World History and Cultures
General
Think like an historian, archeologist, geographer, explorer
Historical Thinking Skills Interactives This series of interactive activities introduces and models the Historical Thinking Skills defined by the National
World History Project This website offers four courses for teaching world history to high school students, including:
Countryballs history of Europe: 1500-2022”
Center for History in the Schools. The interactives each model a specific skill or set of skills, such as analyzing historical artifacts or using primary sources to develop a thesis.
Memory of The World is a new resource on Google Arts & Culture. UNESCO organized it, and it features key documents from world history that they have brought together ” to tell their stories and highlight key moments in history that have left the world changed forever.” It includes lesson plans on how to use them in the classroom.
Google Practice Sets "With practice sets, in Google Classroom, educators are able to use content they already have, or come up with brand new questions from scratch, to build an assessment activity. Google's artificial intelligence then scans the questions and determines the learning skills being addressed, and finds helpful hints and resources to go along with each question in case the students need assistance".Introduction video | Details
Ideas That Changed The World is an interesting site on Google Arts and Culture.
The Good Country Index:The idea of the Good Country Index is simple: to measure what each country on earth contributes to the common good of humanity, and what it takes away, relative to its size
Tools For Comparing Demographics Of Different Countries.
Sites To See “Photos That Changed The World”: Some of the links are not active, but there a numerous ones that are fine that make the site worthwhile.
Point In History shows boundaries around the world and throughout history.
Dollar Street, a project created by Gapminder, sent teams of photographers around the world to take photos of over 264 homes in 50 different countries and uploaded them onto the website, allowing us to see how different people live across the world at different income points. The project imagines the world as a street ordered by income…poor families live at one end and rich families live at the other. A team of photographers went out and photographed the everyday items owned by families of all income levels — shoes, toothbrushes, TVs, beds, lights, sinks — so that visitors to the site can see how much income affects how families live. There are filters to focus in on specific areas like homes, food, customs and more. video start at 15:45
Metroverse is an urban economy navigator built at the Growth Lab at Harvard University. It is based on over a decade of research on how economies grow and diversify and offers a detailed look into the specialization patterns of cities. As a dynamic resource, the tool is continually evolving with new data and features to help answer questions such as What is the economic composition of my city?How does my city compare to cities around the globe? Which cities look most like mine? What are the technological capabilities that underpin my city’s current economy? Which growth and diversification paths does that suggest for the future?
The OER Project The OER Project is a coalition of historians and educators whose goal is to promote social studies education through a number of curricular materials and courses. The OER Project offers two interesting courses titled Big History Project and World History Project. The Big History Project is 'a social studies course that spans 13.8 billion years. It weaves insights from many disciplines to form a single story that helps us better understand people, civilizations, and how we are connected to everything around us.' As for World History project, this is a course designed with history teachers in mind. It offers three versions: Origins to the Present, 1200 to the Present, and 1750 to the Present.
Caption This! Using photos and text to analyze primary sources
World History Encyclopedia - Online collection of thousands of world history resources including articles, videos, maps, primary source materials, quizzes, and more.
Research at the Crossroads of Story, Media, and Social Awareness X-Media Lab, a research hub in Harvard Graduate School of Education, works at the crossroads of education, media, digital technology, and prevention science—leveraging the power of stories. A team of X-Media researchers selects meaningful story content from a creative canon within the arts and humanities to help students and teachers reflect on the academic, ethical, and aesthetic importance of stories to promote humanistic values across cultures, phases of human development, genres, professions, and historical periods. X-Media Lab is working on a multiphased project using R. J. Palacio’s novel Wonder, along with the movie adaptation. Wonder tells the story of how a child with a facial deformity navigates relationships with his family and classmates as he enters a school for the first time.To bring “wonder” into the classroom, the X-Media team has created an illustrated Wonder Educator’s Resource Guide,
National Council for the Social Studies (NCSS) Offers professional development resources for social studies teachers in the form of online conferences and webinars.There are also materials to help with inquiry and teaching using primary resources. The Publications and Resources section features NCSS journals, books, bulletins, podcasts, on-demand library, and more. NCSS SmartBrief is another excellent resource for social studies teachers. This is basically a '3x-weekly snapshot of news on best practices, curriculum, and professional development for social studies educators
Poptential - Free curriculum that pairs pop culture media with engaging digital storytelling for effective dynamic learning in American History, World History, US Government, and Economics.
The History Engine
The History Engine is 'a collection of thousands of historical “episodes” that paints a wide-ranging portrait of the past that is freely available to scholars, teachers, and the general public. Students from a variety of college and universities write these episodes. Creating an episode for the History Engine gives them the opportunity to learn history by doing the work—researching, writing, and publishing—of a historian'.
History Matters
'Designed for high school and college teachers and students of U.S. history survey courses, this site serves as a gateway to web resources and offers unique teaching materials, first-person primary documents, and guides to analyzing historical evidence.'
Discovery Education Discovery Education is another good social studies resource to use with your students. It provides a wide variety of content, tools, and resources to engage students and track their performance. Content in Discovery Education covers various topics and subjects including podcasts, interactives, virtual field trips, videos, and more. The site also provides teachers with formative assessment tools to check students understanding.
Teaching Tools to Support a Global ClassroomWorld Savvy works with educators to make classrooms more inclusive, relevant, and engaging. The organization’s standards-aligned educational resources, curriculum, and teaching tools support the integration of global competence into teaching and learning. All content is free and accessible to anyone interested in globalizing their classroom or learning environment. A library of resources includes case studies (student-inquiry approach), knowledge-to-action (design thinking), multilingual learner toolkit, and student projects.
Digitally Writing New Histories” Unit Plans. (gr. 3 - 12) With a shift towards disciplinary, digital, and critical literacies, with historical documents and artifacts — as well as images, social media posts, and videos created with contemporary technologies — all serve as primary sources for inquiry-based, learning.
Digital Book Series Bringing the Pages of History to Life World of Characters: Revolutions & Industrialization ( free) is a digital experience in the History Adventures series that presents a fresh approach to history education.This interactive, multimodal learning experience covers the period from 1750 to 1900 through the lens of five amazing people living through complex flashpoints in time. The characters include Agent 355, an enslaved woman—and an American Revolutionary War spy; Jiemba, an indigenous Australian at Botany Bay when the British convict ships arrived; Fei Hong, a Chinese family man surviving the Opium Wars; Khari, a native rebel resisting Belgian oppression during the misleadingly titled Congo Free State; and Thomas Brown, a muckraking reporter working to expose the gross malpractice of the Chicago meatpacking industry. The app, available for iOS and Android devices, features immersive 3D environments; animated interactive infographics; enhanced original historical documents; “Choose Your Own Adventure” experiences; animated illustrations and dynamic text; an AP World History curriculum; and media-rich interactive assessments.
Ten Topics in Teaching History With Technology www.freetechteachers.comConnect Extend Challenge is a thinking routine that helps kids make connections between new ideas and content to what they already know and to what makes sense to them. So it’s a perfect way for your students to begin thinking about primary sources and how they can be applied to your direct instruction, a video clip, a piece of literature, or something they learned last year. Site includes template
World History Inquiry Kits Explore this collection of sixty inquiry kits that let students study historical topics that excite them. Each kit has primary and secondary sources to analyze. Study everything from early cultures to modern politics. Inquiry kits examine social studies themes. Go to World History Inquiry Kits
Internet Modern History Sourcebook Use the Internet Modern History Sourcebook to find thousands of sources in modern history. Browse and search to find full texts, multimedia, and more. the Sourcebook project seeks to present teachers and students with a wide variety of educational materials on 'modern European history and American history, as well as in modern Western Civilization and World Cultures...A number of other online source collections emphasize legal and political documents. Here efforts have been made to include contemporary narrative accounts, personal memoirs, songs, newspaper reports, as well as cultural, philosophical, religious and scientific documents. Although the history of social and cultural elite groups remains important to historians, the lives of non-elite women, people of color, lesbians and gays are also well represented here.'
The Largest Cities Throughout History: Every Year
World History Commons offers a free collection of more than 1700 primary sources covering a wide array of themes and events in world history. The best part is that all of the primary sources in the collection are annotated with helpful notes for students. World History Commons also offers a collection of free teaching guides that incorporate the use of primary sources. www.freetech4teachers.com
Rank Country A tool for comparing demographic data from different countries.
World Atlas 2.0, you can click on any one of nearly 3,000 different data sets related to technology, population, education, etc, and a visual representation of it will show up on a world map.
The Best Tools For Comparing Demographics Of Different Countries.
Naraview is a site on which you can create challenges for you students to connect topics through Wikipedia. The idea is that you give your students two topics and they have to click through Wikipedia articles to make the connections between the two topics. As the teacher, I can see the paths that students take to get from the starting article to the ending article. Here's an example of how Naraview works. www.freetech4teachers.com
Our World in Data - Resource Link - Over 3,000 charts on topics including poverty, disease, hunger, climate change, war, existential risks, inequality, and more, with supporting research, data, and conclusions.
The Best Videos For Learning Why It’s Important To Study History:
Ancient Earth Globe - Explore a 3D model of the Earth from present day back to 750 million years ago to see how our planet has changed over time.
Free social studies lessons based on student inquiry. The Inquiry Design Model (IDM) is an instructional research-based framework including: questions to help students frame their inquiry, summative and formative performance tasks, and subject matter-specific texts.The IDMs are a tool for building well-rounded citizens in classrooms. Students are able to analyze and articulate how their ideas and perspectives change as their inquiry unfolds. I’ve used this tool as a formative assessment to help me understand my students’ progress toward meeting our state’s (Kentucky’s) draft social studies standards. Differentiated reading supports may be needed, since some students will have trouble accessing these complex texts and won’t be able to use the resource as-is.
The NO Project is an award-winning, global, educational anti-slavery campaign that specifically targets youth awareness of modern slavery and human trafficking through film, music, art, dance, theatre, journalism, creative writing, education and social media. video tutorial
Big Ideas About Studying History
ClassroomScreen The Swiss Army Knife for the classroom . Click on Learn more for tutorial
Assessment for Evaluating Historical Thinking The Olympics Protest is a new assessment from the Stanford History Education Group (SHEG) that gauges whether students can identify the historical event depicted in an iconic photograph and evaluate its historical significance.
HistorySimulation History Simulation, as its name indicates, is an educational platform that offers a wide variety of history simulations, games, educational activities, and history presentations to use in your history class.
Digital Archive: International History Declassified Is a resource where students, researchers and specialists can access once-secret documents from governments and organizations all over the world. Constructed and maintained by the Wilson Center’s History and Public Policy Program, the Digital Archive contains newly declassified historical materials from archives around the world—much of it in translation and including diplomatic cables, high level correspondence, meeting minutes and more. The historical documents presented in the ever-expanding Digital Archive provide fresh, unprecedented insights into recent international history.
The Core Knowledge free PDFs They cover many of the key elements of any World History or U.S. History curriculum. Each PDF includes both teacher lessons and the student book. However, the teacher lessons are in portrait view but the student book isn’t – you would have to go to something like the free PDF go to “rotate” the student pages so they wouldn’t have to bend their heads to read them online
Mapamundi An interactive that uses diverse data to compare countries.
World101, a program of the Council on Foreign Relations, offers a growing library of free multimedia resources that explain international affairs and foreign policy issues, helping students understand the basics of these topics, including why they matter and how they are relevant. Under Global Era Issues, educators will find ten modules that explore Globalism, Terrorism, Nuclear Proliferation, Climate Change, Migration, Cyberspace and Cybersecurity, Global Health, Trade, Monetary Policy and Currencies, and Development. Regions of the World presents six modules covering the Americas, Europe, Middle East and North Africa, Sub-Saharan Africa, South and Central Asia, and East Asia and the Pacific. From essays and discussion questions to glossaries and up-to-date reading lists, World101 provides comprehensive teaching resources for each module.
The Best Resources For Teaching “What If?” History Lessons.
Doing History is Like Solving a Mystery is an interactive poster for elementary school students. The poster uses images with notes to guide students through the process of developing good research questions and recording their ideas.
The Big History Project - Discover this world of history so full of science information. It is multimedia at its best!
See The Causes of Death Visually in Every Country GBD Compare is an impressive visualization of the causes of death in every country around the world.
World History Geography Kit
Model Diplomacy Students become foreign policy experts in this real-world simulationThis impressive program has ready-to-use and expert-vetted content that'll help advanced students engage meaningfully with foreign policy issues and processes.
Exodus: The Climate Migration Crisis is an impressive project from the Weather Channel. It examines how climate change is forcing people around the world to leave their communities.
Map of Contemporaries is an interactive visual that chronicles the history of the world through the lifespans of famous people. It provides a biographical account of different historical figures and through them an overview of the major events that marked their era.
History Engine (http://historyengine.richmond.edu), a project at the University of Richmond centered on a writing assignment for the digital age, which is called an “episode.” An episode is something like a moment in time: it is a short essay on a particular event in the past, such as a wedding in New York during the Great Depression or an 1840 slave sale in rural Mississippi. Episodes explore these historical moments as interpretive windows into the past. Rather than tackling the entire American Civil War, for example, an episode might focus on the terrifying experience of a particular soldier at the Battle of Gettysburg, illustrated by his surviving letters and contextualized by secondary literature. Another episode might recount the excitement felt by a woman in New Hampshire when she stepped into the voting booth for the first time in 1920, as described in her diary and supported by literature on the 19th amendment. Because they center on historical action at the local level, each episode provides a unique voice about a particular time and place that can be joined by other voices.
History is an Argument About the Past is an interactive poster for middle school and high school students. The poster walks students through identifying primary and secondary sources of information then using that information to create an argument. The League of Extraordinary Bloggers is a team of bloggers from China, japan, south Korea and Vietnam who are traveling through Asia to track down a criminal mastermind who has been stealing cultural landmarks and objects. Students can join these bloggers by taking on the role of Agent X.
Minigames Developing Global and Cultural Awareness The League of Extraordinary Bloggers is a team of bloggers from China, japan, south Korea and Vietnam who are traveling through Asia to track down a criminal mastermind who has been stealing cultural landmarks and objects. Students can join these bloggers by taking on the role of Agent X.
Big History Project High schoolers ( Will need to be adapted for middle schoolers )will benefit from looking at their world from a broader perspective. A wonderfully innovative and divergent way to teach foundational concepts in history, humanities, critical thinking, and science.The reading level of some texts surpasses that of 9th and 10th graders; extra scaffolding may be needed to ensure student buy-in and comprehension.
ActiveHistory features a wide variety of educational materials designed specifically for use in history classrooms. These include award-winning interactive simulations, decision-making games, self-marking quizzes, high-quality worksheets and detailed lesson plans". ActiveHistory also "provides materials on scores of topics from the Middle Ages to the present day, aimed at every age range between 11-18 years.
The Best Resources For Teaching “What If?” History Lessons
American Social History Project (ASHP) in the Center for Media Literacy at City University of New York produces a variety of websites to discover the past. The subjects range from revolutionary France to twenty-first century America. ASHP has developed archives of primary documents and oral histories, as well as teaching tools and 3D recreations that help users explore such places in the past. ASHP continues to develop new web projects that showcase the latest historical thinking, rich archival resources, and the best new digital tools available. For example, Picturing United States History, a digital project based on the belief that visual materials are vital to understanding the American past, provides online essays, lectures, and reflective classroom lessons to help teachers incorporate visual evidence into their classrooms. Zoom In, created in partnership with Education Development Center, features 18 skill-focused, document-rich lessons on social history topics that address every era of US history.
Mapping History is a digital atlas of American, European, Latin American, and African history. Each section is divided into modules based on historical themes and eras. Mapping History is a resource if you need a thematic map to illustrate a pattern in history.
World History for Us All is an innovative model curriculum for teaching world history in middle school and high school. World History for Us All offers an abundance of free teaching units, lesson plans, and other resources that present the human past as a single story rather than as unconnected stories of many civilizations.
Analyzing Photographs Across the Curriculum. Students analyze rights-cleared photographs of refugees and internally displaced groups, and discuss the causes of human displacement and how the international community is responding.
A Comparison of Multimedia Timeline Creation Tools - UpdatedMaking a timeline is a "classic" history class assignment. Today, there are plenty of ways to create multimedia timelines. In the following chart I highlight the features of my favorite tools for making multimedia timelines. A copy of the chart can be acquired in Google Docs format here. www.freetech4teachers.com
Satori is a multimedia timeline creation tool that will work on your laptop, Chromebook, iPad, or tablet. With a HSTRY account you can build timelines in a vertical scroll format similar to that of a Facebook feed. To start the process pick a topic and upload a cover photo. To add events to the timeline just click the "+" symbol and select the type of media that you want to add to your timeline. You can add videos, images, audio, and text to the events on your timeline.
History in Motion is a promising service that allows teachers and students to build multimedia history stories. On History in Motion you can build animated timelines that can move in conjunction with movements on a map. At each stop along your timeline and map you can include descriptions of events, display images, and display videos. Video Tutorial
Hardcore History Podcast Grades 9–12 Every teacher and student knows that, while history may not have been boring, history textbooks often are. Hardcore History with Dan Carlin is aiming to change all that, with honest and dramatic looks at historical figures and events that go far outside the basic historical outline many of us learned. While Hardcore History is not released on a predictable schedule and the episodes are often very long, it brings history to life in an invaluable way. History teachers who take the time to curate clips may find that their students have a whole new interest in learning.
Global Student Laboratory is a web-based, educational platform that enables students, teachers, and learners of all ages to pose questions and together find answers. With GlobalLab, teachers have, in one place, all the resources, tools, partners, and support to bring authentic investigations to classrooms and homes. Each project is a collaborative journey of challenges and discovery. In nine projects, step by step, students use math, graphing, and more to discover who they are as a community.
Having students complete a project reviewing several chapters of a unit from a textbook isn’t particularly innovative, but try doing it in video form and included some reflective questions.Here are the directions and script students used.
World History for Us All is an innovative model curriculum for teaching world history in middle and high schools.
World Population History is an interactive map and timeline of the world's population growth from 1 C.E. to today. The timeline at the bottom of the map features little placemarks that feature developments in science, trade, and major political events. Students can click on the markers in the timeline to learn more about each development.The combination of the map with the timeline can help students see the correlation between scientific advancements and changes in population growth.
Infographic: “Continental Shift: The World’s Most Populous Countries
Animated Infographic: “Top 20 Country Population History & Projection (1810-2100)”
Histography.io learn how history is influenced by interconnected events. Examine periods of history through images, video and text to make connections between events, inventions, social movements, ets...
X Degrees of Separation lets you select two works of art in the Google Arts & Culture collection and then see works that can connect them. The purpose of X Degrees of Separation appears to be to show viewers how cultures can be connected through art. Each image that appears in the connections is linked to an individual page that will include a bit of information about the work. Depending upon the work that you've selected you may not get much more information than the artist's name and the museum in which the work is displayed. www.freetech4teachers.com
ArcGIS Living Atlas of the World is a collection of thousands of online, interactive maps representing all kinds of data. The contents of the collection range from relatively simple displays of historical map imagery to complex, displays of data updated nearly live. For example, this map displays active hurricanes, cyclones, and typhoons. Another good example is this map that displays current air quality conditions around the world. www.freetech4teachers.com
HistoryMaps, available online or via the Android or iOS app, makes it easy to access historical maps. Additionally, the interface is available in multiple languages, including Arabic, Chinese, English, French, Spanish, and Portuguese.Explore HistoryMaps, and you’ll find a different aspect of history represented with each period offering interactive stories, images, and videos,
An Interactive Land Use Map on Land Use WorldCover Viewer is a new interactive land use map produced by the European Space Agency. The map lets visitors see how land is used worldwide and in specific places. Visitors can pan and zoom to see land use for an area or use the statistics explorer tools built into the map to see land use statistics for a country, state, or province. Views of the map and associated data can be downloaded from the WorldCover Viewer. video overview of WorldCover Viewer, www.freetech4teachers.com
Historical Maps
Lost In Our Maps is a slideshow of historical map mistakes.
