Instructify

BY CHRISTOPHER PANNA

I often use stories and analogies to help my students understand what another place or another time would be like. This has the most impact when I can present facts to back up my story. If It Were My Home provides just that by generating statistical comparisons between two places.

The site was first created to show the scale of the Gulf of Mexico oil spill by superimposing the contaminated area over a location of your choice. If It Were My Home has since expanded to include a fabulous country comparison tool. Choose a country and you get, “If ___ were your home instead of the United States…” followed by social and economic comparisons based on data from the CIA World Factbook. By default it uses the United States, but you can compare any two countries. The page also includes a short description of the country and an Amazon-generated list of suggested books. Just glancing at the titles gives an idea of the country’s identity; for Russia it displayed books about Stalin, the Cold War, and the transition from communism. The comment section on each country’s page adds an interesting social element, but beware inappropriate posts.

For English or social studies teachers, this is a compelling way to show students the facts of life in other parts of the world. The country comparisons also offer opportunities for math classes working with fractions and proportions. And you can still check out the original page about the Gulf oil spill. If you and your students were so lucky, you’ll be thankful that it was not your home.

If It Were My Home

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BY BILL FERRIS

The video games I grew up with involved dodging bullets, lasers, ninjas, and occasionally Mike Tyson. In Spent, the object is to avoid becoming homeless.

Spent is an outreach project from Urban Ministries of Durham, a charity based in Durham, North Carolina dedicated toward giving basic essentials to the poor and homeless. The game paints a grim picture of life for people who can barely keep a place to live. The object is to make it 30 days without running out of money. At the start of the game, you’re down to your last $1,000, and you need to find a job and an apartment. A bad economy means slim pickings for both. Cheaper rent means living farther away from work, which increases both your fuel costs as well as the wear and tear on your car.

Like a computerized embodiment of Murphy’s Law, Spent confronts you with one misfortune after another. To win, you have to make a series of hard choices that have no apparent right answer. For example, you wake up one morning to find that someone has siphoned all the gas from your car. Do you take three buses (and three hours) to show up for work late? Or just call in sick and miss out on a day’s wages? (Your low-level temp job doesn’t give paid sick days.) What do you do when your kid is about to fail his math course unless he gets help? Paying $50 for a tutor means not being able to fix your car, which is falling to pieces because of your marathon commute to work every day. I played three rounds of Spent and successfully made it to the end of the month twice. After completing a winning round with $98 left to my name, the game reminded me, “And your rent’s due again. What are you going to do next month?”

I feel fortunate that I’ve never been in such dire straits as those presented in Spent. The game does a good job of giving a sense of the desperation felt by people who live on the fringes. Spent would be a good addition to an economics or social studies class to illustrate the effects of a recession, or to show how some of our nation’s homeless got that way.

Spent

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BY CHRISTOPHER PANNA

Who was the real inspiration for Count Dracula? What happened during the famous mutiny on the Bounty? Few things fascinate like a great story. Not only can it hook students, but a story also provides a solid framework for building understanding of other material. All you have to do is push play — the storytelling is already done thanks to Stuff You Missed in History Class, a podcast series from How Stuff Works.

Over the last few years the series has built a vast library of irresistible tales. Each one is 10-20 minutes long and presented as a conversation between two hosts. They usually begin by discussing common misconceptions resulting from media portrayals, then go on to tell the story, taking care to separate fact from fiction. With so many historical anecdotes available, it’s worth checking the archive for a podcast related to what you’re currently teaching. They’re displayed on one long webpage, so use your browser’s search tool (Ctrl-F) to find text on the page that’s relevant to what you’re looking for.

If you play a podcast in class, I’d recommend supplementing it with a few pictures to help students visualize the story. Since the podcasts are free to download in MP3 format, another option is having students listen on their computers, music players, or phones. Listening and writing comments makes a great alternative to reading for homework.

Stuff You Missed in History Class

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BY CHRISTOPHER PANNA

No social studies classroom is complete without a healthy dose of primary sources. Primary sources develop essential skills for understanding both past and present, like putting information in context and understanding conflicting points of view. Just imagine an entire curriculum designed around these skills. If you teach U.S. history, you have to check out Reading Like a Historian.

