sure, it’s sort of odd but it’s a hook that opens up a possibility for creativity for students early in the school year.

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BY CHRISTOPHER PANNA

What plot could be more alluring than a murder mystery? Whether you’re teaching about the Roman Empire or just want to give your students an exercise in logic, the BBC game Death in Rome will bring CSI-style detective drama into your classroom.

This game is especially easy to play and requires no software. Within seconds of clicking the start button you’re presented with the basic police report: In the year 80 AD Tiberius Claudius Eutychus was discovered dead in his Ostia apartment. (more…)

BY KEVIN HODGSON

HistoryPin combines maps, images, and historical inquiry to explain the changes in neighborhoods through stories and archival images. While still in beta, the site (which is a partnership between Google and an organization called We Are What We Do) has interesting potential for research in the classroom and could be used as a model for a community-action project for students.

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BY KEVIN HODGSON

For the past few years, the United States Library of Congress has been aggressively pushing its archives online through such sites as Flickr and others. This wealth of resources that was previously hidden away in stacks somewhere can now be utilized by educators thanks to the technological revolution. The latest push from the Library of Congress is its new App for iPhones and other Apple devices. The Library of Congress Virtual Tour is free for download at the iTunes store (I’m not sure if an Android version is coming in the future) and features galleries of exhibits along themes such as the Bible, Creating the United States, and Exploring the Early Americas.

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BY CHRISTOPHER PANNA

Ever watch Pop-Up Video? Or have you noticed the first-down line that magically appears when you watch football on TV? These are examples of augmented reality — adding information to enhance a real-world view. Thanks to efforts like the American Civil War Augmented Reality Project, the concept is making its way into education. A few Pennsylvania teachers plan to use this technology to help visitors understand Civil War battlefields.

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BY REBECCAH HAINES

At Interactives at Learner.org, you will find interactive activities in the content areas of math, science, language arts, history, and the arts. Within each activity there is a combination of text, animations, pictures, and interactive material. I used this one on the rock cycle with my students last year.

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BY KEVIN HODGSON

AnswerGarden is sort of like a virtual garden, in which you plant a question or query and wait patiently for folks to provide the answers or responses. The “garden” of responses then grows right before your eyes. Free to use, easy to set up, and even easier to respond to, AnswerGarden is an interesting brainstorming or response tool that uses the concept of “word clouds” to display what visitors have written.

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BY BILL FERRIS

Everyone knows nuclear weapons are deadly. Ground Zero makes the destruction hit home, semi-literally.

This Google Maps mashup lets you see what would happen to your hometown (or another location of your choosing) if it was hit by various nuclear weapons. Pick your poison, which ranges from Fat Man and Little Boy to the Soviet Tsar Bomba, which caused the largest explosion ever. You can even look at the impact of the asteroid that killed the dinosaurs, proving that man is still no match for nature. (more…)

BY JASON DON FORSYTHE

Like most children going through middle school and high school, I on occasion was shown one of those grainy black-and-white film on the day we had a sub. You know the ones, made during the good old days when the narrators talked in monotone, the music consisted of dramatic orchestra swells, and everyone wore suits or long dresses. Well, the good old days are back in full force with the government-funded FedFlix, an extensive archive of government-funded films made from back in the 1940s to the modern day.

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