The End Of The Map is an article that accompanies that slideshow.
NationStates A nation simulation game. You create your own country, fashioned after your own political ideals, and care for its people. You can also join the U.N. and help solve international problems Journey of Mankind Site take visitors on an animated 160,000-year virtual migration of man. Beginning in the tropics of East Africa, the illustrated, annotated journey reveals the many climatological events that governed the routes of early man. This is a spectacular resource, perfect as a foundation for a world cultures class, or for a study of world climate in science.
Field Trip Zoom provides you with an online service that allows you to search, order, schedule and connect to hundreds of live interactive programs. These programs provide your students with unique learning experiences that align with your courses and drive home the in-class materials. Museums, zoos and historical sites are some of the best sources of educational content specific to the curriculum. Whether it’s history, the arts, anthropology or other subject matter areas, these institutions can bring a new level of understanding to the material.
Connect, Communicate, and Collaborate Around the Globe How do the traits of hummingbirds, geckos, and other animals help scientists design robots? What does bird’s nest soup tell about Chinese culture? How do images, color, and text work together to communicate ideas that can change the world? These are just a few examples of the high-interest Experiences, or explorations, that students can work on collaboratively with peers in Afghanistan, Greece, Iceland, India, Italy, and other countries around the world through the free ePals Global Community. STEAM, English language arts, and social studies are among the core curricular skills students practice within the larger context of cultural investigations on topics such as growing up in Turkey or Cambodia, the causes and effects of poverty globally, and recipes from Spain, Russia, Holland, and the American South that reflect regional beliefs and customs. Teacher materials include Experience descriptions, standards-aligned objectives, step-by-step tasks, thought questions, collaborative activities, and homework suggestions. Marginal notes provide tips on grouping students and setting goals, and suggest ways students can contribute their ideas and solutions to charities and other real-world organizations.
Click Here to Visit Website
Google Cultural Institute, you can seriously get lost in here for hours. Think the largest museum you can think of, then multiply that by a very large number and you get a sense of what’s available. And I’m not even talking about the whole Institute. Just the Historic Moments and World Wonders sections. Google has partnered with hundreds of museums, cultural institutions, and archives to host the world’s cultural treasures online at a section of the Institute called Historic Moments. Here you can find artworks, landmarks and world heritage sites, as well as digital exhibitions that tell the stories behind the archives of cultural institutions across the globe.
Google News Newspaper archive. In the Google News Newspaper archive you can search for a specific newspaper, search for article titles, or as demonstrated below you can search for a topic.
PBS World Explorers is a collection of videos from PBS Learning Media. The PBS World Explorers collection includes sixteen short videos about famous explorers throughout history. Some of the explorers featured in PBS World Explorers include Leif Ericson, John Cabot, and Zheng He. You'll also find the usual suspects in the collection including Marco Polo, Christopher Columbus, and Juan Ponce de León. It's also interesting to note that PBS World Explorers includes 20th Century explorers Alan Shepard and Neil Armstrong.
22 Amazing Visualizations and Maps about World Facts and cultures
Go Social Studies Go a series of multimedia books about common social studies topics. The site is divided into three main sections; U.S. History, World History, and World Religions. Click to open a book then click to open a chapter in the each of the books. Within each chapter there is a series of pages containing text, pictures, videos, and links to additional resources on your chosen topic.
Museum Box is a great tool for creating virtual displays of artifacts that you find online. By using Museum Box students can organize images, text, videos, links, and audio clips about any topic that they're researching. When completed , students' "boxes" become digital dioramas.
Educade Start browsing for hundreds of lesson plans and teaching tools right now.
Educade revolutionizes the way students learn by integrating fun and interactive learning methods with cutting-edge 21st century tools, such as apps, games and maker kits. The site celebrates teachers’ expertise and first-hand knowledge of students, and equips them with the tools and community support to maximize their impact on student learning.
Eyewitness to History site that lets students select a period in history and see personal stories of people from the time. A nice combination of a great deal of information and many historical photos and drawings that bring learning to life.
World History for Us All is a powerful, innovative model curriculum for teaching world history in middle and high schools. World History for Us All
Listen Current provides access to audio clips from National Public Radio and other public networks from around the world that cover both current events and historical topics. The clips are short and easy to use with students. But that’s not all that the site can do for you.
They offer a series of powerful lesson plans that are Common Core from the ground up – aligned to standards and ready to use.
Made From History is a fantastic history resource. Made From History is produced by the BBC. The site features picture essays, timelines, videos, and interactive guides to significant events in European and World history. Made From History is divided into four sections; WWI, WWII, Civil Rights, and Referenced Blog.
David Rumsey Historical Map Collection Use the LUNA Browser to check out David Rumsey’s Map Collection with more than 30,000 images, searchable by keyword.
Talking History could be a great resource for history teachers looking to bring audio artifacts into their classrooms. Search archives
Zoom In designed specifically to train secondary students to solve a historical problem by analyzing and collecting evidence, organizing research, and creating a rough draft communicating the solution. Get a sense of the tool at their YouTube channel.
Historia ideal for bringing History into the classroom through Game Based Learning. This game has students team up in groups to lead a civilization into prosperity by doing project based research and making important decisions that impact how their civilization will grow. Also, this game is designed for all kinds of devices such as: interactive whiteboards, tablets, and desktops (Mac/PC), and is aligned to Common Core Standards.
Diffen is a nice resource for those times when you need a quick comparison of two things. Let's say you need a chart to highlight the differences between latitude and longitude, Diffen has that. Or perhaps you need a comparison of Medicare and Medicaid, Diffen has that too.
If you can't find the comparison that you need, you can create your own on Diffen. Diffen is a community site. Anyone who registers on Diffen can contribute to the comparisons on the site. Comparisons are not limited to text. Images can be added to the comparison charts on Diffen. An embed code is available for each chart.
Resources on Genocide
The United States Holocaust Memorial Museum is a must go-to when teaching about the Holocaust and other genocides around the world. The Museum has a ton of resources and suggestions:
What If A Girl In The Holocaust Had Instagram (also called Eva Stories) is an amazing Instagram story that dramatizes the actual diary account of Eva Heyman, a teenager who perished in the Holocaust.
6 Reasons the Ottoman Empire fell One reason is the literacy rate (which was 5-10%).
Dig deeper into teaching about the Holocaust and then explore their lessons and commonly asked questions.
Courtroom 600 a project that places users inside the courtroom at the Nuremberg trials where Nazis and collaborators were tried. This project, still in prototype form, allows users to engage with virtual reality technology in order to interact with a fictitious member of the United States team of prosecutors. It also enables users to read primary source documents, gather evidence and prosecute select defendants.
Get access to ten lesson plans with primary resources, materials, teaching suggestions from Echoes and Reflections.
Anti-Defamation League has a great deal of curriculum and professional development resources. Find their lessons here. Go to a special section of resources specific to talking and teaching about the Pittsburg shooting.
USC Shoah Foundationhas a rich database of video oral histories that can be connected to diary accounts such as Renia’s.
IWitness program This is a collection of 1,500 testimonies of survivors and witnesses to genocide – the Holocaust, as well as others like the Nanjing Massacre in China. The testimonies can be searched by subject. There are also ready-made lessons for teachers that can be accessed from anywhere and used freely at any time.
Yad Vashem – the World Holocaust Remembrance Center has primary source materials and educational materials.
Teaching Tolerance has numerous resources for learning about the Holocaust, racism, and anti-Semitism. Be sure to explore a teaching kit titled One Survivor Remembers, a documentary around the oral history of Gerda Weissmann Klein. Get the Teacher’s Guide and primary sources.
Online sourcebooks that feature primary sources that deal with the Holocaust. These online sources focus on the camp system and women under Nazi persecution.
Europeana A site that allows users to comb through and inspect over 4 million digital artifacts from Europe. The site has great art from museums, as well as videos, music, and other interactive media. Liven up the study of world artifacts from hundreds of years ago through to today.
Internet Modern History Sourcebook Use the Internet Modern History Sourcebook to find thousands of sources in modern history. Browse and search to find full texts, multimedia, and more.
World Conflict Map Help your secondary students gain a greater understanding of some of the 20th century's most devastating military conflicts with this compelling, interactive map. Students can discover where specific wars took place, who the main protagonists were, and which regions of the world have experienced the most unrest.
Cyberschoolbus Designed to provide teachers andstudents with information and teachingmaterials that pertain to internationalissues and the United Nations.It aims to create an online global educationcommunity and sponsor actionprojects to give students a voice onglobal issues. The site is divided intofour main sections: Resources, Curriculum,Quizzes & Games, and Community. Teacher Highlights. Under Resources,click on InfoNation to view and comparestatistical data from country tocountry. Within the Community section find discussion boards for students, as well as student and professional galleries of photos,artwork, and writing. For educators, the most useful areaof Cyberschoolbus is likely to be the Curriculum section, which contains dozens of outstanding thematic units,many with interactive exercises. Two outstanding examples are Rights at Work, which explores the importance of protecting people at work, and Cities of Today, Cities of Tomorrow, which contains six units on the history, potential, and problems of urbanization. Other units address peace, poverty, human rights, and health.
Digital Library Photos by continent and country
Digital Vaults is a site put together by the National Archives (a great history resource). It is a place where historical records, photos, and documents are kept. At this site a user can either create a Digital Poster, Movie or a Pathway Challenge. A Pathway Challenge is a great way to lean history and see how historical items are "linked" together.
HistoryBuff History Buff offers an online newspaper archive, reference library, and even a historical panoramas section in their free primary source material collection.
Ed Helper Social Studies resources has this page packed full of resources and teaching materials on social studies for different grades and age groups.
Lesson Plans and Resources for Social Studies Teachers Dr. Marty Levine, Professor Emeritus of Secondary Education, California State University, Northridge (CSUN), has gathered lesson plans and resources from the Internet which social studies teachers will find useful.
Geography and Historical Maps
Timelines: Sources From History is a nifty interactive from the British Library that lets you explore items from its collection using text, video and images. It’s very engaging. The only negative I see is that you can save favorites, but only to a PDF that you can then print-out. There doesn’t appear to be anyway to save it online. That seems a little strange, but maybe I’m missing something.
The BBC’s “A History Of The World.” is a neat interactive timeline display of historical objects with images and commentary. Not only is it an accessible and engaging way to learn more about world history, but after a quick site registration you can contribute your own historical object choice to the collection and write about it
Online Debating
Europeana A site that allows users to comb through and inspect over 4 million digital artifacts from Europe. The site has great art from museums, as well as videos, music, and other interactive media. It is a great way to liven up the study of world artifacts from hundreds of years ago through to today.
Teaching History. This website is non-negotiable. Every social studies / history teacher needs this for personal professional learning.
ChronoZoom, a free tool developed by Microsoft Research and an international team of collaborators, is helping her students visually explore the history of, well, just about everything, from the Big Bang right up to the present day.
Historical Thinking Matters is a good resource for U.S. History teachers. Includes a good interactive presentation titled Why Historical Thinking Matters. The ten part presentation starts out by explaining why historical thinking isn't just memorization of facts. The presentation walks viewers through a model of how to think and study like a historian who analyzes and compares
History Labs: A Guided Approach to Historical Inquiry in the K-12 Classroom, the site is perfect for teaching kids how to solve historical problems.
Stanford History Education Group websites. Their Beyond the Bubble tool & curriculum based on Sam Wineburg’s ideas of historical thinking have had a huge influence on my view of what great instruction looks like.
Conflict History (6-12)
This site allows users to view Conflicts globally through out time - using and interactive world map and interactive time lines great interactive resource.
The Worst Jobs in History is a series of three interactive learning experiences. In The Worst Jobs in History students learn about the dirtiest, most dangerous, and tiring jobs in three time periods. The time periods are Medieval, Early Modern, and Modern. In each activity in The Worst Jobs in History students read short descriptions of jobs and rank them according to how dirty, dangerous, or tiring they think that they are. After ranking the jobs students can take a short online quiz about what they read about the jobs. There is also the option to download a worksheet to use with the activities.
Conflict History (6-12) This site allows users to view Conflicts globally through out time - using and interactive world map and interactive time lines great interactive resource. normal;vertical-align:baseline"
History Engine - The History Engine is an ambitious project that puts the student in the part of a historian to creating stunning projects.
Historical Scene Investigations Historical Scene Investigation - Bring the fun of CSI to your social studies class. Let your students become detectives as they investigate historical events.
Eyewitness Exhibits Another great, interactive research page is a site called Eyewitness Exhibits. These are very personal, historic photos that present famous events and eras throughout history in a very human way. The photos will show you candid and sometimes extremely emotional images that you just don’t find in the history books.
CultureQuest Explore other people's cultures through inquiry-based projects.
Gateway to World History A site containing the world history archives, links to other online sites, and keyword searches
Keypal Links Interview or communicate with students from other countries--a great way to learn about another country or culture
Google Cultural Institute sites in history, geography, and art courses. The online exhibitions in the Google Cultural Institute feature images, videos, audio, and text about significant historical and cultural people, places, and events. Some of the exhibitions like the Eiffel Tower Exhibitionincorporate the use of Google Maps Street View imagery too. Unicef Games Helps kids rescue others, provide food, help clean water, etc and learn about the world at the same time!
If it Were My Home is a country comparison tool where students can compare living conditions in their own country to those of another.
Nuskool This is a site that uses pop culture as teaching moments for students. Tailored to grades 6th-12th students learn a variety of subjects such as: Math, Science, English, etc through educational lessons based on the different elements of pop culture (video games, sports, films, etc.).
SCAN library the SCAN tool are now FREE to educators! 100+ free lessons based on current or historical events that can help you get your kids connected to the real world within your curriculum. Each lesson contains a scenario with four different perspectives, and guided critical thinking questions that your students discuss online in a private "chat-like" room. Check out our short how-to videos to discover how easy SCAN is to use and set up for your next class.
register
Writing Prompts for Social Studies and History
Hyperhistory Online Timelines, maps, and graphics for events in world history
Historical Atlas of the 20th Century Maps of eras, trends, political boundaries, wars, and more.
EverFi is a new-media learning platform that uses the latest technology – video, animations, 3-D gaming, avatars, and social networking – to bring complex financial concepts to life for today’s digital generation. video demo
Atlas of the Human Journey A National Geographic interactive map of the genetic movement of humans over time
MarsQuest Online On this site, you will launch a spacecraft to Mars, explore, canyons, solve mysteries, and search for life. Use it to compare to early explorations on Earth!
Beyond the Bubble website with its HATs - Historical Assessments of Thinking. Short, easy to administer, handy interactive rubrics to go along with, student examples to aid in scoring, supporting materials, extension videos, and aligned with Common Core literacy standards.
Teaching with Primary Sources. But sometimes it's easy to forget about all the resources that the TPS people have put together for social studies teachers. One of the most useful things you can find is their Teaching with Primary Sources Quarterly. Each Quarterly focuses on a specific topic with helpful articles, links to sources, and grade level lesson plans. This quarter's topic is using primary source activities that align to the Common Core.
Historical Thinking Matters Four investigations of central topics from post-civil war U.S. history, with activities that foster historical thinking and encourage students to form reasoned conclusions about the past. the 80+ lesson plans - all structured around the concepts of high level historical thinking. Beyond the Bubble historical thinking assessment site.
World Digital Library hosts nearly 5,000 primary documents and images from collections around the world. Sponsored by the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization, the mission of the World Digital Library is to promote the study and understanding of cultures. The WDL can be searched by date, era, country, continent, topic, and type of resource. In my search of the WDL I noticed that roughly half of the resources are historical maps and images. The WDL aims to be accessible to as many people as possible by providing search tools and content descriptions in seven languages. The WDL can also be searched by clicking through the map on the homepage.
Bridging World History
Professional development and classroom materials to support the study of world history. Bridging World History is organized into 26 thematic units along a chronological thread. Materials include videos, an audio glossary and a thematically-organized interactive.
HistorySimulation.com has interactive simulations and engaging PowerPoint/Keynote Presentations. The American Civil War, European Imperialism, WWI, WWII and The Cold War. In these simulations, students are assigned roles as world leaders and given objectives that mirror the national interests of those countries
Best of History Sites
Best of History Web Sites, created by EdTechTeacher Inc, is an award-winning portal that contains annotated links to over 1200 history web sites as well as links to hundreds of quality K-12 history lesson plans, history teacher guides, history activities, history games, history quizzes, and more.
Historical Thinking Skills Interactives This series of interactive activities introduces and models the Historical Thinking Skills defined by the National Center for History in the Schools. The interactives each model a specific skill or set of skills, such as analyzing historical artifacts or using primary sources to develop a thesis.
Historical Scene Investigations The Historical Scene Investigation Project (HSI) was designed for social studies teachers who need a strong pedagogical mechanism for bringing primary sources into their classroom.
World History Matters
World History Matters is a portal to world history websites developed by the Center for History and New Media.
World History Resource Center
Tons of resources organized by period – from the beginning of recorded history to the present.
World History Sources
World History Sources responds to the challenges of teaching World History by creating a web site that helps world history teachers and students locate, analyze, and learn from online primary sources and to further their understanding of the complex nature of world history.
History and Politics Out Loud History and Politics Out Loud offers a searchable archive of important recordings through history, particularly politically significant audio materials.
History Engine In this tool for collaborative education and research, students can learn history by researching, writing, and publishing, creating a collection of historical articles in U.S. history that can be searched for here by scholars, teachers, and the general pub
Nationmaster Grades 4 to 12 Offers users the ability to custom-generate scores of comparisons and reports, all based on publicly available data. While students will find the results interesting, government, economics, and world cultures teachers will find this site a great tool for creating illustrations and examples to use in their teaching.
Discovery Channel School : World History Lesson Plans Curriculum tie-ins with the programs, vocabulary, and lessons to support the teaching of world history unit
World History Project This website offers four courses for teaching world history to high school students, including:
- WHP Origins to the Present. This course begins at the origins of human existence through the birth of the modern world.
- WHP 1200 to the Present. Start right before the Columbian Exchange and the first transoceanic connections to globalization.
- WHP 1750 to the Present. This one starts at the Industrial Revolution, exploring key transformations.
- World History Project AP. This one is designed for Advanced Placement (AP) World History students.
Countryballs history of Europe: 1500-2022”
Center for History in the Schools. The interactives each model a specific skill or set of skills, such as analyzing historical artifacts or using primary sources to develop a thesis.
Memory of The World is a new resource on Google Arts & Culture. UNESCO organized it, and it features key documents from world history that they have brought together ” to tell their stories and highlight key moments in history that have left the world changed forever.” It includes lesson plans on how to use them in the classroom.
Google Practice Sets "With practice sets, in Google Classroom, educators are able to use content they already have, or come up with brand new questions from scratch, to build an assessment activity. Google's artificial intelligence then scans the questions and determines the learning skills being addressed, and finds helpful hints and resources to go along with each question in case the students need assistance".Introduction video | Details
Ideas That Changed The World is an interesting site on Google Arts and Culture.
The Good Country Index:The idea of the Good Country Index is simple: to measure what each country on earth contributes to the common good of humanity, and what it takes away, relative to its size
Tools For Comparing Demographics Of Different Countries.
Sites To See “Photos That Changed The World”: Some of the links are not active, but there a numerous ones that are fine that make the site worthwhile.
Point In History shows boundaries around the world and throughout history.
