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This site has some amazing links for all the content areas: sciences, lanugage arts (lit trips), maths, and social studies, including U.S. History Tours, using Google Maps and Google Earth. For multiple grades.

"A superb history tool which combines timelines, maps, text and media, such as videos and audio. A great way to add depth to the story of past events."

"If you have performed a recent search you may have found there is a countless number of social studies resources on the internet. In this post the goal was to find ten sites that addressed the area of Social Studies across all the diversified areas found in the discipline. Below, you will find the results of some extensive searching! You will discover a wide variety of materials including readings, OER (Open Education Resources), primary documents, textbooks, lessons, activities, interactives, videos, audios, and some great blog readings. There is bound to be something for any teacher. Best of all many of these resources will help build a Social Study Classroom e-curriculum while facilitating those important 21st century skills and engaging students! "

Top maps in the gallery. These should be an inspiration for your students for any social studies or environmental studies content projects. They are all fascinating.

This creative mapping tool can hold text, photos, and multimedia. Would be nice to use with an international project. Requires sign-up and log-in

These maps based on U.S. Census and geography include demographic, economic, and business data about various areas. Should be useful for classes studying the U.S.

"Maps can be a remarkably powerful tool for understanding the world and how it works, but they show only what you ask them to. So when we saw a post sweeping the Web titled "40 maps they didn't teach you in school," one of which happens to be a WorldViews original, I thought we might be able to contribute our own collection. Some of these are pretty nerdy, but I think they're no less fascinating and easily understandable. A majority are original to this blog (see our full maps coverage here), with others from a variety of sources. I've included a link for further reading on close to every one." Exceptionally explanatory. Use for class projects and problem-based learning.

This set of sties has some great resources to spark writing and discussion in your class: write about a picture, do research to find resources that explain the picture, etc. Historical, social science, and cultural activities.

The PBS site is free and has wonderful video and interactive activities for young and very young learners, that allow them to investigate the relationship between science and other aspects of real life. Very high quality and suggestive discussion questions, even if you don't use all the materials. Includes daily news stories and technology tips.

Over 200 videos on U.S. and World History. Might be useful for more advanced students.

Video with 6 speakers talking about various ways to engage students in civic life. American perspective.

This world map shows locations with interactivities and webcams. A great collection of links for teaching geography, history, and social studies.

This looks like a very useful tool, once students got used to using it. Has political, ecology, population, etc., possibilities. Visualize history.

R. Byrne: "Scribble Maps provides a variety of base layer maps on which you can draw freehand, add placemarks, add image overlays, and type across the map. Compared to creating a custom map on Google Maps, Scribble Maps is much easier for students to learn how to use. Scribble Maps also provides far more default placemark icons than Google's My Maps tool. Scribble Maps will work in the web browser on your laptop, Chromebook, iPad, or Android tablet."

Some nice ideas from R. Byrne on how to use comics for courses and activities -- literature, social studies, book reports, expressing feelings (and ideas). He includes 5 free comic-book makers. Some good examples of PBL.

Get onto Keith Hughes' channel. He makes history absolutely compelling in short videos for high school students. These videos may help your students get into their social studies subjects and they model a way to bring the past to life. Your students may want to produce some themselves. t/h R.Byrne

" The Railroad Journey and the Industrial Revolution isn't about the building of railroads. In the video John Green covers how rail travel led to changes in where people lived, where they vacationed, and how they interacted with each other. A short lesson on the origin of Greenwich Mean Time is included too. "To bring the lesson into a current context, Green also does a nice job of making comparisons between the effects of the development of railroads and the effects of the development of the Internet." T/H R. Byrne

" I rarely say that any site or app is "the best" because what's best for my students may not be the best for another teacher's students. That said, I'm putting together a response to the question in the form of four lists of sites and apps for elementary school. There will be a list for math, science, social studies, and language arts." Visit this blog page to link to the subject areas you wish. T/H R. Byrne

Literacy Partners is a strategy to help students better understand a text, whether in literature, science or social science topics. Reading in pairs with teacher-directed questions and discussing those questions as they answer them together fosters respect among students and helps both partners gain in knowledge. (Sign-in for the Teaching Channel may be required, but it's free and well worth it.)

"When teaching students about current events I have always tried to incorporate maps so that students can make a connection to the places that they are reading about. I do this if the story is about something happening in Africa or something happening twenty miles down the road from our community. Newspaper Map and the Breaking News map are both helpful in showing students the connections between story subjects and their corresponding locations." T/H to R. Byrne