Tag: historical

Critical Past

Kelly Tenkely14 Comments on Critical Past5553 views

What it is: Critical Past is a website I learned about today from Tom Boito’s great blog EDge 21 in his Catch of the Day.  The resource is too good not to share again here!  Critical Past is a collection of more than 57,000 historical videos and more than 7 million historical photos.  All of the photos and videos are royalty free, archival stock footage.  Most of the footage comes from U.S. Government Agency sources.  All of the videos and photos can be viewed for free online and shared with others via url, Twitter, or Facebook.  The videos and photos are also available to purchase for download.

How to integrate Critical Past into your curriculum: Critical Past is an incredible collection of historical videos and pictures.  The site is easy to search either by decade and topic or keyword.  The clips and photos on Critical Past will bring historical events alive for your students.  Use photos or videos on Critical Past to help illustrate what students are learning in history.  Ask students to be “eyewitnesses” of history and watch a video before they have context for it.  Students can write or blog about what they think they are witnessing, afterward they can research the event more in-depth and write a follow-up reflection on what was actually happening in the clip.

** Check out this awesome lesson that @pharesr created based on this post. So cool!

Tips: Along the right side bar of Critical Past, you will find “related videos.”  Students can watch a clip and the related videos and reflect on how the clips are related.  Sometimes it is a similar time period, sometimes a related event, other times it is a related location.

Please leave a comment and share how you are using Critical Past in your classroom!

Investigating the First Thanksgiving

Kelly Tenkely1 Comment on Investigating the First Thanksgiving2565 views

Picture 1

What it is: Investigating the First Thanksgiving is a fun interactive where kids are the historians.  Students explore all the clues to learn about the first thanksgiving (really a harvest festival).  This site provides great primary source material for kids to sort through.  First they explore a section called Fact vs. Myth where they match pictures and descriptions.  Each section includes an expert video that talks students through the section and explains a little about the first Thanksgiving.  In the next section, students explore the Wampanoag people and learn about their different celebrations and traditions throughout the year.  Then, students visit an English Colonist village and learn more about life for the pilgrims.  Students can then learn about the events that happened prior to 1621 and what led up to the harvest celebration.  The timeline in this section clearly shows what events were happening from the colonists point of view and what events were happening from the Wampanoag point of view. Finally, students can share what they have learned on a virtual informational poster where they can type the text of the poster.  Students can print their completed poster at the end.


How to integrate Investigating the First Thanksgiving into the classroom: Investigating the first Thanksgiving is an outstanding activity that involves students and makes them the historian.  Use this site to teach students the history of Thanksgiving but also how history changes.  This site does a great job of teaching students the difference between “the past” and “history”.  It makes the distinction that the past is always true but history (the way we interpret the past) can change based on additional information and resources.  You can go through the Investigating the First Thanksgiving interactive as a class on the interactive whiteboard, inviting student “historians” to come up and help guide the class through the activities.  Or as a center or individually on classroom or lab computers.  Finish the posters together as a class, filling in information, or each students can complete the final project.  If you do complete as a class, give a copy of the final to each student.


Tips: There is a great teacher guide that accompanies this site and offers great ideas for using the interactive in the classroom.

Leave a comment and share how you are using Investigating the First Thanksgiving  in your classroom.

Franklin’s Interactive Lifetime

Kelly Tenkely1 Comment on Franklin’s Interactive Lifetime2243 views

What it is:   Franklin’s Interactive Lifetime is an incredible look into the life of Benjamin Franklin.  I learned about this awesome site from @kylepace on Twitter (a great educator to follow if you aren’t already).  Students can play, listen, watch, observe and have fun learning about Benjamin Franklin’s life and legacy.  Students can explore Franklin’s life by different  themes such as Franklin’s character, B. Franklin Printer, Franklin at Home, Doing Good, Franklin at Home, and World Stage.  This feature breaks Franklin’s life down into manageable pieces for students and provides a well rounded understanding of who Franklin was and why he is an important figure in American history.  As students explore the timeline, they will find quotes, stories, videos, and audio about Benjamin Franklin.  I wish there was an interactive timeline of every historical figure like this one!  History would have been so much easier for me to understand.

How to integrate Franklin’s Interactive Lifetime into the classroom:  This interactive timeline would be great for use with a whole class and Interactive whiteboard.  Students could take turns visiting the whiteboard to ‘discover’ a new fact about Benjamin Franklin.  Franklin’s Interactive Lifetime could be set up on classroom computers for students to visit as a center during a unit on Franklin.  In a computer lab setting, students could be assigned a theme or time period of Benjamin Franklin’s life to explore and share later with the class.  Make it even more fun by creating a time machine atmosphere where students can travel back in time to learn about Franklin…stamp their time travelling passports as they ‘journey’ from one period of Franklin’s life to another.  This site is an outstanding way to capture students interest in Franklin and American history. 

 

Tips:  Show students the help/tips section for a key to understanding the different symbols on Franklin’s Interactive Lifetime.

 

Leave a comment and tell us how you are using Franklin’s Interactive Lifetime in your classroom.

Obama’s Inauguration Speech

Kelly Tenkely1 Comment on Obama’s Inauguration Speech2402 views

What it is: Barak Obama’s inauguration speech is taking place tomorrow morning!  Make sure that your students (regardless of age) are a part of this historic moment.  Wouldn’t it be neat if your students remembered sitting in your classroom watching and discussing the speech?  Hulu is going to host the speech live.  Because traffic to Hulu is bound to be heavy, I am also going to embed the speech right here on iLearn Technology.  Feel free to come here and watch the speech with me!  

 

How to integrate Obama’s Inauguration Speech into the classroom:  It isn’t every day that you can watch history in the making live in your classroom!  This is a historic moment that every student should be a part of.  Come back to iLearn Technology or Hulu to view the speech live.  It might be fun to make up a speech bingo card and see how many of the words students can pick out of the speech.  I’m sure a ready made bingo card will pop up somewhere!  If it does, I will update this post with the link.  

 

Tips: It will be interesting to see what people are saying about the speech via Twitter! 

 

Leave a comment and tell us how your students responded to the speech.

Library of Congress on Flickr

Kelly TenkelyLeave a Comment on Library of Congress on Flickr2349 views


What it is: The Library of Congress has a photostream on Flickr. If you aren’t familiar with Flickr, it is an online storage/community for photos. Anyone can obtain a Flickr account and now it appears that The Library of Congress has joined the Flickr community and will be sharing some of their most popular images.

How to integrate the Library of Congress on Flickr into the classroom: You can’t get more convient that Flickr for images, and now that the Library of Congress has a photostream, you can get quality historical images to share with your class. These are really incredible photographs that will bring history to life for your students. They say that a picture is worth a thousand words and after seeing this photostream, I believe it! As an added bonus, many of the photographs have no copyright restrictions which means that it is a great place for your students to find images for projects that they are working on. The uncopyrighted photos are also wonderful for you to use in your classrooms in presentations, and as printouts for bulletin boards.

Tips: Here are some fun facts about the Library of Congress: They serve as the national library for the United States, they are based in Washington DC, they have more than 134 million items preserved on 530 miles of bookshelves, they are the world’s largest library, they hold books, photos, maps, databases, movies, sound recordings, sheet music, manuscripts, etc., they have been collecting photos since the mid 1800’s.

Leave a comment and share how you are using the Library of Congress photostream on Flickr in your classroom.