Dollar Street, a project created by Gapminder, sent teams of photographers around the world to take photos of over 264 homes in 50 different countries and uploaded them onto the website, allowing us to see how different people live across the world at different income points. The project imagines the world as a street ordered by income…poor families live at one end and rich families live at the other. A team of photographers went out and photographed the everyday items owned by families of all income levels — shoes, toothbrushes, TVs, beds, lights, sinks — so that visitors to the site can see how much income affects how families live. There are filters to focus in on specific areas like homes, food, customs and more. video start at 15:45
Metroverse is an urban economy navigator built at the Growth Lab at Harvard University. It is based on over a decade of research on how economies grow and diversify and offers a detailed look into the specialization patterns of cities. As a dynamic resource, the tool is continually evolving with new data and features to help answer questions such as What is the economic composition of my city?How does my city compare to cities around the globe? Which cities look most like mine? What are the technological capabilities that underpin my city’s current economy? Which growth and diversification paths does that suggest for the future?
The OER Project The OER Project is a coalition of historians and educators whose goal is to promote social studies education through a number of curricular materials and courses. The OER Project offers two interesting courses titled Big History Project and World History Project. The Big History Project is 'a social studies course that spans 13.8 billion years. It weaves insights from many disciplines to form a single story that helps us better understand people, civilizations, and how we are connected to everything around us.' As for World History project, this is a course designed with history teachers in mind. It offers three versions: Origins to the Present, 1200 to the Present, and 1750 to the Present.
Caption This! Using photos and text to analyze primary sources
World History Encyclopedia - Online collection of thousands of world history resources including articles, videos, maps, primary source materials, quizzes, and more.
Research at the Crossroads of Story, Media, and Social Awareness X-Media Lab, a research hub in Harvard Graduate School of Education, works at the crossroads of education, media, digital technology, and prevention science—leveraging the power of stories. A team of X-Media researchers selects meaningful story content from a creative canon within the arts and humanities to help students and teachers reflect on the academic, ethical, and aesthetic importance of stories to promote humanistic values across cultures, phases of human development, genres, professions, and historical periods. X-Media Lab is working on a multiphased project using R. J. Palacio’s novel Wonder, along with the movie adaptation. Wonder tells the story of how a child with a facial deformity navigates relationships with his family and classmates as he enters a school for the first time.To bring “wonder” into the classroom, the X-Media team has created an illustrated Wonder Educator’s Resource Guide,
National Council for the Social Studies (NCSS) Offers professional development resources for social studies teachers in the form of online conferences and webinars.There are also materials to help with inquiry and teaching using primary resources. The Publications and Resources section features NCSS journals, books, bulletins, podcasts, on-demand library, and more. NCSS SmartBrief is another excellent resource for social studies teachers. This is basically a '3x-weekly snapshot of news on best practices, curriculum, and professional development for social studies educators
Poptential - Free curriculum that pairs pop culture media with engaging digital storytelling for effective dynamic learning in American History, World History, US Government, and Economics.
The History Engine
The History Engine is 'a collection of thousands of historical “episodes” that paints a wide-ranging portrait of the past that is freely available to scholars, teachers, and the general public. Students from a variety of college and universities write these episodes. Creating an episode for the History Engine gives them the opportunity to learn history by doing the work—researching, writing, and publishing—of a historian'.
History Matters
'Designed for high school and college teachers and students of U.S. history survey courses, this site serves as a gateway to web resources and offers unique teaching materials, first-person primary documents, and guides to analyzing historical evidence.'
Discovery Education Discovery Education is another good social studies resource to use with your students. It provides a wide variety of content, tools, and resources to engage students and track their performance. Content in Discovery Education covers various topics and subjects including podcasts, interactives, virtual field trips, videos, and more. The site also provides teachers with formative assessment tools to check students understanding.
Teaching Tools to Support a Global ClassroomWorld Savvy works with educators to make classrooms more inclusive, relevant, and engaging. The organization’s standards-aligned educational resources, curriculum, and teaching tools support the integration of global competence into teaching and learning. All content is free and accessible to anyone interested in globalizing their classroom or learning environment. A library of resources includes case studies (student-inquiry approach), knowledge-to-action (design thinking), multilingual learner toolkit, and student projects.
Digitally Writing New Histories” Unit Plans. (gr. 3 - 12) With a shift towards disciplinary, digital, and critical literacies, with historical documents and artifacts — as well as images, social media posts, and videos created with contemporary technologies — all serve as primary sources for inquiry-based, learning.
Digital Book Series Bringing the Pages of History to Life World of Characters: Revolutions & Industrialization ( free) is a digital experience in the History Adventures series that presents a fresh approach to history education.This interactive, multimodal learning experience covers the period from 1750 to 1900 through the lens of five amazing people living through complex flashpoints in time. The characters include Agent 355, an enslaved woman—and an American Revolutionary War spy; Jiemba, an indigenous Australian at Botany Bay when the British convict ships arrived; Fei Hong, a Chinese family man surviving the Opium Wars; Khari, a native rebel resisting Belgian oppression during the misleadingly titled Congo Free State; and Thomas Brown, a muckraking reporter working to expose the gross malpractice of the Chicago meatpacking industry. The app, available for iOS and Android devices, features immersive 3D environments; animated interactive infographics; enhanced original historical documents; “Choose Your Own Adventure” experiences; animated illustrations and dynamic text; an AP World History curriculum; and media-rich interactive assessments.
Ten Topics in Teaching History With Technology www.freetechteachers.comConnect Extend Challenge is a thinking routine that helps kids make connections between new ideas and content to what they already know and to what makes sense to them. So it’s a perfect way for your students to begin thinking about primary sources and how they can be applied to your direct instruction, a video clip, a piece of literature, or something they learned last year. Site includes template
World History Inquiry Kits Explore this collection of sixty inquiry kits that let students study historical topics that excite them. Each kit has primary and secondary sources to analyze. Study everything from early cultures to modern politics. Inquiry kits examine social studies themes. Go to World History Inquiry Kits
Internet Modern History Sourcebook Use the Internet Modern History Sourcebook to find thousands of sources in modern history. Browse and search to find full texts, multimedia, and more. the Sourcebook project seeks to present teachers and students with a wide variety of educational materials on 'modern European history and American history, as well as in modern Western Civilization and World Cultures...A number of other online source collections emphasize legal and political documents. Here efforts have been made to include contemporary narrative accounts, personal memoirs, songs, newspaper reports, as well as cultural, philosophical, religious and scientific documents. Although the history of social and cultural elite groups remains important to historians, the lives of non-elite women, people of color, lesbians and gays are also well represented here.'
The Largest Cities Throughout History: Every Year
World History Commons offers a free collection of more than 1700 primary sources covering a wide array of themes and events in world history. The best part is that all of the primary sources in the collection are annotated with helpful notes for students. World History Commons also offers a collection of free teaching guides that incorporate the use of primary sources. www.freetech4teachers.com
Rank Country A tool for comparing demographic data from different countries.
World Atlas 2.0, you can click on any one of nearly 3,000 different data sets related to technology, population, education, etc, and a visual representation of it will show up on a world map.
The Best Tools For Comparing Demographics Of Different Countries.
Naraview is a site on which you can create challenges for you students to connect topics through Wikipedia. The idea is that you give your students two topics and they have to click through Wikipedia articles to make the connections between the two topics. As the teacher, I can see the paths that students take to get from the starting article to the ending article. Here's an example of how Naraview works. www.freetech4teachers.com
Our World in Data - Resource Link - Over 3,000 charts on topics including poverty, disease, hunger, climate change, war, existential risks, inequality, and more, with supporting research, data, and conclusions.
The Best Videos For Learning Why It’s Important To Study History:
Ancient Earth Globe - Explore a 3D model of the Earth from present day back to 750 million years ago to see how our planet has changed over time.
Free social studies lessons based on student inquiry. The Inquiry Design Model (IDM) is an instructional research-based framework including: questions to help students frame their inquiry, summative and formative performance tasks, and subject matter-specific texts.The IDMs are a tool for building well-rounded citizens in classrooms. Students are able to analyze and articulate how their ideas and perspectives change as their inquiry unfolds. I’ve used this tool as a formative assessment to help me understand my students’ progress toward meeting our state’s (Kentucky’s) draft social studies standards. Differentiated reading supports may be needed, since some students will have trouble accessing these complex texts and won’t be able to use the resource as-is.
The NO Project is an award-winning, global, educational anti-slavery campaign that specifically targets youth awareness of modern slavery and human trafficking through film, music, art, dance, theatre, journalism, creative writing, education and social media. video tutorial
Big Ideas About Studying History
- Excellent History Question For Students: “What Are History’s Biggest Turning-Point Years?”
- The Best Resources For Teaching “What If?” History Lessons
- Four Intriguing Perspectives On History
- Funny, Yet Sad: “The Onion” Publishes Excellent Commentary On Importance Of History
- Grammar, Morals & History
- Quote Of The Day: “The Problem With History
ClassroomScreen The Swiss Army Knife for the classroom . Click on Learn more for tutorial
- Language – Choose to display text in a large range of languages-Random Name/Dice – Enter the names of students and choose one at random. -Sound Level – Monitor classroom noise levels using the microphone on your device.-QR Code – Enter a link and a QR code is automatically generated.- Drawing – There are two sizes available where you can free draw.- Text – A simple tool to write instructions, reminders, learning goals and so on.- Work Symbols – Display one of four options: work together, ask a neighbor, whisper, and silence.- Traffic Light – Display a red, amber, or green light to provide a visual reminder of when to move around, begin a task, pack up etc.- Timer – Count up or count down, record “laps”, and more. You can customise the tone that rings when the time is up.-Clock – Shows the time as a 12 or 24 hour clock. Also shows a calendar.
Assessment for Evaluating Historical Thinking The Olympics Protest is a new assessment from the Stanford History Education Group (SHEG) that gauges whether students can identify the historical event depicted in an iconic photograph and evaluate its historical significance.
HistorySimulation History Simulation, as its name indicates, is an educational platform that offers a wide variety of history simulations, games, educational activities, and history presentations to use in your history class.
Digital Archive: International History Declassified Is a resource where students, researchers and specialists can access once-secret documents from governments and organizations all over the world. Constructed and maintained by the Wilson Center’s History and Public Policy Program, the Digital Archive contains newly declassified historical materials from archives around the world—much of it in translation and including diplomatic cables, high level correspondence, meeting minutes and more. The historical documents presented in the ever-expanding Digital Archive provide fresh, unprecedented insights into recent international history.
The Core Knowledge free PDFs They cover many of the key elements of any World History or U.S. History curriculum. Each PDF includes both teacher lessons and the student book. However, the teacher lessons are in portrait view but the student book isn’t – you would have to go to something like the free PDF go to “rotate” the student pages so they wouldn’t have to bend their heads to read them online
Mapamundi An interactive that uses diverse data to compare countries.
World101, a program of the Council on Foreign Relations, offers a growing library of free multimedia resources that explain international affairs and foreign policy issues, helping students understand the basics of these topics, including why they matter and how they are relevant. Under Global Era Issues, educators will find ten modules that explore Globalism, Terrorism, Nuclear Proliferation, Climate Change, Migration, Cyberspace and Cybersecurity, Global Health, Trade, Monetary Policy and Currencies, and Development. Regions of the World presents six modules covering the Americas, Europe, Middle East and North Africa, Sub-Saharan Africa, South and Central Asia, and East Asia and the Pacific. From essays and discussion questions to glossaries and up-to-date reading lists, World101 provides comprehensive teaching resources for each module.
The Best Resources For Teaching “What If?” History Lessons.
Doing History is Like Solving a Mystery is an interactive poster for elementary school students. The poster uses images with notes to guide students through the process of developing good research questions and recording their ideas.
The Big History Project - Discover this world of history so full of science information. It is multimedia at its best!
See The Causes of Death Visually in Every Country GBD Compare is an impressive visualization of the causes of death in every country around the world.
World History Geography Kit
Model Diplomacy Students become foreign policy experts in this real-world simulationThis impressive program has ready-to-use and expert-vetted content that'll help advanced students engage meaningfully with foreign policy issues and processes.
Exodus: The Climate Migration Crisis is an impressive project from the Weather Channel. It examines how climate change is forcing people around the world to leave their communities.
Map of Contemporaries is an interactive visual that chronicles the history of the world through the lifespans of famous people. It provides a biographical account of different historical figures and through them an overview of the major events that marked their era.
History Engine (http://historyengine.richmond.edu), a project at the University of Richmond centered on a writing assignment for the digital age, which is called an “episode.” An episode is something like a moment in time: it is a short essay on a particular event in the past, such as a wedding in New York during the Great Depression or an 1840 slave sale in rural Mississippi. Episodes explore these historical moments as interpretive windows into the past. Rather than tackling the entire American Civil War, for example, an episode might focus on the terrifying experience of a particular soldier at the Battle of Gettysburg, illustrated by his surviving letters and contextualized by secondary literature. Another episode might recount the excitement felt by a woman in New Hampshire when she stepped into the voting booth for the first time in 1920, as described in her diary and supported by literature on the 19th amendment. Because they center on historical action at the local level, each episode provides a unique voice about a particular time and place that can be joined by other voices.
History is an Argument About the Past is an interactive poster for middle school and high school students. The poster walks students through identifying primary and secondary sources of information then using that information to create an argument. The League of Extraordinary Bloggers is a team of bloggers from China, japan, south Korea and Vietnam who are traveling through Asia to track down a criminal mastermind who has been stealing cultural landmarks and objects. Students can join these bloggers by taking on the role of Agent X.
Minigames Developing Global and Cultural Awareness The League of Extraordinary Bloggers is a team of bloggers from China, japan, south Korea and Vietnam who are traveling through Asia to track down a criminal mastermind who has been stealing cultural landmarks and objects. Students can join these bloggers by taking on the role of Agent X.
Big History Project High schoolers ( Will need to be adapted for middle schoolers )will benefit from looking at their world from a broader perspective. A wonderfully innovative and divergent way to teach foundational concepts in history, humanities, critical thinking, and science.The reading level of some texts surpasses that of 9th and 10th graders; extra scaffolding may be needed to ensure student buy-in and comprehension.
ActiveHistory features a wide variety of educational materials designed specifically for use in history classrooms. These include award-winning interactive simulations, decision-making games, self-marking quizzes, high-quality worksheets and detailed lesson plans". ActiveHistory also "provides materials on scores of topics from the Middle Ages to the present day, aimed at every age range between 11-18 years.
The Best Resources For Teaching “What If?” History Lessons
American Social History Project (ASHP) in the Center for Media Literacy at City University of New York produces a variety of websites to discover the past. The subjects range from revolutionary France to twenty-first century America. ASHP has developed archives of primary documents and oral histories, as well as teaching tools and 3D recreations that help users explore such places in the past. ASHP continues to develop new web projects that showcase the latest historical thinking, rich archival resources, and the best new digital tools available. For example, Picturing United States History, a digital project based on the belief that visual materials are vital to understanding the American past, provides online essays, lectures, and reflective classroom lessons to help teachers incorporate visual evidence into their classrooms. Zoom In, created in partnership with Education Development Center, features 18 skill-focused, document-rich lessons on social history topics that address every era of US history.
Mapping History is a digital atlas of American, European, Latin American, and African history. Each section is divided into modules based on historical themes and eras. Mapping History is a resource if you need a thematic map to illustrate a pattern in history.
World History for Us All is an innovative model curriculum for teaching world history in middle school and high school. World History for Us All offers an abundance of free teaching units, lesson plans, and other resources that present the human past as a single story rather than as unconnected stories of many civilizations.
Analyzing Photographs Across the Curriculum. Students analyze rights-cleared photographs of refugees and internally displaced groups, and discuss the causes of human displacement and how the international community is responding.
A Comparison of Multimedia Timeline Creation Tools - UpdatedMaking a timeline is a "classic" history class assignment. Today, there are plenty of ways to create multimedia timelines. In the following chart I highlight the features of my favorite tools for making multimedia timelines. A copy of the chart can be acquired in Google Docs format here. www.freetech4teachers.com
Satori is a multimedia timeline creation tool that will work on your laptop, Chromebook, iPad, or tablet. With a HSTRY account you can build timelines in a vertical scroll format similar to that of a Facebook feed. To start the process pick a topic and upload a cover photo. To add events to the timeline just click the "+" symbol and select the type of media that you want to add to your timeline. You can add videos, images, audio, and text to the events on your timeline.
History in Motion is a promising service that allows teachers and students to build multimedia history stories. On History in Motion you can build animated timelines that can move in conjunction with movements on a map. At each stop along your timeline and map you can include descriptions of events, display images, and display videos. Video Tutorial
Hardcore History Podcast Grades 9–12 Every teacher and student knows that, while history may not have been boring, history textbooks often are. Hardcore History with Dan Carlin is aiming to change all that, with honest and dramatic looks at historical figures and events that go far outside the basic historical outline many of us learned. While Hardcore History is not released on a predictable schedule and the episodes are often very long, it brings history to life in an invaluable way. History teachers who take the time to curate clips may find that their students have a whole new interest in learning.
Global Student Laboratory is a web-based, educational platform that enables students, teachers, and learners of all ages to pose questions and together find answers. With GlobalLab, teachers have, in one place, all the resources, tools, partners, and support to bring authentic investigations to classrooms and homes. Each project is a collaborative journey of challenges and discovery. In nine projects, step by step, students use math, graphing, and more to discover who they are as a community.
Having students complete a project reviewing several chapters of a unit from a textbook isn’t particularly innovative, but try doing it in video form and included some reflective questions.Here are the directions and script students used.
World History for Us All is an innovative model curriculum for teaching world history in middle and high schools.
World Population History is an interactive map and timeline of the world's population growth from 1 C.E. to today. The timeline at the bottom of the map features little placemarks that feature developments in science, trade, and major political events. Students can click on the markers in the timeline to learn more about each development.The combination of the map with the timeline can help students see the correlation between scientific advancements and changes in population growth.
Infographic: “Continental Shift: The World’s Most Populous Countries
Animated Infographic: “Top 20 Country Population History & Projection (1810-2100)”
Histography.io learn how history is influenced by interconnected events. Examine periods of history through images, video and text to make connections between events, inventions, social movements, ets...
X Degrees of Separation lets you select two works of art in the Google Arts & Culture collection and then see works that can connect them. The purpose of X Degrees of Separation appears to be to show viewers how cultures can be connected through art. Each image that appears in the connections is linked to an individual page that will include a bit of information about the work. Depending upon the work that you've selected you may not get much more information than the artist's name and the museum in which the work is displayed. www.freetech4teachers.com
ArcGIS Living Atlas of the World is a collection of thousands of online, interactive maps representing all kinds of data. The contents of the collection range from relatively simple displays of historical map imagery to complex, displays of data updated nearly live. For example, this map displays active hurricanes, cyclones, and typhoons. Another good example is this map that displays current air quality conditions around the world. www.freetech4teachers.com
HistoryMaps, available online or via the Android or iOS app, makes it easy to access historical maps. Additionally, the interface is available in multiple languages, including Arabic, Chinese, English, French, Spanish, and Portuguese.Explore HistoryMaps, and you’ll find a different aspect of history represented with each period offering interactive stories, images, and videos,
An Interactive Land Use Map on Land Use WorldCover Viewer is a new interactive land use map produced by the European Space Agency. The map lets visitors see how land is used worldwide and in specific places. Visitors can pan and zoom to see land use for an area or use the statistics explorer tools built into the map to see land use statistics for a country, state, or province. Views of the map and associated data can be downloaded from the WorldCover Viewer. video overview of WorldCover Viewer, www.freetech4teachers.com
Historical Maps
- Resources for Historical Maps
- Countryballs history of Europe: 1500-2022”
- HistoryMaps, available online or via the Android or iOS app, makes it easy to access historical maps. Additionally, the interface is available in multiple languages, including Arabic, Chinese, English, French, Spanish, and Portuguese.Explore HistoryMaps, and you’ll find a different aspect of history represented with each period offering interactive stories, images, and videos,
- Ten of the greatest: Maps that changed the world is a slideshow from the Mail Online.