The breadth of this project is impressive. Seventy-five lessons span the whole of history of the United States, and though these lessons were designed as a single program, each can easily stand alone. The activities focus on analyzing sources and drawing conclusions about a central historical issue. In some lessons, students explore documents designed to “challenge or expand the textbook’s account.” In others, they use sources to take sides on an issue and then later must reconcile their differences. The quality of the curriculum reflects the talent of the Stanford PhD’s and graduate students that developed it.

The journey is just as important as the destination here. Reading Like a Historian will help your class investigate a topic in more depth while developing essential critical thinking skills. I don’t know anyone who has implemented the entire curriculum, but the abundance of lessons means you’re never far from an opportunity to try one. And since the planning is already done for you, there’s little reason not to use this excellent resource.

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BY KEVIN HODGSON

All the news that’s fit to print, indeed. Newspaper Map is an amazing overview of how news is being published — and by extension, how history is being written — by connecting literally thousands of newspapers from around the world on a single interactive map. The site uses a basic format of a Google Map, with pin links to the actual newspapers in just about every place in the world. China? Check. Africa? Check. The Americas? Check. Iran? Not so much, but even the lack of a newspaper has the potential for a classroom discussion about freedom of information and journalism’s role in a country.

One of the nice things about Newspaper Map is that it uses Google Translate to automatically convert any newspaper into other languages, such as English. There is also a handy color-coded key to show the language of various newspapers on the map. Newspaper Map lets students examine how global events, such as the recent riots in Egypt or the vote in Sudan, are being covered in different parts of the world, as well as see how language and politics influence a story.

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BY BILL FERRIS

Are your students confused about filibusters and filibuster reform? Is that the most exciting lead sentence you’ve heard all year? If you answered “yes” to both questions, you should visit Filibustery (and get out more).

Filibustery is a multimedia project created by journalist Josh Kalven, formerly of Media Matters for America and Progress Illinois. Kalven bills Filibustery as, “a website launched in January 2011 with the goal of making the filibuster — and the proposals in the U.S. Senate to reform it — more understandable.”

As Kalven points out in the initial Filibustery video, most people associate the filibuster with an heroic James Steward in Mr. Smith Goes to Washington, breaking out his coffee thermos and taking a stand on an important issue for hours on end. However, the tactic has increasingly been used as a routine tactic to defeat both large and small legislation, usually without ever employing the marathon, live-debate stage most people are familiar with. It’s a much more complicated process than I realized, but Kalven explains it with plain talk and helpful illustrations. Filibustery would be a helpful tool for a civics course talking about congressional procedure, or for anyone who wants a closer look at how the sausage gets made in Washington.

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BY CHRISTOPHER PANNA

If you’ve ever muttered under your breath about spoiled kids, you’ve probably later remembered that it’s not the kids’ fault. Their worldview only reflects their reality; to understand the plight of the developing world they’d need to experience it. And while a field trip to Nigeria isn’t feasible, your students can play a simulation like Third World Farmer.

I find the name a bit distasteful, but move past this label and you’ll find a game that captures the realities of rural life in Sub-Saharan Africa. You begin the game with a family of four, a small house, and an empty field. If you’re successful growing crops and raising livestock, the family can afford education and medical care, or try to increase their farm output by purchasing tools. Throughout the game, situations arise like new children, marriage proposals, and job opportunities in the city.

It sounds simple enough, but almost every turn brings challenges beyond the family’s control. Theft, drought, disease, and war frequently undermine your accomplishments and force you to rebuild from scratch. It’s not easy to succeed, and that’s why this is such an effective simulation. It’s shocking to see your family’s livestock stolen by refugees or its children grow up with only a few years of education.

Beyond giving a glimpse of life in the developing world, the site also shows how you can help. It includes links to more than a dozen organizations that work to ease poverty like UNICEF, Oxfam, and Doctors without Borders. Once students play the game, they’ll be better prepared to discuss rural poverty and learn about what these relief organizations do.

Third World Farmer

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BY KEVIN HODGSON

For years now, the talk in many technology circles has been the coming of the so-called semantic web, where information and data from many sources would be gathered and collated and, hopefully, interpreted across a wide range of topics. We may not be there yet but there are signs that more and more data is being transformed into useful information for learning. Gapminder World has the potential to be a very valuable research site for students learning about global trends through data visualization. The software that runs the site is a variation of Trendalyzer (developed by the Gapminder folks and sold to Google).

