Instructify

BY BILL FERRIS

You now can access lots of free audio and video from the Library of Congress on iTunes U. There’s a lot of great material suitable for a history class, such as early films made by Edison himself (or his company, at least). There are also fascinating oral histories from actual slaves in the Voices from the Days of Slavery collection. For a look at how people entertained themselves before TV, radio and the interweb came to be, you can look at early American animation, and even olde timey Vaudeville performances.

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BY BILL FERRIS

Stuck inside classrooms, a lot of students don’t get to experience the hands-on aspects of history and archaeology. Though driving a mouse isn’t exactly hands-on, by clicking to Interactive Dig: El Carrizal from Archaeology Magazine, students can see photo updates and read first-hand accounts of this in-progress archaeological project.

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BY BILL FERRIS

As schools move away from rote memorization of facts, what happens to those kids who like to rattle off the state capitals or list all the presidents? They can put their knowledge of educational trivia to good use at Sporcle, a site filled with countless list-style quizzes that will exercise kids’ knowledge of…well, just about everything.

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BY BILL FERRIS

Create time lines easily with xtimeline, a handy web tool that creates time lines. Easily. Time lines. Hence the name “xtimeline.”

To start putting a time line together, you just enter an event, the date it occurred, plus a description and images. There’s really not much to it, folks. xtimline puts it all together in a logical, easy-to-read order.

A history class is the most obvious application for xtimeline, but you could use it for a variety of subjects. It’s an ideal companion for research papers, or reports on anything from the life of Mark Twain to the history of the computer.

xtimeline doesn’t look as slick as Mnemograph (now called TimeGlider), but its usability makes it a great choice unless you need a really fancy-schmancy printable time line for some reason. Hey, I’ve cobbled time lines together in Word and Excel, and I assure you that if you just need a quick time line that looks presentable, xtimeline is a much better way to go.

xtimeline

Related stuff:

Time Lines are on your Side with Mnemograph

BY BILL FERRIS

As further proof that my pop-culture awareness stopped sometime in the mid-90s, this month’s random roundup features Indiana Jones, apparently Instructify’s go-to reference to convey that a history or archaeology tool is exciting or adventurous in some capacity.

Of course, now that they’re making a fifth Indiana Jones movie, I don’t feel quite so dated.

National Geographic’s Explore a Pyramid: Archaeology with No Risk of Snakes or Nazis!
When I was a kid, I wanted to be an archaeologist like Indiana Jones and I dreamed about being on Nickelodeon’s Legends of the Hidden Temple. Sadly, I’m not currently exploring foreign lands for ancient artifacts and getting chased by Nazis, nor did I ever get the chance to be a Blue Barracuda. But with National Geographic’s Explore a Pyramid, your students can have the opportunities that I never did, and learn while doing it!

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BY BILL FERRIS

In Escape from the Mummy’s Tomb! your elementary students must recover Egyptian artifacts from inside a pyramid. As the title of the game has no doubt alerted you, you’ll have to wrest these artifacts from an undead mummy’s cold, dead, bandaged fingers.

After your students have finished their archaeological adventure, they’ll find themselves in a museum, where they must put the artifacts in their proper display cases. (more…)

BY NICK YINGLING

One of my fondest memories growing up was this time when my friends and I found an old treasure map. We eventually ran afoul of a family of gangsters, but my one heavyset buddy was able to befriend the deformed son of the head gangster, Mama Fratelli. Just as the gangsters caught up with us, Chunk and his new friend, Sloth, were able to swoop in and save the day. We were, truly, a bunch of Goonies. No, wait—there I go again, confusing myself with Corey Feldman.

That image you get in your mind when you imagine treasure maps isn’t just fascinating because of the promise of riches. That classic example of some old, yellow, frayed-at-the-edges map also maybe has some crazy artwork of an agitated seabeast where there be dragons or something. You can just feel the wonder of exploration resonating from old-world cartography.

The David Rumsey Historical Map Collection has been busy scanning these old maps and making them available free-of-charge in digital high-resolution images. (more…)

BY EMILY JACK

Quick: Which is more likely to stimulate your students’ interest in the Cold War?

A. A PowerPoint presentation about the Cuban missile crisis
B. A creepy photo of a real family fallout shelter

If you answered A, your PowerPoint skills are supernatural and you probably need no further help from Instructify. If you answered B, have a look at Smithsonian’s History Explorer.

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BY NICK YINGLING

In the comments for Bill’s posting about the Stuff You Missed in History Class Podcast, I mentioned that people who enjoyed that show might also enjoy Dan Carlin’s Hardcore History. It’s a little dry and demands some attentive listening, but can be pretty rewarding if you find that you enjoy it.

Dan Carlin brings a really unusual perspective to looking at history. In one of his more sensational episodes, “History Under the Influence,” he explores how drugs and alcohol might have played a role in history. For example, have you ever considered the possibility that certain historical figures were tweaking on amphetamines or strung out on painkillers? How about asking who was drunk and possibly bi-polar? It definitely sounds irreverent, but remember that history is often written by the winners.

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BY NICK YINGLING

According to the plot summary for Teen Wolf on Wikipedia, “High school student Scott Howard is seventeen years old, sick of being average and wishing he were special… Scott keeps undergoing changes and eventually undergoes a complete change and becomes a wolf… During the final basketball game, Scott refuses to “wolf out” and insists on winning the game on his own.”

Isn’t that heart-warming? The message is just be yourself!

So, what does Teen Wolf have to do with anything here? (more…)

BY BILL FERRIS

This week’s MBTN features tips to help you to hang on to your job, a panoramic tour of the new seven wonders of the world, and ideas on how to make Wordle educational. More after the jump.

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BY BILL FERRIS

For this month’s random roundup, we’ve selected the Library of Congress, our nation’s storehouse of pretty much everything worth knowing. As you’d expect, a lot of great resources for teachers have been derived from the Library. See your tax dollars at work by reading the articles linked after the jump.

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BY BILL FERRIS

The neat thing about the past is so much interesting stuff happened during it. So much, in fact, that your typical history class doesn’t have time to mention all of it (obviously). The fine folks at How Stuff Works have the skinny on a lot of great historical info you don’t have time to cover in their Stuff You Missed in History Class Podcast.

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Looking for ideas or resources for your class? MIT Open CourseWare is there to help.  Yes, the same MIT that everyone hopes their engineering-focused little one gets into has created a free and open resource for anyone in the world to use.  It’s not just math and science courses either; MIT has published complete course resources for all the subjects they teach, from history to music and theater arts. (more…)

As a reminder that things can always get worse, the Library of Congress has released several photos from the Great Depression on the photo-sharing site Flickr. The LOC has posted some of the most frequently requested photos from their collection as free digital images in their FSA/OWI Favorites set. Like other LOC photo collections on Flickr, you and your class can tag and comment to your heart’s content.

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