- Florida's Educational Technology Clearinghouse has a collection of more than 5,000 historical maps. The maps are licensed for free download and reuse by teachers and students. The collection is organized by continent and country. The US category is further broken down and organized by state and by historical theme. (www.freetech4teachers/com)
- Historic Maps in K-12 Classrooms has historic maps as well as lesson plans to accompany them.
- The David Rumsey Map Collection
- Early World Maps comes from Wikipedia.
- Why a map is a window on to history is an article from the BBC.
- The World’s Oldest Maps is a nice collection of…the world’s oldest maps.
- Audio slideshow: Mapping Africa is from the BBC.
- The Beauty of Maps is a pretty amazing twelve part BBC series that is now available on YouTube.
- Evolution of the Map of Africa is an intriguing collection of…maps.
- A History of Map Monsters is a slideshow from Slate.
- Old Maps Online lets you type in a location and then it will search through collections of historical maps throughout the world to show you a variety of them for that area. Its interface and accessibility are superb.
- A Handsome Atlas
- Historical Photo + Video Based Map Sites:
- Historypin is probably the biggest site on the Web.
- Sepia Town
- There and Then has a limited number of historical videos.
- What Was There lets you search for any place in the world and then shows you images of “what was there” a long time ago using a Google Maps street view. You can upload photos, too.
- Google Street View Adds “Go Back In Time” Feature
Lost In Our Maps is a slideshow of historical map mistakes.
The End Of The Map is an article that accompanies that slideshow.
NationStates A nation simulation game. You create your own country, fashioned after your own political ideals, and care for its people. You can also join the U.N. and help solve international problems Journey of Mankind Site take visitors on an animated 160,000-year virtual migration of man. Beginning in the tropics of East Africa, the illustrated, annotated journey reveals the many climatological events that governed the routes of early man. This is a spectacular resource, perfect as a foundation for a world cultures class, or for a study of world climate in science.
Field Trip Zoom provides you with an online service that allows you to search, order, schedule and connect to hundreds of live interactive programs. These programs provide your students with unique learning experiences that align with your courses and drive home the in-class materials. Museums, zoos and historical sites are some of the best sources of educational content specific to the curriculum. Whether it’s history, the arts, anthropology or other subject matter areas, these institutions can bring a new level of understanding to the material.
Connect, Communicate, and Collaborate Around the Globe How do the traits of hummingbirds, geckos, and other animals help scientists design robots? What does bird’s nest soup tell about Chinese culture? How do images, color, and text work together to communicate ideas that can change the world? These are just a few examples of the high-interest Experiences, or explorations, that students can work on collaboratively with peers in Afghanistan, Greece, Iceland, India, Italy, and other countries around the world through the free ePals Global Community. STEAM, English language arts, and social studies are among the core curricular skills students practice within the larger context of cultural investigations on topics such as growing up in Turkey or Cambodia, the causes and effects of poverty globally, and recipes from Spain, Russia, Holland, and the American South that reflect regional beliefs and customs. Teacher materials include Experience descriptions, standards-aligned objectives, step-by-step tasks, thought questions, collaborative activities, and homework suggestions. Marginal notes provide tips on grouping students and setting goals, and suggest ways students can contribute their ideas and solutions to charities and other real-world organizations.
Click Here to Visit Website
Google Cultural Institute, you can seriously get lost in here for hours. Think the largest museum you can think of, then multiply that by a very large number and you get a sense of what’s available. And I’m not even talking about the whole Institute. Just the Historic Moments and World Wonders sections. Google has partnered with hundreds of museums, cultural institutions, and archives to host the world’s cultural treasures online at a section of the Institute called Historic Moments. Here you can find artworks, landmarks and world heritage sites, as well as digital exhibitions that tell the stories behind the archives of cultural institutions across the globe.
Google News Newspaper archive. In the Google News Newspaper archive you can search for a specific newspaper, search for article titles, or as demonstrated below you can search for a topic.
PBS World Explorers is a collection of videos from PBS Learning Media. The PBS World Explorers collection includes sixteen short videos about famous explorers throughout history. Some of the explorers featured in PBS World Explorers include Leif Ericson, John Cabot, and Zheng He. You'll also find the usual suspects in the collection including Marco Polo, Christopher Columbus, and Juan Ponce de León. It's also interesting to note that PBS World Explorers includes 20th Century explorers Alan Shepard and Neil Armstrong.
22 Amazing Visualizations and Maps about World Facts and cultures
Go Social Studies Go a series of multimedia books about common social studies topics. The site is divided into three main sections; U.S. History, World History, and World Religions. Click to open a book then click to open a chapter in the each of the books. Within each chapter there is a series of pages containing text, pictures, videos, and links to additional resources on your chosen topic.
Museum Box is a great tool for creating virtual displays of artifacts that you find online. By using Museum Box students can organize images, text, videos, links, and audio clips about any topic that they're researching. When completed , students' "boxes" become digital dioramas.
Educade Start browsing for hundreds of lesson plans and teaching tools right now.
Educade revolutionizes the way students learn by integrating fun and interactive learning methods with cutting-edge 21st century tools, such as apps, games and maker kits. The site celebrates teachers’ expertise and first-hand knowledge of students, and equips them with the tools and community support to maximize their impact on student learning.
Eyewitness to History site that lets students select a period in history and see personal stories of people from the time. A nice combination of a great deal of information and many historical photos and drawings that bring learning to life.
World History for Us All is a powerful, innovative model curriculum for teaching world history in middle and high schools. World History for Us All
Listen Current provides access to audio clips from National Public Radio and other public networks from around the world that cover both current events and historical topics. The clips are short and easy to use with students. But that’s not all that the site can do for you.
They offer a series of powerful lesson plans that are Common Core from the ground up – aligned to standards and ready to use.
Made From History is a fantastic history resource. Made From History is produced by the BBC. The site features picture essays, timelines, videos, and interactive guides to significant events in European and World history. Made From History is divided into four sections; WWI, WWII, Civil Rights, and Referenced Blog.
David Rumsey Historical Map Collection Use the LUNA Browser to check out David Rumsey’s Map Collection with more than 30,000 images, searchable by keyword.
Talking History could be a great resource for history teachers looking to bring audio artifacts into their classrooms. Search archives
Zoom In designed specifically to train secondary students to solve a historical problem by analyzing and collecting evidence, organizing research, and creating a rough draft communicating the solution. Get a sense of the tool at their YouTube channel.
Historia ideal for bringing History into the classroom through Game Based Learning. This game has students team up in groups to lead a civilization into prosperity by doing project based research and making important decisions that impact how their civilization will grow. Also, this game is designed for all kinds of devices such as: interactive whiteboards, tablets, and desktops (Mac/PC), and is aligned to Common Core Standards.
Diffen is a nice resource for those times when you need a quick comparison of two things. Let's say you need a chart to highlight the differences between latitude and longitude, Diffen has that. Or perhaps you need a comparison of Medicare and Medicaid, Diffen has that too.
If you can't find the comparison that you need, you can create your own on Diffen. Diffen is a community site. Anyone who registers on Diffen can contribute to the comparisons on the site. Comparisons are not limited to text. Images can be added to the comparison charts on Diffen. An embed code is available for each chart.
Resources on Genocide
The United States Holocaust Memorial Museum is a must go-to when teaching about the Holocaust and other genocides around the world. The Museum has a ton of resources and suggestions:
- Define the term “Holocaust.”
- Translate statistics into people.
- Best Resources for Teaching About Genocide
- Do not teach or imply that the Holocaust was inevitable.
- Avoid simple answers to complex questions.
- Strive for precision of language.
- Strive for balance in establishing whose perspective informs your study of the Holocaust.
- Avoid comparisons of pain.
- Do not romanticize history.
- Contextualize the history.
- Make responsible methodological choices.
What If A Girl In The Holocaust Had Instagram (also called Eva Stories) is an amazing Instagram story that dramatizes the actual diary account of Eva Heyman, a teenager who perished in the Holocaust.
6 Reasons the Ottoman Empire fell One reason is the literacy rate (which was 5-10%).
Dig deeper into teaching about the Holocaust and then explore their lessons and commonly asked questions.
Courtroom 600 a project that places users inside the courtroom at the Nuremberg trials where Nazis and collaborators were tried. This project, still in prototype form, allows users to engage with virtual reality technology in order to interact with a fictitious member of the United States team of prosecutors. It also enables users to read primary source documents, gather evidence and prosecute select defendants.
Get access to ten lesson plans with primary resources, materials, teaching suggestions from Echoes and Reflections.
Anti-Defamation League has a great deal of curriculum and professional development resources. Find their lessons here. Go to a special section of resources specific to talking and teaching about the Pittsburg shooting.
USC Shoah Foundationhas a rich database of video oral histories that can be connected to diary accounts such as Renia’s.
IWitness program This is a collection of 1,500 testimonies of survivors and witnesses to genocide – the Holocaust, as well as others like the Nanjing Massacre in China. The testimonies can be searched by subject. There are also ready-made lessons for teachers that can be accessed from anywhere and used freely at any time.
Yad Vashem – the World Holocaust Remembrance Center has primary source materials and educational materials.
Teaching Tolerance has numerous resources for learning about the Holocaust, racism, and anti-Semitism. Be sure to explore a teaching kit titled One Survivor Remembers, a documentary around the oral history of Gerda Weissmann Klein. Get the Teacher’s Guide and primary sources.
Online sourcebooks that feature primary sources that deal with the Holocaust. These online sources focus on the camp system and women under Nazi persecution.
Europeana A site that allows users to comb through and inspect over 4 million digital artifacts from Europe. The site has great art from museums, as well as videos, music, and other interactive media. Liven up the study of world artifacts from hundreds of years ago through to today.
Internet Modern History Sourcebook Use the Internet Modern History Sourcebook to find thousands of sources in modern history. Browse and search to find full texts, multimedia, and more.
World Conflict Map Help your secondary students gain a greater understanding of some of the 20th century's most devastating military conflicts with this compelling, interactive map. Students can discover where specific wars took place, who the main protagonists were, and which regions of the world have experienced the most unrest.
Cyberschoolbus Designed to provide teachers andstudents with information and teachingmaterials that pertain to internationalissues and the United Nations.It aims to create an online global educationcommunity and sponsor actionprojects to give students a voice onglobal issues. The site is divided intofour main sections: Resources, Curriculum,Quizzes & Games, and Community. Teacher Highlights. Under Resources,click on InfoNation to view and comparestatistical data from country tocountry. Within the Community section find discussion boards for students, as well as student and professional galleries of photos,artwork, and writing. For educators, the most useful areaof Cyberschoolbus is likely to be the Curriculum section, which contains dozens of outstanding thematic units,many with interactive exercises. Two outstanding examples are Rights at Work, which explores the importance of protecting people at work, and Cities of Today, Cities of Tomorrow, which contains six units on the history, potential, and problems of urbanization. Other units address peace, poverty, human rights, and health.
Digital Library Photos by continent and country
Digital Vaults is a site put together by the National Archives (a great history resource). It is a place where historical records, photos, and documents are kept. At this site a user can either create a Digital Poster, Movie or a Pathway Challenge. A Pathway Challenge is a great way to lean history and see how historical items are "linked" together.
HistoryBuff History Buff offers an online newspaper archive, reference library, and even a historical panoramas section in their free primary source material collection.
Ed Helper Social Studies resources has this page packed full of resources and teaching materials on social studies for different grades and age groups.
Lesson Plans and Resources for Social Studies Teachers Dr. Marty Levine, Professor Emeritus of Secondary Education, California State University, Northridge (CSUN), has gathered lesson plans and resources from the Internet which social studies teachers will find useful.
Geography and Historical Maps
Timelines: Sources From History is a nifty interactive from the British Library that lets you explore items from its collection using text, video and images. It’s very engaging. The only negative I see is that you can save favorites, but only to a PDF that you can then print-out. There doesn’t appear to be anyway to save it online. That seems a little strange, but maybe I’m missing something.
The BBC’s “A History Of The World.” is a neat interactive timeline display of historical objects with images and commentary. Not only is it an accessible and engaging way to learn more about world history, but after a quick site registration you can contribute your own historical object choice to the collection and write about it
Online Debating
- Debate Graph is a resource that students can use to evaluate the many arguments in hot-button global topics. By providing webbed diagrams of arguments students can see and explore the many facets of debate. To find a debate, visit the gallery of debates on Debate Graph. There are seven formats in which you can view the parts of a debate. If you want to create your own debate diagram or contribute to one that is already started register for free on Debate Graph. Rarely are debates a simple two-sided matter. Debate Graph provides students with a great tool for exploring the many facets of debates.
- Mootup - Set up debate writing assignments within your class or across the school to teach CCSS-aligned argumentative writing using this website.
- aMap is short for ‘argument map’. The idea’s very simple – to promote the art of arguing by mapping out complex debates in a simple visual format. This can be applied to the classroom by using their site to create student debates on various topics.
- IFTTT is a service that lets you create powerful connections with one simple statement: If This Then That
- NowComment - Turn any document into a class discussion with a commenting system that appears right next to the text.
- Quibl is a Free Online Debate Platform For Discussing All Kinds Of Issues
- Google Moderator Students can post questions or comments to the moderated discussion. Once comments are posted, students can "vote" for the idea, or comment on a post. Comments can then be sorted based on the number of votes it received, and can be posted anonymously or require a Google account.
Europeana A site that allows users to comb through and inspect over 4 million digital artifacts from Europe. The site has great art from museums, as well as videos, music, and other interactive media. It is a great way to liven up the study of world artifacts from hundreds of years ago through to today.
Teaching History. This website is non-negotiable. Every social studies / history teacher needs this for personal professional learning.
ChronoZoom, a free tool developed by Microsoft Research and an international team of collaborators, is helping her students visually explore the history of, well, just about everything, from the Big Bang right up to the present day.
Historical Thinking Matters is a good resource for U.S. History teachers. Includes a good interactive presentation titled Why Historical Thinking Matters. The ten part presentation starts out by explaining why historical thinking isn't just memorization of facts. The presentation walks viewers through a model of how to think and study like a historian who analyzes and compares
History Labs: A Guided Approach to Historical Inquiry in the K-12 Classroom, the site is perfect for teaching kids how to solve historical problems.
Stanford History Education Group websites. Their Beyond the Bubble tool & curriculum based on Sam Wineburg’s ideas of historical thinking have had a huge influence on my view of what great instruction looks like.
Conflict History (6-12)
This site allows users to view Conflicts globally through out time - using and interactive world map and interactive time lines great interactive resource.
The Worst Jobs in History is a series of three interactive learning experiences. In The Worst Jobs in History students learn about the dirtiest, most dangerous, and tiring jobs in three time periods. The time periods are Medieval, Early Modern, and Modern. In each activity in The Worst Jobs in History students read short descriptions of jobs and rank them according to how dirty, dangerous, or tiring they think that they are. After ranking the jobs students can take a short online quiz about what they read about the jobs. There is also the option to download a worksheet to use with the activities.
Conflict History (6-12) This site allows users to view Conflicts globally through out time - using and interactive world map and interactive time lines great interactive resource. normal;vertical-align:baseline"
History Engine - The History Engine is an ambitious project that puts the student in the part of a historian to creating stunning projects.
Historical Scene Investigations Historical Scene Investigation - Bring the fun of CSI to your social studies class. Let your students become detectives as they investigate historical events.
Eyewitness Exhibits Another great, interactive research page is a site called Eyewitness Exhibits. These are very personal, historic photos that present famous events and eras throughout history in a very human way. The photos will show you candid and sometimes extremely emotional images that you just don’t find in the history books.
CultureQuest Explore other people's cultures through inquiry-based projects.
Gateway to World History A site containing the world history archives, links to other online sites, and keyword searches
Keypal Links Interview or communicate with students from other countries--a great way to learn about another country or culture
Google Cultural Institute sites in history, geography, and art courses. The online exhibitions in the Google Cultural Institute feature images, videos, audio, and text about significant historical and cultural people, places, and events. Some of the exhibitions like the Eiffel Tower Exhibitionincorporate the use of Google Maps Street View imagery too. Unicef Games Helps kids rescue others, provide food, help clean water, etc and learn about the world at the same time!
If it Were My Home is a country comparison tool where students can compare living conditions in their own country to those of another.
Nuskool This is a site that uses pop culture as teaching moments for students. Tailored to grades 6th-12th students learn a variety of subjects such as: Math, Science, English, etc through educational lessons based on the different elements of pop culture (video games, sports, films, etc.).
SCAN library the SCAN tool are now FREE to educators! 100+ free lessons based on current or historical events that can help you get your kids connected to the real world within your curriculum. Each lesson contains a scenario with four different perspectives, and guided critical thinking questions that your students discuss online in a private "chat-like" room. Check out our short how-to videos to discover how easy SCAN is to use and set up for your next class.
register
Writing Prompts for Social Studies and History
Hyperhistory Online Timelines, maps, and graphics for events in world history
Historical Atlas of the 20th Century Maps of eras, trends, political boundaries, wars, and more.
EverFi is a new-media learning platform that uses the latest technology – video, animations, 3-D gaming, avatars, and social networking – to bring complex financial concepts to life for today’s digital generation. video demo
Atlas of the Human Journey A National Geographic interactive map of the genetic movement of humans over time
MarsQuest Online On this site, you will launch a spacecraft to Mars, explore, canyons, solve mysteries, and search for life. Use it to compare to early explorations on Earth!
Beyond the Bubble website with its HATs - Historical Assessments of Thinking. Short, easy to administer, handy interactive rubrics to go along with, student examples to aid in scoring, supporting materials, extension videos, and aligned with Common Core literacy standards.
Teaching with Primary Sources. But sometimes it's easy to forget about all the resources that the TPS people have put together for social studies teachers. One of the most useful things you can find is their Teaching with Primary Sources Quarterly. Each Quarterly focuses on a specific topic with helpful articles, links to sources, and grade level lesson plans. This quarter's topic is using primary source activities that align to the Common Core.
Historical Thinking Matters Four investigations of central topics from post-civil war U.S. history, with activities that foster historical thinking and encourage students to form reasoned conclusions about the past. the 80+ lesson plans - all structured around the concepts of high level historical thinking. Beyond the Bubble historical thinking assessment site.
World Digital Library hosts nearly 5,000 primary documents and images from collections around the world. Sponsored by the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization, the mission of the World Digital Library is to promote the study and understanding of cultures. The WDL can be searched by date, era, country, continent, topic, and type of resource. In my search of the WDL I noticed that roughly half of the resources are historical maps and images. The WDL aims to be accessible to as many people as possible by providing search tools and content descriptions in seven languages. The WDL can also be searched by clicking through the map on the homepage.
Bridging World History
Professional development and classroom materials to support the study of world history. Bridging World History is organized into 26 thematic units along a chronological thread. Materials include videos, an audio glossary and a thematically-organized interactive.
HistorySimulation.com has interactive simulations and engaging PowerPoint/Keynote Presentations. The American Civil War, European Imperialism, WWI, WWII and The Cold War. In these simulations, students are assigned roles as world leaders and given objectives that mirror the national interests of those countries
Best of History Sites
Best of History Web Sites, created by EdTechTeacher Inc, is an award-winning portal that contains annotated links to over 1200 history web sites as well as links to hundreds of quality K-12 history lesson plans, history teacher guides, history activities, history games, history quizzes, and more.
