Monday is President's Day in the United States. In celebration of that day, Google has published a new kmz file containing images and links to information about each former President of the United States. You can download the file and launch it in Google Earth or view it here using the Google Earth browser plug-in. The file shows where each president was from, offers an image of each president, provides a link to more information about each president, and shows how many states were in the Union when each president was elected.
Earth Album is a simpler, slicker Flickr mash-up that allows you to explore some of the most stunning photos in the world courtesy of Google maps and Flickr. To begin your journey, just click somewhere on the map, e.g. "India". Note-- since the top Flickr images are used, the images change every few weeks; bookmark this site and check back for a different experience in a month!
Here is a description of Contextu via Richard Byrne's Free Technology For Teachers posting:
Ken Halla, the blogger behind the US History Teachers Blog, has been working on an excellent new site for students of US History. The new site is called ContextU and its purpose is to help students see the greater context for significant events in history. The first iteration of ContextU is focused on the American Civil War.
On ContextU students select from a table of contents an event, piece of legislation, or theme to see it in the context of other events, pieces of legislation, and themes leading to the start of the Civil War. Through timelines, Google Maps, diagrams, flow charts, timelines, and text ContextU provides context for each chosen event, piece of legislation, or theme. Students can jump from event to event or from theme to theme by following the hyperlinks within each diagram.
History Pin is a site that lets teachers and students view and share their personal history in a totally new way. It uses Google Maps and Street View technology and hopes to become the largest user-generated archive of the worlds historical images and stories. History Pin asks the public to dig out, upload and pin their own old photos, as well as the stories behind them, onto the History Pin map. Uniquely, History Pin lets you layer old images onto modern Street View scenes, giving a series of peeks into the past. This is a great tool for writing compare and contrast literature and, of course, for use with a History class as well.