The aim of Trendalyzer and Gapminder World “….is to unveil the beauty of statistical time series by converting boring numbers into enjoyable, animated and interactive graphics.”

It succeeds, I think.

For example, given the focus on CO2 emissions and Global Warming, I checked out the data map on that topic at Gapminder World. Using information from as far back as 1820, I clicked the “play” button for the data grid, and watched as the world’s CO2 emissions began to unfold, region by region. I could then isolate the United States and China, or any other country, and do some direct comparisons. While that particular data set only goes back to the year 2000, a project that comes to mind is for students to gather data and continue the graph into 2010. Other topics include child mortality rates, impacts of earthquakes and volcanoes, and the age that people get married.

Gapminder also has a special section for teachers, where a long list of downloadable resources are available (including a beta version of a desktop Gapminder platform). The data, the graphs, and all of its resources can be used freely under a Creative Commons licence, so students can incorporate information into reports and projects.

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BY KEVIN HODGSON

This Day, a website by Nikon, is a beautifully rendered look into historical events that happened in the past on the day you visit the site. With a lush background soundtrack (that can be turned off), and an automatic timeline that shifts backwards, the site transports you back in time to key events in history.

What I like here Is the simplicity of the design — the black background, the historical images and a short bit of text about that day in history. The site also offers an option of a screensaver and a desktop gadget. This Day might be useful as something for the whiteboard at the start of the day, as students mill into the room to get ready for learning. Or during units around time lines. On the day I watched, I learned about the Wright Brothers, the Tokyo Train Station in Japan, the first transatlantic radio transmission by Marconi, the rise of Nero, and more.

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BY CHRISTOPHER PANNA

How can 21^st century tools improve geography education? When a European geography association took on this challenge, the result was Geocube. Created by an international panel of educators with funding from the European Union, Geocube is an exceptionally well-designed resource for exploring “what geography is and what geographers do.”

Modeled on a Rubik’s Cube, the Geocube’s six sides each represent a geographical theme, which are then divided into subtopics on the individual squares. Clicking first on a side, then on a square, you’ll zoom to a description of the topic with accompanying pictures and videos. The rotating cube concept does a great job symbolizing the various “sides” of geography. As for Geocube’s fun factor, your students will love spinning the cube every which way and they’ll surely be engaged by the high-quality photos and videos.

For teachers, the site includes a downloadable PDF file of all 54 topics in the cube. There’s also an intriguing template for printing and folding a paper version of the cube. With this you could develop a dice game or even modify it to have students create their own cubes. After all, geography is about teaching them to take ownership of the world.

Geocube

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BY CHRISTOPHER PANNA

I once had a student in my world history class who was about as lazy as they come. He rarely did homework and spent most of his class time scheming up ways to avoid assignments. So how did this student know more history than 90 percent of his classmates? He played Age of Empires religiously.

The power of video games to engage and teach is undeniable. But historical video games aren’t exactly mainstream, so cases like that student have long been exceptions. Mission US is among the first of a new type of game created specifically for schools and bringing access to all students.

Entirely free and web-based, Mission US puts you in the shoes of a teenage boy in Boston just before the American Revolution. You have to complete a variety of tasks around the city while meeting people and making choices that affect the outcome of the game. Ultimately, after witnessing the Boston Massacre, the hero has to decide if he’ll support the patriot cause or not. It’s this deep storyline that sets Mission US apart from other educational games. The adventure is divided into six episodes and takes about 90 minutes to complete. Students can save and resume their game, allowing them to play certain parts and then do corresponding activities provided in the teacher’s guide. Your teacher account will allow you to track each student’s progress to make sure everyone’s keeping up. And whether you have students play together or separately, in school or at home, the guide provides tips for each situation.

This is why it’s exciting to be a teacher in 2010 — Mission US is a dream come true for teachers who want to integrate a full-length video game into their class. Keep your eyes on this project, as a second “mission” is in development that will deal with the anti-slavery movement before the Civil War.

Mission US

Mission US video trailer

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BY CHRISTOPHER PANNA

With this coming April marking the 150^th anniversary of the start of the Civil War, expect media outlets to feature extra coverage of this trying time in United States history. The New York Times is leading the charge with a new blog called Disunion.