Historical Thinking Skills Interactives This series of interactive activities introduces and models the Historical Thinking Skills defined by the National Center for History in the Schools. The interactives each model a specific skill or set of skills, such as analyzing historical artifacts or using primary sources to develop a thesis.
Historical Scene Investigations The Historical Scene Investigation Project (HSI) was designed for social studies teachers who need a strong pedagogical mechanism for bringing primary sources into their classroom.
World History Matters
World History Matters is a portal to world history websites developed by the Center for History and New Media.
World History Resource Center
Tons of resources organized by period – from the beginning of recorded history to the present.
World History Sources
World History Sources responds to the challenges of teaching World History by creating a web site that helps world history teachers and students locate, analyze, and learn from online primary sources and to further their understanding of the complex nature of world history.
History and Politics Out Loud History and Politics Out Loud offers a searchable archive of important recordings through history, particularly politically significant audio materials.
History Engine In this tool for collaborative education and research, students can learn history by researching, writing, and publishing, creating a collection of historical articles in U.S. history that can be searched for here by scholars, teachers, and the general pub
Nationmaster Grades 4 to 12 Offers users the ability to custom-generate scores of comparisons and reports, all based on publicly available data. While students will find the results interesting, government, economics, and world cultures teachers will find this site a great tool for creating illustrations and examples to use in their teaching.
Discovery Channel School : World History Lesson Plans Curriculum tie-ins with the programs, vocabulary, and lessons to support the teaching of world history unit
Literacy Strategies & Book Sites for Social Studies
Children’s Literature with Social Studies
Great resources for K-6 teachersReadworks.org should definitely be on your list. This website offers a wide range of lesson plans, comprehension units, and reading passages organized by skill and Lexile level.
Glossary of Instructional Strategies
Hundreds of effective strategies to try
World Savvy offers a variety of resources and tools that you can use to build global literacy skills in your students. You’ll find dozens of downloadable documents, lessons, professional learning activities, and student strategies.
CommonLit’s website is a website full of leveled passages for students in fifth through twelfth grade. It organizes texts into collections to make it easy for teachers to find a passage to share with their students.
History Engine (http://historyengine.richmond.edu), a project at the University of Richmond centered on a writing assignment for the digital age, which is called an “episode.” An episode is something like a moment in time: it is a short essay on a particular event in the past, such as a wedding in New York during the Great Depression or an 1840 slave sale in rural Mississippi. Episodes explore these historical moments as interpretive windows into the past. Rather than tackling the entire American Civil War, for example, an episode might focus on the terrifying experience of a particular soldier at the Battle of Gettysburg, illustrated by his surviving letters and contextualized by secondary literature. Another episode might recount the excitement felt by a woman in New Hampshire when she stepped into the voting booth for the first time in 1920, as described in her diary and supported by literature on the 19th amendment. Because they center on historical action at the local level, each episode provides a unique voice about a particular time and place that can be joined by other voices.
Literacy in Social Studies
Some useful links and tutorials
ReadingQuest: Making Sense in Social Studies
A website designed for social studies teachers who wish to more effectively engage their students with the content in their classesUse these practice activities to help struggling readers with comprehension
Reading, Writing and Researching for History
Written for college kids but could be adapted for MS and HS use
Yearly list of K-8 tradebooks by the National Council for the Social Studies
Annotated Book List
An older but still useful list of books by topic
Schools of California Online Resources for Education / History & Social Studies
Lessons and extensive book lists by grade
Opening Doors with Children's Lit
Book titles by topic
Reading Strategies for the Social Studies Classroom (pdf)
Helpful ideas from middle school teachers
Recommended Reading List
Extensive list from the California DOE
Notable Tradebooks
Compare and Contrast Tools
Diffen - What uses in the classroom might you find to compare anything? After-all comparing and contrasting is a 21stcentury skill which would come under Critical thinking. At first you will just want to play and see how it compares. I am sure you will want to put in apples and oranges, cats and dogs, and rain and snow. You may even want to practice a little political comparison. What content area items could your students compare? How about making a lesson. Check out these two additional digital tools that could come in handy from the people at Read Write Think as described in their own words.
Venn Diagram - The Venn Diagram app allows users to compare and contrast information in a visually appealing way. Sounds like a 21st Century Skill useful from fine arts to applied science
Compare & Contrast Map - This interactive graphic organizer helps students develop an outline for one of three types of comparison essays: whole-to-whole, similarities-to-differences, or point-to-point. A link in the introduction to the Comparison and Contrast Guide can give students the chance to get definitions and look at examples before they begin working.
Great resources for K-6 teachersReadworks.org should definitely be on your list. This website offers a wide range of lesson plans, comprehension units, and reading passages organized by skill and Lexile level.
Glossary of Instructional Strategies
Hundreds of effective strategies to try
World Savvy offers a variety of resources and tools that you can use to build global literacy skills in your students. You’ll find dozens of downloadable documents, lessons, professional learning activities, and student strategies.
CommonLit’s website is a website full of leveled passages for students in fifth through twelfth grade. It organizes texts into collections to make it easy for teachers to find a passage to share with their students.
History Engine (http://historyengine.richmond.edu), a project at the University of Richmond centered on a writing assignment for the digital age, which is called an “episode.” An episode is something like a moment in time: it is a short essay on a particular event in the past, such as a wedding in New York during the Great Depression or an 1840 slave sale in rural Mississippi. Episodes explore these historical moments as interpretive windows into the past. Rather than tackling the entire American Civil War, for example, an episode might focus on the terrifying experience of a particular soldier at the Battle of Gettysburg, illustrated by his surviving letters and contextualized by secondary literature. Another episode might recount the excitement felt by a woman in New Hampshire when she stepped into the voting booth for the first time in 1920, as described in her diary and supported by literature on the 19th amendment. Because they center on historical action at the local level, each episode provides a unique voice about a particular time and place that can be joined by other voices.
Literacy in Social Studies
Some useful links and tutorials
ReadingQuest: Making Sense in Social Studies
A website designed for social studies teachers who wish to more effectively engage their students with the content in their classesUse these practice activities to help struggling readers with comprehension
Reading, Writing and Researching for History
Written for college kids but could be adapted for MS and HS use
Yearly list of K-8 tradebooks by the National Council for the Social Studies
Annotated Book List
An older but still useful list of books by topic
Schools of California Online Resources for Education / History & Social Studies
Lessons and extensive book lists by grade
Opening Doors with Children's Lit
Book titles by topic
Reading Strategies for the Social Studies Classroom (pdf)
Helpful ideas from middle school teachers
Recommended Reading List
Extensive list from the California DOE
Notable Tradebooks
Compare and Contrast Tools
Diffen - What uses in the classroom might you find to compare anything? After-all comparing and contrasting is a 21stcentury skill which would come under Critical thinking. At first you will just want to play and see how it compares. I am sure you will want to put in apples and oranges, cats and dogs, and rain and snow. You may even want to practice a little political comparison. What content area items could your students compare? How about making a lesson. Check out these two additional digital tools that could come in handy from the people at Read Write Think as described in their own words.
Venn Diagram - The Venn Diagram app allows users to compare and contrast information in a visually appealing way. Sounds like a 21st Century Skill useful from fine arts to applied science
Compare & Contrast Map - This interactive graphic organizer helps students develop an outline for one of three types of comparison essays: whole-to-whole, similarities-to-differences, or point-to-point. A link in the introduction to the Comparison and Contrast Guide can give students the chance to get definitions and look at examples before they begin working.
Apps
Historia ideal for bringing History into the classroom through Game Based Learning. This game has students team up in groups to lead a civilization into prosperity by doing project based research and making important decisions that impact how their civilization will grow. Also, this game is designed for all kinds of devices such as: interactive whiteboards, tablets, and desktops (Mac/PC), and is aligned to Common Core Standards.
Revolutionaries of the past century a hundred years of revolutionaries and social movements help make connections to the past
Productivity Apps - use for presentations, PBLs, research
The Timeline Builders: Pyramid Rising 2
Become the Pharaoh’s architect, build historic temples, manage your resources skilfully and avoid enemies to succeed! Great Pharaoh Touti and his friends are back for an epic adventure that will take you on a journey along the Nile in TimeBuilders: Pyramid Rising 2. Here are some apps for a price on Ancient Egypt
RISE OF ANCIENT EGYPT
The Giza Project from Harvard has created an engaging tour of the Great Pyramid of Giza
Fabricius is a Google Arts & Culture Lab Experiment that uses machine learning to help translate ancient Egyptian hieroglyphs. In the Learn section of Fabricius, students take their first steps into the world of hieroglyphs. They then move to the Play section where they can send coded messages using hieroglyphs. And finally to the Work section, where they will find a set of tools to assist them in translating hieroglyphs.
Return of the Cat Mummy is a game from Google Arts and Culture. The game is set in the animated backdrop of ancient Egypt. In the game you control a cat mummy to collect items for a pharaoh to take to the afterlife. The game does no provide students with information about the artifacts they collect while playing the game. You could have students play the game and then look in the Google Arts and Culture website for ancient Egyptian artifacts. The game could also be a nice companion activity for students who are reading the Magic Treehouse book Mummies in the Morning www.freetech4teachers.com
The Pyramids ‘With this beautiful iPad app from Touchpress you can explore the incredible pyramids and tombs of ancient Egypt. Fly around the plateau where the pyramids and the Sphinx are located at Giza near Cairo. Enter and wander around the labyrinthine tombs and passageways.’
TimeTours: Uxmal ‘TimeTours is not just a typical guidebook. Instead, this virtual trip through time brings the past back to life using modern 3D reconstructions. The Now and Then time windows let you experience what the city looked like when ball games and human sacrifices were performed here. The new 'Now and Then and ...' bring the time of the rediscovery alive.’
Back in Time Back in Time will take you on a stunning exploration of the history of our Universe, Earth, Life and Civilization. A journey through time where each event is documented with social and historical context, several images, an illustrative timeline and little-known interesting facts.’
Word War II Interactive‘ World War II Interactive covers the biggest conflict in history with stunning photos, videos and speeches and amazing design.’
Social Studies Apps categorized by themes and grades
The World in Figures The Economist World in Figures iPad edition displays facts and figures for more than 190 countries around the world. Rank and compare countries, test your knowledge of country-related trivia and share fun facts via Twitter and Facebook.
Streetmuseum: Londinium directs students to locations from Roman London where they can “excavate” finds, using their fingers to dig and gradually reveal ancient artifacts where they were originally found.
Educade Start browsing for hundreds of lesson plans and teaching tools right now.
Educade revolutionizes the way students learn by integrating fun and interactive learning methods with cutting-edge 21st century tools, such as apps, games and maker kits. The site celebrates teachers’ expertise and first-hand knowledge of students, and equips them with the tools and community support to maximize their impact on student learning.
European Exploration: The Age of Discovery
Explore the new world as a European power in the 15th Century by funding and sending expeditions out into the unknown. Hire captains, build ships, and outfit voyages to learn of the wonders of the new world. Expeditions can be dangerous however, so be careful or else Europe may never hear of your discoveries!
US Geography by Discovery
Discovery Education’s U.S. Geography app for iPhone and iPod Touch is the perfect way to become an expert in U.S. Geography while being entertained for hours on end. With dozens of breathtaking videos, interactive gameplay, global competition and sharing — there’s never been a more exciting and engaging way to experience U.S. Geography!
Revolutionaries of the past century a hundred years of revolutionaries and social movements help make connections to the past
Productivity Apps - use for presentations, PBLs, research
The Timeline Builders: Pyramid Rising 2
Become the Pharaoh’s architect, build historic temples, manage your resources skilfully and avoid enemies to succeed! Great Pharaoh Touti and his friends are back for an epic adventure that will take you on a journey along the Nile in TimeBuilders: Pyramid Rising 2. Here are some apps for a price on Ancient Egypt
RISE OF ANCIENT EGYPT
The Giza Project from Harvard has created an engaging tour of the Great Pyramid of Giza
Fabricius is a Google Arts & Culture Lab Experiment that uses machine learning to help translate ancient Egyptian hieroglyphs. In the Learn section of Fabricius, students take their first steps into the world of hieroglyphs. They then move to the Play section where they can send coded messages using hieroglyphs. And finally to the Work section, where they will find a set of tools to assist them in translating hieroglyphs.
Return of the Cat Mummy is a game from Google Arts and Culture. The game is set in the animated backdrop of ancient Egypt. In the game you control a cat mummy to collect items for a pharaoh to take to the afterlife. The game does no provide students with information about the artifacts they collect while playing the game. You could have students play the game and then look in the Google Arts and Culture website for ancient Egyptian artifacts. The game could also be a nice companion activity for students who are reading the Magic Treehouse book Mummies in the Morning www.freetech4teachers.com
The Pyramids ‘With this beautiful iPad app from Touchpress you can explore the incredible pyramids and tombs of ancient Egypt. Fly around the plateau where the pyramids and the Sphinx are located at Giza near Cairo. Enter and wander around the labyrinthine tombs and passageways.’
TimeTours: Uxmal ‘TimeTours is not just a typical guidebook. Instead, this virtual trip through time brings the past back to life using modern 3D reconstructions. The Now and Then time windows let you experience what the city looked like when ball games and human sacrifices were performed here. The new 'Now and Then and ...' bring the time of the rediscovery alive.’
Back in Time Back in Time will take you on a stunning exploration of the history of our Universe, Earth, Life and Civilization. A journey through time where each event is documented with social and historical context, several images, an illustrative timeline and little-known interesting facts.’
Word War II Interactive‘ World War II Interactive covers the biggest conflict in history with stunning photos, videos and speeches and amazing design.’
Social Studies Apps categorized by themes and grades
The World in Figures The Economist World in Figures iPad edition displays facts and figures for more than 190 countries around the world. Rank and compare countries, test your knowledge of country-related trivia and share fun facts via Twitter and Facebook.
Streetmuseum: Londinium directs students to locations from Roman London where they can “excavate” finds, using their fingers to dig and gradually reveal ancient artifacts where they were originally found.
Educade Start browsing for hundreds of lesson plans and teaching tools right now.
Educade revolutionizes the way students learn by integrating fun and interactive learning methods with cutting-edge 21st century tools, such as apps, games and maker kits. The site celebrates teachers’ expertise and first-hand knowledge of students, and equips them with the tools and community support to maximize their impact on student learning.
European Exploration: The Age of Discovery
Explore the new world as a European power in the 15th Century by funding and sending expeditions out into the unknown. Hire captains, build ships, and outfit voyages to learn of the wonders of the new world. Expeditions can be dangerous however, so be careful or else Europe may never hear of your discoveries!
US Geography by Discovery
Discovery Education’s U.S. Geography app for iPhone and iPod Touch is the perfect way to become an expert in U.S. Geography while being entertained for hours on end. With dozens of breathtaking videos, interactive gameplay, global competition and sharing — there’s never been a more exciting and engaging way to experience U.S. Geography!
Videos
Video Resource Page The top of the page are multiple subject area video portals. Scroll down to view the social studies topics
That Was History is an educational, history channel featuring videos about our world's history. We discuss topics from a range of categories including Military History, World History, US History, Political History, Entertainment History and more.
Untold is a platform that provides educational resources to engage students in history learning. The site offers a free collection of animated videos that shed light on alternative historical perspectives highlighting those stories and events that do not normally make it into the mainstream history textbooks. As they interact with these resources, students develop critical thinking skills required to help them evaluate and question the validity and authenticity of the information and news they deal with on a daily basis.
Video: “10 Pivotal Battles That Changed History”
Alternate HistoryHub This channel provides challenging video content featuring alternative perspectives on a number of historical events. It’s What If video series approaches world history from a different angel and theorizes possible eventualities had an event been different. Examples include: What if Germany won War World II? What if the industrial revolution never happened? What if the Soviets landed on the moon first?
That Was History is an educational, history channel featuring videos about our world's history. We discuss topics from a range of categories including Military History, World History, US History, Political History, Entertainment History and more.Mr.Beat’s Social Studies Channel created by a teacher called Mr.Beat in which he provides a wide variety of video content related to social studies. He makes engaging educational videos and uses music in almost all of his videos. ‘He has written songs about all of the Presidents and has created music videos for all of them.’
Glean - Ever feel overwhelmed by all the educational videos online? Aided by a team of teachers, this service chooses and catalogs the best videos.
Animated Infographic: “Top 20 Country Population History & Projection (1810-2100)”
Ancient Rome 101 National Geographic has a great series of YouTube videos called National Geographic 101 which include videos like Ancient Rome 101. The video provides an excellent introduction to the origin, rise, and fall of the Roman Empire. The length and substance of the video makes it an ideal candidate for inclusion in an EDpuzzle lesson.TED-Ed has a good lesson that you can use as a follow-up to Ancient Rome 101. A Glimpse of Teenage Life in Ancient Rome is a TED-Ed lesson developed by Ray Laurence from the University of Kent. The video and its associated questions feature the story of seventeen year old Lucius Popidius Secundus.
Ancient Rome 101 The video provides an excellent introduction to the origin, rise, and fall of the Roman Empire.
Glencoe’s online videos for social studies, but have now discovered that offer many more free resources to support all their social studies textbooks. They’re useful even if you don’t use their books, though, and they’re freely available. You can start off at their main Social Studies site or at their main site for all their textbooks. From there, it’s easy to navigate to their U.S. History, World History and Geography books. They all have links to videos, “in-motion animations” like this one, interactive maps like this (these maps offer audio support for the text), and different games (I especially like their categorization activities).
Hip Hughes History Hip Hughes History is a series of short, upbeat lectures on topics in US History and World History Google Document that lists all of the videos that he's published.
Living History Videos - from WWII to present.
Video Resource Page The top of the page are multiple subject area video portals. Scroll down to view the social studies topics
The Public Domain Review is a website that features collections of images, books, essays, audio recordings, and films that are in the public domain. Choose any of the collections to search for materials according to date, style, genre, and rights. Directions for downloading and saving media is included along with each collection of media.
Glencoe’s online videos for social studies, but have now discovered that offer many more free resources to support all their social studies textbooks. They’re useful even if you don’t use their books, though, and they’re freely available. You can start off at their main Social Studies site or at their main site for all their textbooks. From there, it’s easy to navigate to their U.S. History, World History and Geography books. They all have links to videos, “in-motion animations” like this one, interactive maps like this (these maps offer audio support for the text), and different games (I especially like their categorization activities).
Glean - Ever feel overwhelmed by all the educational videos online? Aided by a team of teachers, this service chooses and catalogs the best videos.
Alternate History Hub that has tons of short videos exploring various “What If?” scenarios.
Crash Course – World History
This one focuses on, wait for it . . . World History.
the Associated Press and British Movietone, one of the world's most comprehensive newsreel archives, are together bringing more than 1 million minutes of digitized film footage to YouTube. Showcasing the moments, people and events that shape the world, it will be the largest upload of historical news content on the video-sharing platform to date. The two channels will act as a view-on-demand visual encyclopedia, offering a unique perspective on the most significant moments of modern history. Available for all to explore, the channels will also be powerful educational tools and a source of inspiration for history enthusiasts and documentary filmmakers. The YouTube channels will include more than 550,000 video stories dating from 1895 to the present day.
Public Domain Project an important resource for many such creators, offering as it does “thousands of historic media files for your creative projects, completely free and made available by Pond5,” an entity that brands itself as “the world’s most vibrant marketplace for creativity.”
C. G. P. Grey
Complex things explained. Very cool videos on a variety of topics. History geeks will start with the history ones but don’t be afraid to branch out.
Horrible Histories
Hilarious history videos from the BBC. And almost all of them historically accurate!
Copycat Horrible Histories
The BBC Horrible Histories generate so much traffic, others have jumped on the bandwagon.
