Social Studies

The Coverdell World Wise Schools is a program designed by the Peace Corps to help connect students in the United States to developing countries. A classroom can be matched with a Peace Corp volunteer who is actually in country via the internet. Students can dialogue with the volunteer through this connection where they can learn about the culture. World Wise also has offers many other classroom benefits such as an archive of lesson plans.

This is a great site for students to use in the classroom. I used this in a middle school history class where we were studying the Middle East. Each student also had a blank hard copy to fill in with notes or to color. The students enjoyed working on the site and learned the material quickly...within the hour.

DocSouth is a website run through UNC Chapel Hill that provides pirmary sources relating to the American South via the internet. It's a really simple site to use, but extremely rich with content. It also provides guides on how to site the materials found within the site and could be a very good web site from which to draw primary sources for the classroom and also to help teach research skills.

In light of the fact that we are all pursuing higher degrees in education, I found this debate forum to be very interesting. Some argue for and against and also bring factors such as using advance degrees as the basis for pay increases and promotions versus student performance into the debate.

This is the Frontline Video that explores how to teach racism/prejudice prevention.

Rethinking Schools is an organization committed to equity and to the vision that public education is central to the creation of a humane, caring, multiracial democracy. While writing for a broad audience, Rethinking Schools emphasizes problems facing urban schools, particularly issues of race. Rethinking Schools tries to balance classroom practice and educational theory. It is an activist publication, with articles written by and for teachers, parents, and students. It also addresses key policy issues, such as vouchers and marketplace-oriented reforms, funding equity, and school-to-work.

This is my go-to site! Thanks for posting it!

This is a great visual explanation of how diamonds are formed. While explaining the process it's quite useful to have a detailed image to refer to.

This clip shows the process of diamonds coming up through a kimberlite pipe. My students begged me to show it over and over again.