Group items tagged

'One of the primary goals of the History Engine project has been to design a research and writing exercise modest enough in its analytical scope and its length that it allows students to "do history" long before a senior seminar or capstone course. (Another important goal, discussed below, is to capture this research to amass a large history archive.) The History Engine is an online archive consisting of thousands of "episodes" written and contributed by undergraduates.'

Joining this group might be a good way to develop your professional network. There are some good source sites and resources there too.

Another excellent community of history teachers. Has thousands of members.

An excellent find! Contains over 3000 members who discuss different aspects of history. You're going to get a few loonies in a group of people that size but it seems well-organised and efficiently run. Looks like there's a few battles of ideas going on there too, which is cool.

Highly recommend anything from activehistory.co.uk. Russell Tarr is fantastic and his games really capture the interest of those "I hate history" students.

Useful for classroom discussions, days where a fire alarm cuts your class in half, etc.

Article

Great to initiate discussion with students. I gave mine the "TIME" criteria for the award and we battled it out over if it was a deserved award or not...best used after they have some info and background on Hitler.

Long list of links to collections of historical images on Flickr.

access original books, like Vesalius's book on human anatomy and more.

also has audio clips on each page giving explanations and little tidbits - as well as zoom controls and when you scroll your mouse over a page, a zoomed pop up appears with info...since we discuss Vesalius's book on Anatomy, it was a great way for my students to view the actual resource and draw correlations between him and the Renaissance - as the audio and extra info discusses his desire to help sculptors and painters...

Modules designed for George Mason University's U.S. survey course offering relevant exercises that reinforce textbook readings and classroom discussion. They provide an alternate, often entertaining, way of investigating historical concepts and problems.

Create a public space for group collaboration on the fly. Might be a great tool to have on-line discussion with students, or a place for students to collaborate on an assignment.

This is the forum of the My History Network. Please join up & bring your students along. The students involved have found it beneficial to their engagement with and understandings of history.

The Smithsonian's National Museum of American History, National September 11 Memorial & Museum, Pentagon Memorial Fund, and the Flight 93 National Memorial offer a free online conference, September 11: Teaching Contemporary History, for K-12 teachers. Designed to provide educators with resources and strategies for discussing the September 11 attacks at the 10th anniversary, the conference will include roundtable discussions with content experts and six workshop sessions. These sessions and the conference website highlight resources available at each organization, provide background information on September 11, and encourage conversations on how to document, preserve, and interpret recent history and current events.

discussion on teaching history backwards -- the comments are worth the whole thing

HWPP is an online space for scholars to share works-in-progress with their peers. After uploading a conference paper, essay, or article manuscript to the HWPP website, authors can invite others to read their work and make comments in the margins. As more people respond, writers get more feedback. But, unlike traditional comments done on paper, HWPP allows commenters and authors to interact with each other. They can read each other's marginalia and engage in dialogue about it. In fact, entire threaded discussions can take place in the margins. Here's what it looks like:

"Over the past several years, History Matters has organized twenty-five online dialogues with leading historians and teachers about the the teaching of major topics in U.S. history--from early settlement to the Vietnam War. Those discussions are archived here and contain many useful teaching suggestions"

There are a couple of pages on this site which might be useful for history teachers in challenging us to reflect on our practice. I don't know about you, but too often I get so caught up in the bureaucratic paperwork and day-to-day of teaching I forget to reflect on the big picture of what teaching history is all about...

An interactive tool to explore rankings of various countries according to a number of criteria (education, health, economic performance etc.). Could be useful in discussing what makes a good country and how your own country measures up to others.

These could be great to use as class discussion topics/starters. Or in some project based way in your class

Would a topic like meeting the educational needs of students with different abilities be a useful topic?