IWitness - Video Testimonies of Holocaust Survivors
ViewChange.Org has some pretty amazing short videos from around the world. This is how it describes itself: Using the power of video to tell stories about real people and progress in global development. The emphasis is on the developing world, as well as in the technology and research behind it. The site uses sophisticated Web tools that take advantage of the scope of information available on the Internet. For example, when watching a documentary on water supplies in India, links to related YouTube videos, research articles, news and blog updates will appear in adjacent windows. Semantic web tools make these links possible by analyzing context and meaning of key words.
Reading Like a Historian videos. The SHEG people have put together a great series of videos that demonstrated what historical thinking looks like. I get this a lot: But what does it look like? This series of 14 videos helps answer that question. The series is hosted on the Teaching Channel web site. They become very useful as you begin using the SHEG resources and began designing your own lessons. These videos highlight actual teachers and actual classrooms, not some talking head academic. This is real teaching and learning in real schools. Watch the videos to get a better sense of what it looks like but also use it with kids to model for them the end in mind, to show them what you expect from them.
the THC Classroom (One thing you might look at is the September 17th Emancipation Proclamation live webcast the HTC is promoting as a partner with the National Endowment for the Humanities and the Smithsonian) The Classroom also has some other useful stuff including a page of new study guides and a list of older ones. These study guides, both US and Global, provide some nice structure if you do use History Channel videos in your class and some great ideas for discussion questions and activities even if you don't. I especially like the Citizenship Quiz! There are short video clips that would be great hook activities for introducing different lessons and units. Go to the Shows page and click the show you're interested in. You'll see a link to a variety of available videos.
British Pathé was one of the leading producers of newsreels and documentaries during the 20th century. The company, now an archive, is turning over its entire collection—more than 85,000 historical films—to YouTube. The archive—which spans from 1896 to 1976—is a goldmine of footage, containing movies of some of the most important moments of the last 100 years. The intriguing part of the archive is seeing all the ephemera from the 20th century—the hairstyles, the way a city street looked, the sexism and racism and more. Click Here to Visit Website
Click Here to Visit YouTube Channel
That Was History is an educational, history channel featuring videos about our world's history. We discuss topics from a range of categories including Military History, World History, US History, Political History, Entertainment History and more.
Untold is a platform that provides educational resources to engage students in history learning. The site offers a free collection of animated videos that shed light on alternative historical perspectives highlighting those stories and events that do not normally make it into the mainstream history textbooks. As they interact with these resources, students develop critical thinking skills required to help them evaluate and question the validity and authenticity of the information and news they deal with on a daily basis.
Video: “10 Pivotal Battles That Changed History”
Alternate HistoryHub This channel provides challenging video content featuring alternative perspectives on a number of historical events. It’s What If video series approaches world history from a different angel and theorizes possible eventualities had an event been different. Examples include: What if Germany won War World II? What if the industrial revolution never happened? What if the Soviets landed on the moon first?
That Was History is an educational, history channel featuring videos about our world's history. We discuss topics from a range of categories including Military History, World History, US History, Political History, Entertainment History and more.Mr.Beat’s Social Studies Channel created by a teacher called Mr.Beat in which he provides a wide variety of video content related to social studies. He makes engaging educational videos and uses music in almost all of his videos. ‘He has written songs about all of the Presidents and has created music videos for all of them.’
Glean - Ever feel overwhelmed by all the educational videos online? Aided by a team of teachers, this service chooses and catalogs the best videos.
Animated Infographic: “Top 20 Country Population History & Projection (1810-2100)”
Ancient Rome 101 National Geographic has a great series of YouTube videos called National Geographic 101 which include videos like Ancient Rome 101. The video provides an excellent introduction to the origin, rise, and fall of the Roman Empire. The length and substance of the video makes it an ideal candidate for inclusion in an EDpuzzle lesson.TED-Ed has a good lesson that you can use as a follow-up to Ancient Rome 101. A Glimpse of Teenage Life in Ancient Rome is a TED-Ed lesson developed by Ray Laurence from the University of Kent. The video and its associated questions feature the story of seventeen year old Lucius Popidius Secundus.
Ancient Rome 101 The video provides an excellent introduction to the origin, rise, and fall of the Roman Empire.
Glencoe’s online videos for social studies, but have now discovered that offer many more free resources to support all their social studies textbooks. They’re useful even if you don’t use their books, though, and they’re freely available. You can start off at their main Social Studies site or at their main site for all their textbooks. From there, it’s easy to navigate to their U.S. History, World History and Geography books. They all have links to videos, “in-motion animations” like this one, interactive maps like this (these maps offer audio support for the text), and different games (I especially like their categorization activities).
Hip Hughes History Hip Hughes History is a series of short, upbeat lectures on topics in US History and World History Google Document that lists all of the videos that he's published.
Living History Videos - from WWII to present.
Video Resource Page The top of the page are multiple subject area video portals. Scroll down to view the social studies topics
The Public Domain Review is a website that features collections of images, books, essays, audio recordings, and films that are in the public domain. Choose any of the collections to search for materials according to date, style, genre, and rights. Directions for downloading and saving media is included along with each collection of media.
Glencoe’s online videos for social studies, but have now discovered that offer many more free resources to support all their social studies textbooks. They’re useful even if you don’t use their books, though, and they’re freely available. You can start off at their main Social Studies site or at their main site for all their textbooks. From there, it’s easy to navigate to their U.S. History, World History and Geography books. They all have links to videos, “in-motion animations” like this one, interactive maps like this (these maps offer audio support for the text), and different games (I especially like their categorization activities).
Glean - Ever feel overwhelmed by all the educational videos online? Aided by a team of teachers, this service chooses and catalogs the best videos.
Alternate History Hub that has tons of short videos exploring various “What If?” scenarios.
Crash Course – World History
This one focuses on, wait for it . . . World History.
the Associated Press and British Movietone, one of the world's most comprehensive newsreel archives, are together bringing more than 1 million minutes of digitized film footage to YouTube. Showcasing the moments, people and events that shape the world, it will be the largest upload of historical news content on the video-sharing platform to date. The two channels will act as a view-on-demand visual encyclopedia, offering a unique perspective on the most significant moments of modern history. Available for all to explore, the channels will also be powerful educational tools and a source of inspiration for history enthusiasts and documentary filmmakers. The YouTube channels will include more than 550,000 video stories dating from 1895 to the present day.
Public Domain Project an important resource for many such creators, offering as it does “thousands of historic media files for your creative projects, completely free and made available by Pond5,” an entity that brands itself as “the world’s most vibrant marketplace for creativity.”
C. G. P. Grey
Complex things explained. Very cool videos on a variety of topics. History geeks will start with the history ones but don’t be afraid to branch out.
Horrible Histories
Hilarious history videos from the BBC. And almost all of them historically accurate!
Copycat Horrible Histories
The BBC Horrible Histories generate so much traffic, others have jumped on the bandwagon.
IWitness - Video Testimonies of Holocaust Survivors
ViewChange.Org has some pretty amazing short videos from around the world. This is how it describes itself: Using the power of video to tell stories about real people and progress in global development. The emphasis is on the developing world, as well as in the technology and research behind it. The site uses sophisticated Web tools that take advantage of the scope of information available on the Internet. For example, when watching a documentary on water supplies in India, links to related YouTube videos, research articles, news and blog updates will appear in adjacent windows. Semantic web tools make these links possible by analyzing context and meaning of key words.
Reading Like a Historian videos. The SHEG people have put together a great series of videos that demonstrated what historical thinking looks like. I get this a lot: But what does it look like? This series of 14 videos helps answer that question. The series is hosted on the Teaching Channel web site. They become very useful as you begin using the SHEG resources and began designing your own lessons. These videos highlight actual teachers and actual classrooms, not some talking head academic. This is real teaching and learning in real schools. Watch the videos to get a better sense of what it looks like but also use it with kids to model for them the end in mind, to show them what you expect from them.
the THC Classroom (One thing you might look at is the September 17th Emancipation Proclamation live webcast the HTC is promoting as a partner with the National Endowment for the Humanities and the Smithsonian) The Classroom also has some other useful stuff including a page of new study guides and a list of older ones. These study guides, both US and Global, provide some nice structure if you do use History Channel videos in your class and some great ideas for discussion questions and activities even if you don't. I especially like the Citizenship Quiz! There are short video clips that would be great hook activities for introducing different lessons and units. Go to the Shows page and click the show you're interested in. You'll see a link to a variety of available videos.
British Pathé was one of the leading producers of newsreels and documentaries during the 20th century. The company, now an archive, is turning over its entire collection—more than 85,000 historical films—to YouTube. The archive—which spans from 1896 to 1976—is a goldmine of footage, containing movies of some of the most important moments of the last 100 years. The intriguing part of the archive is seeing all the ephemera from the 20th century—the hairstyles, the way a city street looked, the sexism and racism and more. Click Here to Visit Website
Click Here to Visit YouTube Channel
Online Games and Simulations
Online Social Studies Games
Online Social Studies Simulations
Life in the Iron Age is a series of interactive animations from BBC History. Through the animations, students discover how the Iron Age community carried out daily tasks, such as making fire, grinding grain and baking bread or spinning wool. Each animation includes an activity in which students gather materials needed to carry out the task. As they collect objects, students read a short passage about that object and the way it was used to accomplish these everyday activities in ancient communities. At the end of each animation, students can take a short quiz about the activity they just studied. Click Here to Access Free Interactive Animations
Drawn in Sixty Seconds is a good YouTube video with…sixty second animated videos on Social Studies topics. It’s from the UK, and has topics more specifically relevant to that country, but also has many that can be useful anywhere.
ActiveHistory features a wide variety of educational materials designed specifically for use in history classrooms. These include award-winning interactive simulations, decision-making games, self-marking quizzes, high-quality worksheets and detailed lesson plans". ActiveHistory also "provides materials on scores of topics from the Middle Ages to the present day, aimed at every age range between 11-18 years.
Smithsonian X 3D (SIx3D) offers a way for students to learn about artifacts from the Smithsonian museums. The site is the result of a collaboration between Autodesk and the Smithsonian Institution. More than artifacts are currently featured on Smithsonian X 3D. The artifacts can be viewed as 3D models that you can virtually manipulate. Many of the artifacts have accompanying fact sheets through which you can learn about the artifact's history and significance. A screenshot of the fact sheet accompanying the model of the Philadelphia (a gunboat) is included below.
If you have access to a 3D printer you can print models of many of the artifacts featured on Smithsonian X 3D.
Open Heritage project Primary sources come in all shapes and sizes and can be viewed in a myriad of ways. Google has collaborated to help preserve historical sites around the world that are at risk of irreversible damage or total erasure due to human conflict and natural disasters. The Open Heritage project, will capture all the relevant data at a historical site needed to recreate it virtually, so it can be preserved and explored online either on a computer, through a mobile device, or while wearing a virtual reality headset.
Play Your Dates Right create a game that is focused on helping students recall the sequence of historical events video
Create Your Own Game Tools
HistorySimulation.com has interactive simulations and engaging PowerPoint/Keynote Presentations. The American Civil War, European Imperialism, WWI, WWII and The Cold War. In these simulations, students are assigned roles as world leaders and given objectives that mirror the national interests of those countries
Online Social Studies Simulations
Life in the Iron Age is a series of interactive animations from BBC History. Through the animations, students discover how the Iron Age community carried out daily tasks, such as making fire, grinding grain and baking bread or spinning wool. Each animation includes an activity in which students gather materials needed to carry out the task. As they collect objects, students read a short passage about that object and the way it was used to accomplish these everyday activities in ancient communities. At the end of each animation, students can take a short quiz about the activity they just studied. Click Here to Access Free Interactive Animations
Drawn in Sixty Seconds is a good YouTube video with…sixty second animated videos on Social Studies topics. It’s from the UK, and has topics more specifically relevant to that country, but also has many that can be useful anywhere.
ActiveHistory features a wide variety of educational materials designed specifically for use in history classrooms. These include award-winning interactive simulations, decision-making games, self-marking quizzes, high-quality worksheets and detailed lesson plans". ActiveHistory also "provides materials on scores of topics from the Middle Ages to the present day, aimed at every age range between 11-18 years.
Smithsonian X 3D (SIx3D) offers a way for students to learn about artifacts from the Smithsonian museums. The site is the result of a collaboration between Autodesk and the Smithsonian Institution. More than artifacts are currently featured on Smithsonian X 3D. The artifacts can be viewed as 3D models that you can virtually manipulate. Many of the artifacts have accompanying fact sheets through which you can learn about the artifact's history and significance. A screenshot of the fact sheet accompanying the model of the Philadelphia (a gunboat) is included below.
If you have access to a 3D printer you can print models of many of the artifacts featured on Smithsonian X 3D.
Open Heritage project Primary sources come in all shapes and sizes and can be viewed in a myriad of ways. Google has collaborated to help preserve historical sites around the world that are at risk of irreversible damage or total erasure due to human conflict and natural disasters. The Open Heritage project, will capture all the relevant data at a historical site needed to recreate it virtually, so it can be preserved and explored online either on a computer, through a mobile device, or while wearing a virtual reality headset.
Play Your Dates Right create a game that is focused on helping students recall the sequence of historical events video
Create Your Own Game Tools
HistorySimulation.com has interactive simulations and engaging PowerPoint/Keynote Presentations. The American Civil War, European Imperialism, WWI, WWII and The Cold War. In these simulations, students are assigned roles as world leaders and given objectives that mirror the national interests of those countries
Ancient
General Ancient Civilization Topics | Mesopotamia | Indus Valley | Egypt | Greece | Rome | Meso-America | Asia | Africa | Middle East
General Topics
Ancient History and Cultures Sites
International resources of ancient cultures. Goes beyond eurocentric cultures.
Ancient Earth Globe - Explore a 3D model of the Earth from present day back to 750 million years ago to see how our planet has changed over time.
Why do Civilizations Fall?
A WebQuest that guides students to evaluate what attributes to a civilization collapses. The inquiry-based investigation focuses on the Maya, Mali, Anaszasi, and Mesopotamia civilizations, but has implications for other past and present cultures.
Ancient Maps
Large collection of searchable maps.
The Big Myth
Myths from cultures throughout the world with multimedia rendditions of world creation stories. Each includes an overview of the culture that produced it, class activities, and discussion questions.
Dig: Archaeology Links for Kids
Archaeology links for students from this publication for kids
Daily Life in Ancient Civilizations gr 2-5
Short descriptions and pictures
Ancient History Encyclopedia is a resource for history teachers and students. It provides a wealth of documents, articles, illustrations, videos, images (some of which are 3D), maps and many other resources to improve history education worldwide. The content in Ancient History Encyclopedia is written in ‘an easy-to-read manner with students and the general public in mind.’ The site also helps ‘teachers, students, and schools by providing them with reliable, easy-to-read, and high-quality resources entirely for free.
Open Heritage project Primary sources come in all shapes and sizes and can be viewed in a myriad of ways. Google has collaborated to help preserve historical sites around the world that are at risk of irreversible damage or total erasure due to human conflict and natural disasters. The Open Heritage project, will capture all the relevant data at a historical site needed to recreate it virtually, so it can be preserved and explored online either on a computer, through a mobile device, or while wearing a virtual reality headset.
Go Social Studies Go essentially a series of multimedia books about common social studies topics. The site is divided into four main sections; World Geography, World Religions, Ancient History, and Colonial America. Within each section is a series of booklets containing text, pictures, videos, and links to additional resources.
Google Cultural Institute, you can seriously get lost in here for hours. Think the largest museum you can think of, then multiply that by a very large number and you get a sense of what’s available. And I’m not even talking about the whole Institute. Just the Historic Moments and World Wonders sections. Google has partnered with hundreds of museums, cultural institutions, and archives to host the world’s cultural treasures online at a section of the Institute called Historic Moments. Here you can find artworks, landmarks and world heritage sites, as well as digital exhibitions that tell the stories behind the archives of cultural institutions across the globe.
BBC Dimensions: Ancient Worlds - Explore the scale of ancient worlds and historic journeys by overlaying them on other locations on a Google Map.
Internet Ancient History Sourcebook The Internet Ancient History Sourcebook is a great place to study human origins, with full text and search on topics including Mesopotamia, Rome, the Hellenistic world, Late Antiquity, and Christian origins.
The Ancient Web
Includes civilizations not generally covered, e.g., Southeast Asia, and South American civilizations. News, stories and videos.
Cultures
Resources for living and ancient cultures
A Multimedia Guide to the Ancient World Grades 6 to 12
There's more to this Chicago Art Institute site than the title suggests. The site contains artifacts from Egyptian, Roman, and Greek civilizations. There are Quicktime movies for each object that explain is origin and use, and Quicktime images let users zoom in to examine the artifacts in detail
MesopotamiaYou can play like the ancients. The royal game of Ur, an ancient board game, has been studied well enough that we can still play it — even online. Play the game here, and learn more about the royal game in this video from the British Museum.
Hone your archeological skills even further with this Pyramids and Ziggurats infographic from National Geographic.
For research-based projects and primary sources readings for older students, check out Internet Ancient History Sourcebook: Mesopotamia, packed with relevant texts.
Learn how you and your students can make your own cylinder seals from the University of Chicago here.
Explore this interactive timeline and map with borders, water sources, and climate zones, called The Fertile Crescent – Where Past Meets Present.
The Indus Valley: The Indian SubcontinentGet a sense of life in India’s earliest civilizations and its evolution through history with the interactive photo gallery, timeline, and more in this online companion to PBS’ Story of India.
The Asia Society provides this outline of the Indus Valley civilization and early India, providing detail for a place and time about which learning resources are sometimes scant.
Ancient India Links to resources
One hallmark of the Indus Valley civilization, and one major source of understanding, is its art and physical culture. Check out these image-filled artifact timelines for two different eras of the Indus Valley societies here and here, from the Met museum.
Step into ancient India and Pakistan by reading about a day in the life of a baker’s son or exploring an interactive map of the Mohenjo-daro site here.
Go in-depth and learn about language and culture, watch videos, explore maps, and much more at Harappa, named for a site in modern Punjab, Pakistan.
Egypt
Odyssey Online gr 4-8
This extensive source provides information about the ancient cultures of the Near East, Egypt, Greece, and Rome. An additional section explores 19th - 20th century sub-Saharan Africa. Images of museum artifacts from each region are liberally distributed throughout the site, along with some interactive maps, occasional videos, and games. The Teacher Resource section provides lesson plans (aligned to national standards), suggestions for integrating art into the social studies curriculum, and helpful tips on using the site.
Ancient Egypt from the British Museum
Includes activities for students to practice skills using the site; visit the Staff Room for instructions
Atlas of the Valley of the Kings is an interactive atlas developed through theTheban Mapping Project. The atlas contains more than 2000 images and models of tombs in the Valley of the Kings. You can scroll through 250 interactive maps in the atlas, click on images, and watch 65 narrated video tours of tombs in the Valley of the Kings.
Time Trek! gr. 4-9
This site is presented as a "time machine" that will allow students to visit cultures from 1200 BC (Ancient Egypt) through a fictional city in 2800 CE. Each "visit" provides information about the geography, culture and history of the city under consideration. After students have visited the cultures, there are also games, puzzles and activities related to the cultures discussed.
Describing Egypt offers visitors a growing bank of 360-degree virtual tours showcasing some of Egypt’s historical sites.
Egyptians Grades 4 to 12
The BBC offers this elegant, detailed treatment of ancient Egypt. The site includes audio recordings of Egyptian texts, lots of images, and a collection of instructional games based on Egyptian history and facts. Students could explore this one for days.