The project’s premise is simple, yet brilliant. Disunion reports on the Civil War as if in real time, so the post for today would reflect the events of November 19, 1860. With a staff of writers that includes professional historians, university professors, and an ex-presidential speechwriter, the stories are top quality. Here’s a sample from one of my favorite entries:

In 1860, a cub reporter named Samuel R. Weed scored the assignment of a lifetime when his St. Louis newspaper sent him to spend Election Day with the man who might become America’s president. Surprisingly, no one else had thought of it, and Weed arrived to find a relaxed Abraham Lincoln, greeting him “as calmly and as amiably as if he had started on a picnic.”

For us teachers, one of the best things about Disunion is that it includes primary sources from the Civil War era (the post quoted above featured the article written by Samuel R. Weed). Finding good teaching documents is always a challenge, and the Disunion people do the work for us by providing them on an almost daily basis.

I’ve never been a Civil War fanatic and you certainly won’t see me out in fields reenacting battles, but I’m already hooked on Disunion. Use it to inspire your teaching or give it to your students as supplemental reading.

Disunion

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BY CHRISTOPHER PANNA

We’ve come a long way from the days of using a map to memorize the 50 states. With animation and narration, a map can show that geography doesn’t just sit there; it plays a role in shaping ideas and events. Try these animated maps to show the interplay between history and geography.

The Map as History: With a captivating British accent, the narrator sets the stage and the maps zoom around as pictures appear to illustrate events. The maps are about mostly modern European history, but they recently added series about the United States and Ancient Greece, and they’re working on more. The catch is that only a handful are available for free. However, the reasonable subscription rates would make it a good value for both your students and other teachers in your school.

Maps of War: Don’t be misled by the name; this site also has maps that illustrate the spread of religion and democracy from ancient times to the present. We’ve touched on Maps of War before, but it’s worth another look. This thematic design is great for showing a big picture view of history. And these maps are just as visually engaging, with colors and events appearing as the story advances.

Watching these animations will help your students see connections between places and events, as well as inspire them in some creative map making of their own. Give them a blank map and some tools -– as high-tech as an image editing program or as simple as a few colored pens -– and see what they produce.

The Map as History

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BY CHRISTOPHER PANNA

The National Archives has recently combined an interactive approach with their extraordinary collection of primary-source documents. The result is called DocsTeach and U.S. history teachers will soon be flocking to it.

Perhaps the best feature of DocsTeach is that it lets teachers take the lead. The Archives provides the documents; teachers create and share the activities. There are a variety of activity templates that encourage critical reading and allow you to work with the documents in a way that fits your teaching. In Finding a Sequence, the dates of documents are hidden and students have to put them in chronological order. Mapping History challenges them to pin documents on a map. Pictured here is weighing the Evidence, in which students put documents on one side or another to support a position on an issue.

The documents themselves are impressive because they are not presented as text, but images of the originals. With every pen mark, stamp, and crease visible, the documents tell compelling stories.

Though DocsTeach is new this year, there’s already a considerable amount of teacher-created activities available. You can give your students a link directly to a specific activity, and they can use the email feature to send their work to you. If you don’t find the activity you want, what a great excuse to create your own!

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BY CHRISTOPHER PANNA

“You have to do more than memorize facts! Show me that you can analyze and connect these ideas!” How many times have we said things like this to our students? In the quest to develop higher-order thinking skills, The Flow of History can provide some visually captivating help.

Flow charts are the main attraction here. There are more than 200 in all, covering a lot of the most common topics in world history. The site’s creator sought to highlight cause-and-effect relationships, and The Flow of History does that beautifully. The charts use color and visuals to show the progression of events that led to, say, the rise of Greek democracy or the British conquest of India. And the design of the diagrams is as varied as the stories they tell. Sometimes events are shown in a linear way, but more often they double back into cycles, diverge into separate branches, and unite several events into one result. There is also a reading to go with each flow chart, so students can use the chart to help understand the reading, or vice versa.

There are plenty of possibilities for using The Flow of History. After seeing a few examples, students could create their own flow charts. Or, as the site’s creator suggests, they could focus on the big picture by summarizing a chart in one sentence. For some students, a visual model like this can turn a scattered mess of events into a sequence that makes sense.

The Flow of History

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