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to integrate History Buff into the classroom: History Buff is a website that can help history come to life through story, virtual tours, audio and primary source news papers. I suspect that most students fall into the judge-a-site-by-it's-cover category like me. For this reason, if I was using it in my classroom, I wouldn't send students directly to the website to do a lot of digging on their own. Instead, I might direct them to the portion of the site I knew we would be using through a classroom website, wiki, blog or use a Weblist or Symbaloo to link to them. It is amazing how changing something as small as the entry point into a site can change a students attitude about the site (heck, I'm like that too!). Once I got into History Buff, I really appreciated the connection to primary sources and the way that the "actual" newspapers bring history to life. I REALLY liked the hoaxes in news section and suspect that students will get a kick out of it to. Your kids will be asking, how can people be SO gullible? These kinds of stories are wonderful discussion starters and will make students think critically about their own news media. As a fun extension, have your students write their own hoax news stories. Okay, now for demystifying the navigation of this site. See the itty bitty brown words in the left sidebar that are all squished together? That is the navigation. For real. I didn't notice it at first either! Go ahead and click on one to test it out…not so bad when you know what you are looking for, right? Right. For your convenience, I'm linking to each page of the site below so you can easily find what you are looking for. :) Online Newspaper Archives Historic Panoramas Reference Libraries (audio resources, hoaxes) Primary Source Material State Facts Interactive Quizzes Tips: History Buff has a newsletter you can subscribe to if you are, you know, a history buff. Just enter your email in that box under the header and clic

It gives you a virtual space where you can post short text notes in the same way that you could put post-it notes onto a notice board in your classroom. But this noticeboard can be shared between people all over the world. As well as text notes you can add images, video and links to other websites.

AccuTeach could be a nice place to find other educators with whom you can share lesson ideas and materials. As the video above points out, the blog and calendar option is useful for keeping parents informed of their students' assignments.