Eternal Egypt
Explore the people, places, and artifacts of 5,000 years of Egyptian civilization with this outstanding site. Start with the Guided Tour which introduces the site's many features and options for beginning the virtual journey, then investigate the maps, timelines, multimedia offerings, sites and museums, virtual library, and more. Try the interactive "Connections" option which illustrates the complex links between the characters, places, and objects that define Egypt.
Egypt's Golden Empire. 7 to 12
A glimpse of life in Egypt from 1550-1200 BC. This site's ancient Egyptian resources examine each of the pharaohs, as well as provide information about daily life in Egypt. The interactive map and hieroglyph translator provide an interesting lens through which students can view life in this era. Like other PBS empire sites, this site has a listing of lesson plans for expanding on these resources.
SimMummy
In this simulation, kids participate in all the stages of an ancient Egyptian mummification, from removal of the organs to placing the mummy in the tomb, and they reenact these funerary customs the same way (or extremely close, anyway!) that the Egyptians did it
Egypt - Secrets of an Ancient World gr. 4-12
National Geographic's Egypt site offers a pyramid time line, an explanation of how and why pyramids developed, and a general introduction to ancient Egyptian civilization. There's a wealth of material here, so some previewing would be in order, especially when working with younger students.
Digital Giza Project allows scholars to virtually walk through archaeological sites and examine artifacts that might otherwise be inaccessible. The Giza Project began in 2000 at the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, with the goal of digitizing all of the archaeological documentation from the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston–Harvard University expedition to Giza, Egypt (c. 1904–1947) and making that information freely available online for anyone to use. Since moving to Harvard in 2011, the project has expanded its scope, partnering with other institutions around the world that excavated at Giza, to bring together as much data as possible about this complex site. The process of integrating and standardizing all of these records is ongoing. The project has utilized this vast quantity of information to begin building a 3D virtual reconstruction of the Giza Plateau as it may have looked when first built, providing new ways to sightsee, explore, and learn about the pyramids and their surrounding cemeteries.
Eternal Egypt Eternal Egypt is a living record of a land rich in art and history, people and places, myths and religions. The stories of Eternal Egypt are told using the latest interactive technologies, high-resolution imagery, animations, virtual environments, remote cameras, three-dimensional models and more.
There are many ways to begin your journey through Eternal Egypt. The guided tour is a quick way to experience the best that the site has to offer. You can also begin with one of the cultural highlights below, or make your own discoveries using one of the many other ways to explore.
British Museum Artifacts 3D Tours: One is on ancient Egypt
Greece
Xerxe's March to Greece
You are Xerxes, King of the mighty Persian Empire, and you are about to embark on one of the greatest military campaigns in history
Winged Sandals gr 2-7
Take a journey with Hermes, the messenger god! Stop along the way to read stories, play interactive games, "Ask the Oracle" a question, and explore ancient history. Select portions of the Web site based on the level of your students. Many of the games and hand-on activities are designed for elementary students, but middle school kids can use the historical descriptions as a helpful resource during a unit on mythology.
The Greeks Grades 7 to 12
Part of the PBS Civilizations series, this site explores ancient Greece, complete with virtual tours of the acropolis and the Parthenon temple. In the Greeks Interactive section, students can view interactive maps and experiment with the Greek alphabet. There is also an educational resources section, complete with lesson plans for using the site.
Mythweb Grades 4 to 10
This page offers a number of lesson ideas linked to the Mythweb site for Greek mythology studies. There are a number of suggestions on how to integrate the material into other classroom activities.
Rome
Ancient Rome 101 The video provides an excellent introduction to the origin, rise, and fall of the Roman Empire.
Exploring Ancient Rome with Free, Interactive Resources Here are more than 20 interactive digital resources to assist you in bringing the ancient Roman world to life for your students.
BBC Best Link: History - Death in Rome game
Your chance to be a sleuth in ancient Rome and work out who killed Eutychus. You may even learn some history along the way
Radio 4 - The Roman Way
Exploring everyday life in the Roman Empire, from the emperors in Rome to life in the far-flung corners of the Empire
The Roman Empire Grades 7 to 12 PBS
Interactive proof that Rome wasn't built in a day. This site examines the history of the empire, as well as the culture, lifestyle, and government of the Roman era. Along with classroom resources sorted by grade level, the site also has an interactive political simulation and an Augustan Family Tree.
Roman History BBC Site for 7-11 year olds with facts, illustrations and activities
You wouldn't want to be a Roman gladiator!
A humorous and authentic view of life in earlier times. Students can trace the experience of an unfortunate Gaul, captured by Romans and sent to fight as a gladiator in the arena. Will he survive to fight again? Visitors can browse through the virtual book using the "next" and "previous" buttons.
Virtual Rome A voyage to Ancient Rome, the capital of the largest empire in the ancient world, which has been reconstructed in virtual form and which you can explore in a “full-immersion” panoramic experience.
Life in the Iron Age is a series of interactive animations from BBC History. Through the animations, students discover how the Iron Age community carried out daily tasks, such as making fire, grinding grain and baking bread or spinning wool. Each animation includes an activity in which students gather materials needed to carry out the task. As they collect objects, students read a short passage about that object and the way it was used to accomplish these everyday activities in ancient communities. At the end of each animation, students can take a short quiz about the activity they just studied. Click Here to Access Free Interactive Animations
Meso-America
MesoWeb
For the ancient cultures of Mesoamerica including the Olmec, Maya and Aztec.
Google unveiled an online video called called The Descent of the Serpent Here’s how they describe it: The game involves retrieving the lost objects and returning them to Chichen Itza in time for the solar equinox. That’s when the sun casts a shadow on the carvings in a way that resembles a snake descending the monument’s steps — which inspires the game’s name. As part of the challenge, players are invited to learn surprising, impressive and interesting aspects about ancient Mesoamerican cultures, and face mythological figures who’ll test the knowledge they’ve collected throughout the adventure.
Mundo Maya
Covers daily life, history, customs, legends and more
Ancient Mexico Grades 6 to 12
This is a remarkably well-done site dealing with "the art, culture, and history of ancient Mesoamerica." The bulk of the content deals with the cities, gods, and conquest of ancient Mexico, but there are additional sections on Peru and Chile. These latter two are much more works in progress.
The Sport of Life and Death
Learn about the land and culture of Mesoamerica with this engaging site that draws visitors into the ancient world of athletes and gods. After exploring maps and timelines, and learning about the elements of the sport, visitor can participate in a unique version of the Mesoamerican Ballgame - the most outstanding feature of the site. To play, students must enter correct responses to content-specific questions. Points are earned by choosing correct answers. Lose the game, and find out why this was know as "the sport of life and death!"
Asia
Ancient Southeast Asia Resources
Easy to search resources and lessons.
Ancient China
Discover the culture of ancient China with this outstanding, interactive site that explores its artisans, geography, tombs, writings, and more. Each section of the site provides historical information, a story, an in-depth exploration, and a challenge. The challenge activities promote higher level thinking and are ideal for independent practice and review.
Visualize Chinese history from the ancient Shang dynasty onward in this interactive map from TimeMaps.
Go all the way back to the foundations of Chinese society in prehistory and the Xia dynasty, alongside images and video, in this interactive timeline from PBS.
Get a start to understanding the history of China with this resource article from National Geographic, which will scale the reading to various grade levels from 3–12.
Go up close with ancient Chinese art and literature with images, maps, and timelines from the World Digital Library. Learn more about the WDL here.
Looking for research aids for secondary students? Check out this extensive list of primary sources on ancient Chinese life, religion, philosophy, and more from Kansas University Libraries.
Japan In-Depth gr. 6-12
This site gives a very clear overview of major components of ancient Japanese culture. The page is separated into a wide variety of subsections including architecture, shrines, religious observations, clothing, art, floral design, theatre and dance. Each section links to simple line-drawings with an explanation of the significance of each cultural component.
Africa
African Voices
Smithsonian exhibit that includes Africa's influence on world history and culture.
Ancient Africa Resources
Web resources include a number of civilizations, customs and history.
Animations of Historical Movements and PatternsUse maps to analyze data and identify patterns in history. Mapping History, produced by the University of Oregon, features numerous animated maps illustrating problems, patterns, and events throughout history. Mapping History is essentially a digital atlas of American, European, Latin American, and African history. Each section is divided into modules based on historical themes and eras. www.freetech4teachers.com
Middle East
Ancient Islam
From Islamic beginnings to the peak of the empire.
Resources For Fighting Islamophobia In School
Persia
Includes lessons and information.
Ancient History and Cultures Sites
International resources of ancient cultures. Goes beyond eurocentric cultures.
Ancient Earth Globe - Explore a 3D model of the Earth from present day back to 750 million years ago to see how our planet has changed over time.
Why do Civilizations Fall?
A WebQuest that guides students to evaluate what attributes to a civilization collapses. The inquiry-based investigation focuses on the Maya, Mali, Anaszasi, and Mesopotamia civilizations, but has implications for other past and present cultures.
Ancient Maps
Large collection of searchable maps.
The Big Myth
Myths from cultures throughout the world with multimedia rendditions of world creation stories. Each includes an overview of the culture that produced it, class activities, and discussion questions.
Dig: Archaeology Links for Kids
Archaeology links for students from this publication for kids
Daily Life in Ancient Civilizations gr 2-5
Short descriptions and pictures
Ancient History Encyclopedia is a resource for history teachers and students. It provides a wealth of documents, articles, illustrations, videos, images (some of which are 3D), maps and many other resources to improve history education worldwide. The content in Ancient History Encyclopedia is written in ‘an easy-to-read manner with students and the general public in mind.’ The site also helps ‘teachers, students, and schools by providing them with reliable, easy-to-read, and high-quality resources entirely for free.
Open Heritage project Primary sources come in all shapes and sizes and can be viewed in a myriad of ways. Google has collaborated to help preserve historical sites around the world that are at risk of irreversible damage or total erasure due to human conflict and natural disasters. The Open Heritage project, will capture all the relevant data at a historical site needed to recreate it virtually, so it can be preserved and explored online either on a computer, through a mobile device, or while wearing a virtual reality headset.
Go Social Studies Go essentially a series of multimedia books about common social studies topics. The site is divided into four main sections; World Geography, World Religions, Ancient History, and Colonial America. Within each section is a series of booklets containing text, pictures, videos, and links to additional resources.
Google Cultural Institute, you can seriously get lost in here for hours. Think the largest museum you can think of, then multiply that by a very large number and you get a sense of what’s available. And I’m not even talking about the whole Institute. Just the Historic Moments and World Wonders sections. Google has partnered with hundreds of museums, cultural institutions, and archives to host the world’s cultural treasures online at a section of the Institute called Historic Moments. Here you can find artworks, landmarks and world heritage sites, as well as digital exhibitions that tell the stories behind the archives of cultural institutions across the globe.
BBC Dimensions: Ancient Worlds - Explore the scale of ancient worlds and historic journeys by overlaying them on other locations on a Google Map.
Internet Ancient History Sourcebook The Internet Ancient History Sourcebook is a great place to study human origins, with full text and search on topics including Mesopotamia, Rome, the Hellenistic world, Late Antiquity, and Christian origins.
The Ancient Web
Includes civilizations not generally covered, e.g., Southeast Asia, and South American civilizations. News, stories and videos.
Cultures
Resources for living and ancient cultures
A Multimedia Guide to the Ancient World Grades 6 to 12
There's more to this Chicago Art Institute site than the title suggests. The site contains artifacts from Egyptian, Roman, and Greek civilizations. There are Quicktime movies for each object that explain is origin and use, and Quicktime images let users zoom in to examine the artifacts in detail
MesopotamiaYou can play like the ancients. The royal game of Ur, an ancient board game, has been studied well enough that we can still play it — even online. Play the game here, and learn more about the royal game in this video from the British Museum.
Hone your archeological skills even further with this Pyramids and Ziggurats infographic from National Geographic.
For research-based projects and primary sources readings for older students, check out Internet Ancient History Sourcebook: Mesopotamia, packed with relevant texts.
Learn how you and your students can make your own cylinder seals from the University of Chicago here.
Explore this interactive timeline and map with borders, water sources, and climate zones, called The Fertile Crescent – Where Past Meets Present.
The Indus Valley: The Indian SubcontinentGet a sense of life in India’s earliest civilizations and its evolution through history with the interactive photo gallery, timeline, and more in this online companion to PBS’ Story of India.
The Asia Society provides this outline of the Indus Valley civilization and early India, providing detail for a place and time about which learning resources are sometimes scant.
Ancient India Links to resources
One hallmark of the Indus Valley civilization, and one major source of understanding, is its art and physical culture. Check out these image-filled artifact timelines for two different eras of the Indus Valley societies here and here, from the Met museum.
Step into ancient India and Pakistan by reading about a day in the life of a baker’s son or exploring an interactive map of the Mohenjo-daro site here.
Go in-depth and learn about language and culture, watch videos, explore maps, and much more at Harappa, named for a site in modern Punjab, Pakistan.
Egypt
Odyssey Online gr 4-8
This extensive source provides information about the ancient cultures of the Near East, Egypt, Greece, and Rome. An additional section explores 19th - 20th century sub-Saharan Africa. Images of museum artifacts from each region are liberally distributed throughout the site, along with some interactive maps, occasional videos, and games. The Teacher Resource section provides lesson plans (aligned to national standards), suggestions for integrating art into the social studies curriculum, and helpful tips on using the site.
Ancient Egypt from the British Museum
Includes activities for students to practice skills using the site; visit the Staff Room for instructions
Atlas of the Valley of the Kings is an interactive atlas developed through theTheban Mapping Project. The atlas contains more than 2000 images and models of tombs in the Valley of the Kings. You can scroll through 250 interactive maps in the atlas, click on images, and watch 65 narrated video tours of tombs in the Valley of the Kings.
Time Trek! gr. 4-9
This site is presented as a "time machine" that will allow students to visit cultures from 1200 BC (Ancient Egypt) through a fictional city in 2800 CE. Each "visit" provides information about the geography, culture and history of the city under consideration. After students have visited the cultures, there are also games, puzzles and activities related to the cultures discussed.
Describing Egypt offers visitors a growing bank of 360-degree virtual tours showcasing some of Egypt’s historical sites.
Egyptians Grades 4 to 12
The BBC offers this elegant, detailed treatment of ancient Egypt. The site includes audio recordings of Egyptian texts, lots of images, and a collection of instructional games based on Egyptian history and facts. Students could explore this one for days.
Eternal Egypt
Explore the people, places, and artifacts of 5,000 years of Egyptian civilization with this outstanding site. Start with the Guided Tour which introduces the site's many features and options for beginning the virtual journey, then investigate the maps, timelines, multimedia offerings, sites and museums, virtual library, and more. Try the interactive "Connections" option which illustrates the complex links between the characters, places, and objects that define Egypt.
Egypt's Golden Empire. 7 to 12
A glimpse of life in Egypt from 1550-1200 BC. This site's ancient Egyptian resources examine each of the pharaohs, as well as provide information about daily life in Egypt. The interactive map and hieroglyph translator provide an interesting lens through which students can view life in this era. Like other PBS empire sites, this site has a listing of lesson plans for expanding on these resources.
SimMummy
In this simulation, kids participate in all the stages of an ancient Egyptian mummification, from removal of the organs to placing the mummy in the tomb, and they reenact these funerary customs the same way (or extremely close, anyway!) that the Egyptians did it
Egypt - Secrets of an Ancient World gr. 4-12
National Geographic's Egypt site offers a pyramid time line, an explanation of how and why pyramids developed, and a general introduction to ancient Egyptian civilization. There's a wealth of material here, so some previewing would be in order, especially when working with younger students.
Digital Giza Project allows scholars to virtually walk through archaeological sites and examine artifacts that might otherwise be inaccessible. The Giza Project began in 2000 at the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, with the goal of digitizing all of the archaeological documentation from the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston–Harvard University expedition to Giza, Egypt (c. 1904–1947) and making that information freely available online for anyone to use. Since moving to Harvard in 2011, the project has expanded its scope, partnering with other institutions around the world that excavated at Giza, to bring together as much data as possible about this complex site. The process of integrating and standardizing all of these records is ongoing. The project has utilized this vast quantity of information to begin building a 3D virtual reconstruction of the Giza Plateau as it may have looked when first built, providing new ways to sightsee, explore, and learn about the pyramids and their surrounding cemeteries.
Eternal Egypt Eternal Egypt is a living record of a land rich in art and history, people and places, myths and religions. The stories of Eternal Egypt are told using the latest interactive technologies, high-resolution imagery, animations, virtual environments, remote cameras, three-dimensional models and more.
There are many ways to begin your journey through Eternal Egypt. The guided tour is a quick way to experience the best that the site has to offer. You can also begin with one of the cultural highlights below, or make your own discoveries using one of the many other ways to explore.
British Museum Artifacts 3D Tours: One is on ancient Egypt
Greece
Xerxe's March to Greece
You are Xerxes, King of the mighty Persian Empire, and you are about to embark on one of the greatest military campaigns in history
Winged Sandals gr 2-7
Take a journey with Hermes, the messenger god! Stop along the way to read stories, play interactive games, "Ask the Oracle" a question, and explore ancient history. Select portions of the Web site based on the level of your students. Many of the games and hand-on activities are designed for elementary students, but middle school kids can use the historical descriptions as a helpful resource during a unit on mythology.
The Greeks Grades 7 to 12
Part of the PBS Civilizations series, this site explores ancient Greece, complete with virtual tours of the acropolis and the Parthenon temple. In the Greeks Interactive section, students can view interactive maps and experiment with the Greek alphabet. There is also an educational resources section, complete with lesson plans for using the site.
Mythweb Grades 4 to 10
This page offers a number of lesson ideas linked to the Mythweb site for Greek mythology studies. There are a number of suggestions on how to integrate the material into other classroom activities.
Rome
Ancient Rome 101 The video provides an excellent introduction to the origin, rise, and fall of the Roman Empire.
Exploring Ancient Rome with Free, Interactive Resources Here are more than 20 interactive digital resources to assist you in bringing the ancient Roman world to life for your students.
BBC Best Link: History - Death in Rome game
Your chance to be a sleuth in ancient Rome and work out who killed Eutychus. You may even learn some history along the way
Radio 4 - The Roman Way
Exploring everyday life in the Roman Empire, from the emperors in Rome to life in the far-flung corners of the Empire
The Roman Empire Grades 7 to 12 PBS
Interactive proof that Rome wasn't built in a day. This site examines the history of the empire, as well as the culture, lifestyle, and government of the Roman era. Along with classroom resources sorted by grade level, the site also has an interactive political simulation and an Augustan Family Tree.
Roman History BBC Site for 7-11 year olds with facts, illustrations and activities
You wouldn't want to be a Roman gladiator!
A humorous and authentic view of life in earlier times. Students can trace the experience of an unfortunate Gaul, captured by Romans and sent to fight as a gladiator in the arena. Will he survive to fight again? Visitors can browse through the virtual book using the "next" and "previous" buttons.
Virtual Rome A voyage to Ancient Rome, the capital of the largest empire in the ancient world, which has been reconstructed in virtual form and which you can explore in a “full-immersion” panoramic experience.
Life in the Iron Age is a series of interactive animations from BBC History. Through the animations, students discover how the Iron Age community carried out daily tasks, such as making fire, grinding grain and baking bread or spinning wool. Each animation includes an activity in which students gather materials needed to carry out the task. As they collect objects, students read a short passage about that object and the way it was used to accomplish these everyday activities in ancient communities. At the end of each animation, students can take a short quiz about the activity they just studied. Click Here to Access Free Interactive Animations
Meso-America
MesoWeb
For the ancient cultures of Mesoamerica including the Olmec, Maya and Aztec.
Google unveiled an online video called called The Descent of the Serpent Here’s how they describe it: The game involves retrieving the lost objects and returning them to Chichen Itza in time for the solar equinox. That’s when the sun casts a shadow on the carvings in a way that resembles a snake descending the monument’s steps — which inspires the game’s name. As part of the challenge, players are invited to learn surprising, impressive and interesting aspects about ancient Mesoamerican cultures, and face mythological figures who’ll test the knowledge they’ve collected throughout the adventure.
Mundo Maya
Covers daily life, history, customs, legends and more
Ancient Mexico Grades 6 to 12
This is a remarkably well-done site dealing with "the art, culture, and history of ancient Mesoamerica." The bulk of the content deals with the cities, gods, and conquest of ancient Mexico, but there are additional sections on Peru and Chile. These latter two are much more works in progress.
The Sport of Life and Death
Learn about the land and culture of Mesoamerica with this engaging site that draws visitors into the ancient world of athletes and gods. After exploring maps and timelines, and learning about the elements of the sport, visitor can participate in a unique version of the Mesoamerican Ballgame - the most outstanding feature of the site. To play, students must enter correct responses to content-specific questions. Points are earned by choosing correct answers. Lose the game, and find out why this was know as "the sport of life and death!"
Asia
Ancient Southeast Asia Resources
Easy to search resources and lessons.
Ancient China
Discover the culture of ancient China with this outstanding, interactive site that explores its artisans, geography, tombs, writings, and more. Each section of the site provides historical information, a story, an in-depth exploration, and a challenge. The challenge activities promote higher level thinking and are ideal for independent practice and review.
Visualize Chinese history from the ancient Shang dynasty onward in this interactive map from TimeMaps.
Go all the way back to the foundations of Chinese society in prehistory and the Xia dynasty, alongside images and video, in this interactive timeline from PBS.
Get a start to understanding the history of China with this resource article from National Geographic, which will scale the reading to various grade levels from 3–12.
Go up close with ancient Chinese art and literature with images, maps, and timelines from the World Digital Library. Learn more about the WDL here.
Looking for research aids for secondary students? Check out this extensive list of primary sources on ancient Chinese life, religion, philosophy, and more from Kansas University Libraries.
Japan In-Depth gr. 6-12
This site gives a very clear overview of major components of ancient Japanese culture. The page is separated into a wide variety of subsections including architecture, shrines, religious observations, clothing, art, floral design, theatre and dance. Each section links to simple line-drawings with an explanation of the significance of each cultural component.
Africa
African Voices
Smithsonian exhibit that includes Africa's influence on world history and culture.
Ancient Africa Resources
Web resources include a number of civilizations, customs and history.
Animations of Historical Movements and PatternsUse maps to analyze data and identify patterns in history. Mapping History, produced by the University of Oregon, features numerous animated maps illustrating problems, patterns, and events throughout history. Mapping History is essentially a digital atlas of American, European, Latin American, and African history. Each section is divided into modules based on historical themes and eras. www.freetech4teachers.com
Middle East
Ancient Islam
From Islamic beginnings to the peak of the empire.
Resources For Fighting Islamophobia In School
Persia
Includes lessons and information.
Middle Ages
The Middle Ages
This online unit includes videos
Internet Medieval Sourcebook
Links to texts available on the Internet to assist in teaching medieval history
Open Heritage project Primary sources come in all shapes and sizes and can be viewed in a myriad of ways. Google has collaborated to help preserve historical sites around the world that are at risk of irreversible damage or total erasure due to human conflict and natural disasters. The Open Heritage project, will capture all the relevant data at a historical site needed to recreate it virtually, so it can be preserved and explored online either on a computer, through a mobile device, or while wearing a virtual reality headset.
Labyrinth : Resources for Medieval Studies
Provides organized access to electronic resources in medieval studies
Historic Tale Construction Kit
Using this digital storytelling tool, students can select among menus of folk (brave and ordinary), buildings, and beasts; add their own text in the colors of their choice; adjust the scale of the items they select; and create an authentic looking Medieval comic strip
Conqueror!
A turn-based, multiplayer strategy game that takes place on a map of medieval Europe. Play on the web against as many as 16 human or AI opponents
China Middle Ages gr5-8
Resources and lesson plans
Medieval Times Reality Adventure
This extensive webquest on life in Medieval times includes all facets of life and provides multiple challenges to students to research, assimilate information, write, analyze and evaluate. The final group task (after multiple individual steps) is to analyze a problem from Medieval times and provide a suggested solution. The list of resources to use is extensive, and stduetns are also directed to infrmation about evaluating web-based srouces BEFORE they start the task. Although there is no actual Teacher Page, there is a listing of resources teachers might use and an invitaiton to submit further ideas via email.
Mostly Medieval Grades 6 to 12
Those studying castles, knights, and the feudal system will find a surprisingly rich collection of information and lifestyle trivia at this site. The emphasis is on life in the medieval era, from medicine and food to religion, music, heraldry, and folklore. Lots of tidbits and interesting ideas here.
This online unit includes videos
Internet Medieval Sourcebook
Links to texts available on the Internet to assist in teaching medieval history
Open Heritage project Primary sources come in all shapes and sizes and can be viewed in a myriad of ways. Google has collaborated to help preserve historical sites around the world that are at risk of irreversible damage or total erasure due to human conflict and natural disasters. The Open Heritage project, will capture all the relevant data at a historical site needed to recreate it virtually, so it can be preserved and explored online either on a computer, through a mobile device, or while wearing a virtual reality headset.
Labyrinth : Resources for Medieval Studies
Provides organized access to electronic resources in medieval studies
Historic Tale Construction Kit
Using this digital storytelling tool, students can select among menus of folk (brave and ordinary), buildings, and beasts; add their own text in the colors of their choice; adjust the scale of the items they select; and create an authentic looking Medieval comic strip
Conqueror!
A turn-based, multiplayer strategy game that takes place on a map of medieval Europe. Play on the web against as many as 16 human or AI opponents
China Middle Ages gr5-8
Resources and lesson plans
Medieval Times Reality Adventure
This extensive webquest on life in Medieval times includes all facets of life and provides multiple challenges to students to research, assimilate information, write, analyze and evaluate. The final group task (after multiple individual steps) is to analyze a problem from Medieval times and provide a suggested solution. The list of resources to use is extensive, and stduetns are also directed to infrmation about evaluating web-based srouces BEFORE they start the task. Although there is no actual Teacher Page, there is a listing of resources teachers might use and an invitaiton to submit further ideas via email.
Mostly Medieval Grades 6 to 12
Those studying castles, knights, and the feudal system will find a surprisingly rich collection of information and lifestyle trivia at this site. The emphasis is on life in the medieval era, from medicine and food to religion, music, heraldry, and folklore. Lots of tidbits and interesting ideas here.
Renaissance
Renaissance Connection
Be a patron of the arts. Design your own innovation. Investigate Renaissance artworks in depth. Discover how past innovations inform life today. And more, all enhanced with quirky visuals, irreverent humor, and engaging interactivity that reveal the ways that Renaissance life and culture resemble our own.
Renaissance Florence: Time Machine Adventure
Your job? Stop the evil headmaster from kidnapping five of the greatest thinkers ever known!
Da Vinci – The Genius, a website created by the Museum of Science, Boston, helps students gain insight into the mind of this genius and the fundamental scientific and artistic principles he discovered. Leonardo da Vinci applied the scientific method to every aspect of life, including art and music. Although he is best known for his dramatic and expressive artwork, Da Vinci also conducted dozens of carefully thought-out experiments and created futuristic inventions that were groundbreaking for the time. Students are invited to navigate this website and explore ten interactive learning activities to learn more about Da Vinci’s brilliant and imaginative mind, as well as his art, inventions, and discoveries.
Life and times of this important period in world history
Renaissance Connection gr 6-8
This educational website for middle school students focuses on the art, history, scientific inventions, and art patronage of the Renaissance. With a delightfully interactive flair, the site features digital images, maps, a timeline, glossary, and lesson plans. Students can role play the experience of commissioning a piece of artwork or trace today's innovations back to their Renaissance beginnings.
The Renaissance Grades 4 to 12
This offers a comprehensive, interdisciplinary introduction to Renaissance life and thought. Developed as part of the Annenberg/CPB project, it exposes students to the interplay of art, philosophy, and science which made the renaissance unique in European history. There is particular emphasis on the Italian renaissance.
Age of Exploration gr. 3-7
Learn about the courageous voyages that changed the course of human history with this comprehensive collection of activities, narratives, and teaching materials. Visual images and text are woven together to create a useful resource for content enrichment and student research. Visit the "Activities for Students and Teachers" for ready-to-go activities with printable handouts that can be incorporated into transparencies, presentations, or reports.
Galileo's Battle for the Heavens Grades 6 to 12
This site from the PBS Nova series chronicles Galileo's life, experiments, and scientific accomplishments. Users will find a detailed time line, articles about Galileo's accomplishments, and a nice series of interactive "experiments" illustrating his fundamental discoveries. Great site for the study of astronomy, inventors, or the Renaissance.
Be a patron of the arts. Design your own innovation. Investigate Renaissance artworks in depth. Discover how past innovations inform life today. And more, all enhanced with quirky visuals, irreverent humor, and engaging interactivity that reveal the ways that Renaissance life and culture resemble our own.
Renaissance Florence: Time Machine Adventure
Your job? Stop the evil headmaster from kidnapping five of the greatest thinkers ever known!
Da Vinci – The Genius, a website created by the Museum of Science, Boston, helps students gain insight into the mind of this genius and the fundamental scientific and artistic principles he discovered. Leonardo da Vinci applied the scientific method to every aspect of life, including art and music. Although he is best known for his dramatic and expressive artwork, Da Vinci also conducted dozens of carefully thought-out experiments and created futuristic inventions that were groundbreaking for the time. Students are invited to navigate this website and explore ten interactive learning activities to learn more about Da Vinci’s brilliant and imaginative mind, as well as his art, inventions, and discoveries.
- Universal Leonardo has a bunch of great online interactive experiences students can have with Leonardo da Vinci’s drawings and experiments.
- Leonardo da Vinci 1452-1519 is from the BBC.
- Leonardo da Vinci exhibition at the National Gallery: in pictures is from The Telegraph.
- Exploring Leonardo comes from The Museum of Science.
- It Flies! Da Vinci’s Dream Comes True is from NPR.
- Leonardo da Vinci’s Resume is very intriguing.
- Da Vinci museum exhibit here.
- The Man Who Wanted To Know Everything is an extensive video about Leonardo Da Vinci, and is made available by Awesome Stories.
- Face to face with Leonardo da Vinci – an interactive guide is from The Guardian.
- Leonardo da Vinci’s 500th anniversary: The great master’s enduring legacy is from CNN, with an accompanying interactive timeline.
- Leonardo da Vinci’s Huge Notebook Collections, the Codex Forster, Now Digitized in High-Resolution: Explore Them Online is from Open Culture.
Life and times of this important period in world history
Renaissance Connection gr 6-8
This educational website for middle school students focuses on the art, history, scientific inventions, and art patronage of the Renaissance. With a delightfully interactive flair, the site features digital images, maps, a timeline, glossary, and lesson plans. Students can role play the experience of commissioning a piece of artwork or trace today's innovations back to their Renaissance beginnings.
The Renaissance Grades 4 to 12
This offers a comprehensive, interdisciplinary introduction to Renaissance life and thought. Developed as part of the Annenberg/CPB project, it exposes students to the interplay of art, philosophy, and science which made the renaissance unique in European history. There is particular emphasis on the Italian renaissance.
Age of Exploration gr. 3-7
Learn about the courageous voyages that changed the course of human history with this comprehensive collection of activities, narratives, and teaching materials. Visual images and text are woven together to create a useful resource for content enrichment and student research. Visit the "Activities for Students and Teachers" for ready-to-go activities with printable handouts that can be incorporated into transparencies, presentations, or reports.
Galileo's Battle for the Heavens Grades 6 to 12
This site from the PBS Nova series chronicles Galileo's life, experiments, and scientific accomplishments. Users will find a detailed time line, articles about Galileo's accomplishments, and a nice series of interactive "experiments" illustrating his fundamental discoveries. Great site for the study of astronomy, inventors, or the Renaissance.
Romanticism
Napoleonic Wars Online
Napoleonic Wars OnLine is a multiplayer simulation of combat and diplomacy during the Wars of the French Revolution and the Napoleonic Wars
Romanticism and Napoleon
Extensive links for high school
Exploring the French Revolution
LIBERTY, EQUALITY, FRATERNITY: EXPLORING THE FRENCH REVOUTION provides an accessible and lively introduction to the French Revolution as well as an extraordinary archive of some of the most important documentary evidence from the Revolution, including 338 texts, 245 images, and a number of maps and songs.
6 Reasons the Ottoman Empire fell One reason is the literacy rate (which was 5-10%).
Napoleonic Wars OnLine is a multiplayer simulation of combat and diplomacy during the Wars of the French Revolution and the Napoleonic Wars
Romanticism and Napoleon
Extensive links for high school
Exploring the French Revolution
LIBERTY, EQUALITY, FRATERNITY: EXPLORING THE FRENCH REVOUTION provides an accessible and lively introduction to the French Revolution as well as an extraordinary archive of some of the most important documentary evidence from the Revolution, including 338 texts, 245 images, and a number of maps and songs.
6 Reasons the Ottoman Empire fell One reason is the literacy rate (which was 5-10%).
Industrial Revolution
British Industrial Revolution
The Industrial Revolution began in England. What attributes of the country contributed to its success?
Digital Book Series Bringing the Pages of History to Life World of Characters: Revolutions & Industrialization ( free) is a digital experience in the History Adventures series that presents a fresh approach to history education.This interactive, multimodal learning experience covers the period from 1750 to 1900 through the lens of five amazing people living through complex flashpoints in time. The characters include Agent 355, an enslaved woman—and an American Revolutionary War spy; Jiemba, an indigenous Australian at Botany Bay when the British convict ships arrived; Fei Hong, a Chinese family man surviving the Opium Wars; Khari, a native rebel resisting Belgian oppression during the misleadingly titled Congo Free State; and Thomas Brown, a muckraking reporter working to expose the gross malpractice of the Chicago meatpacking industry. The app, available for iOS and Android devices, features immersive 3D environments; animated interactive infographics; enhanced original historical documents; “Choose Your Own Adventure” experiences; animated illustrations and dynamic text; an AP World History curriculum; and media-rich interactive assessments.
Industrial Revolution: Women in World History
Women in England during the Industrial Revolution.
Internet Modern History Sourcebook: Industrial Revolution
Extensive international resources
The Industrial Revolution began in England. What attributes of the country contributed to its success?
Digital Book Series Bringing the Pages of History to Life World of Characters: Revolutions & Industrialization ( free) is a digital experience in the History Adventures series that presents a fresh approach to history education.This interactive, multimodal learning experience covers the period from 1750 to 1900 through the lens of five amazing people living through complex flashpoints in time. The characters include Agent 355, an enslaved woman—and an American Revolutionary War spy; Jiemba, an indigenous Australian at Botany Bay when the British convict ships arrived; Fei Hong, a Chinese family man surviving the Opium Wars; Khari, a native rebel resisting Belgian oppression during the misleadingly titled Congo Free State; and Thomas Brown, a muckraking reporter working to expose the gross malpractice of the Chicago meatpacking industry. The app, available for iOS and Android devices, features immersive 3D environments; animated interactive infographics; enhanced original historical documents; “Choose Your Own Adventure” experiences; animated illustrations and dynamic text; an AP World History curriculum; and media-rich interactive assessments.
Industrial Revolution: Women in World History
Women in England during the Industrial Revolution.
Internet Modern History Sourcebook: Industrial Revolution
Extensive international resources
World War I
The Great War: 80 Years On
World War I; includes related poems, interviews, and personal letters home
World War One Centenary: Continuations and Beginnings
This educational website provides a substantial collection of learning resources. A rich variety of materials, including expert articles, audio and video lectures, downloadable images, interactive maps and e-books are available under a set of cross-disciplinary themes that seek to reappraise the War in its cultural, social, geographical, and historical contexts.
6 Reasons the Ottoman Empire fell One reason is the literacy rate (which was 5-10%).
First World War: Multimedia History
Yahoo! World War I Index
A compilation of WWI sites organized by themes and regions.
Europeana 1914-1918
Europeana 1914-1918 is an initiative that is building a unique European collection of family histories and primary source documents to tell the story of a generation who experienced the First World War in the theaters of war and at home.
World War I; includes related poems, interviews, and personal letters home
World War One Centenary: Continuations and Beginnings
This educational website provides a substantial collection of learning resources. A rich variety of materials, including expert articles, audio and video lectures, downloadable images, interactive maps and e-books are available under a set of cross-disciplinary themes that seek to reappraise the War in its cultural, social, geographical, and historical contexts.
6 Reasons the Ottoman Empire fell One reason is the literacy rate (which was 5-10%).
First World War: Multimedia History
Yahoo! World War I Index
A compilation of WWI sites organized by themes and regions.
Europeana 1914-1918
Europeana 1914-1918 is an initiative that is building a unique European collection of family histories and primary source documents to tell the story of a generation who experienced the First World War in the theaters of war and at home.
World War II
World War Two Begins
The War - PBS Broad coverage of issues including civil rights
HistorySimulation.com has interactive simulations and engaging PowerPoint/Keynote Presentations. The American Civil War, European Imperialism, WWI, WWII and The Cold War. In these simulations, students are assigned roles as world leaders and given objectives that mirror the national interests of those countries
Internment Of Japanese-Americans
The End Of World War II
Inside World War II: A Global Perspective. The History Channel has a nice interactive called
“The Price Of Freedom: Americans At War” is a Smithsonian multimedia interactive on each war in United States’ history. Videos (with transcript), images and text are included.
D-Day To Victory is a very engaging interactive from History Television in Canada.
Jewish Partisan Educational Foundation focuses on historical thinking skills. Most people have never heard of the 20,000-30,000 Jews who fought back against the Nazis as Jewish partisans. The mission of the JPEF is to develop and distribute effective educational materials about the Jewish partisans and their life lessons, bringing the celebration of heroic resistance against tyranny into educational and cultural organizations.
The War - PBS Broad coverage of issues including civil rights
HistorySimulation.com has interactive simulations and engaging PowerPoint/Keynote Presentations. The American Civil War, European Imperialism, WWI, WWII and The Cold War. In these simulations, students are assigned roles as world leaders and given objectives that mirror the national interests of those countries
Internment Of Japanese-Americans
The End Of World War II
Inside World War II: A Global Perspective. The History Channel has a nice interactive called
“The Price Of Freedom: Americans At War” is a Smithsonian multimedia interactive on each war in United States’ history. Videos (with transcript), images and text are included.
D-Day To Victory is a very engaging interactive from History Television in Canada.
Jewish Partisan Educational Foundation focuses on historical thinking skills. Most people have never heard of the 20,000-30,000 Jews who fought back against the Nazis as Jewish partisans. The mission of the JPEF is to develop and distribute effective educational materials about the Jewish partisans and their life lessons, bringing the celebration of heroic resistance against tyranny into educational and cultural organizations.
World Cultures
A compilation of sites organized by themes and regions.
Global Schoolhouse The Global Schoolhouse
is a virtual meeting place where kids from all over the world can work and learn together.
Dollar Street, a project created by Gapminder, sent teams of photographers around the world to take photos of over 264 homes in 50 different countries and uploaded them onto the website, allowing us to see how different people live across the world at different income points. The project imagines the world as a street ordered by income…poor families live at one end and rich families live at the other. A team of photographers went out and photographed the everyday items owned by families of all income levels — shoes, toothbrushes, TVs, beds, lights, sinks — so that visitors to the site can see how much income affects how families live. There are filters to focus in on specific areas like homes, food, customs and more. video start at 15:45
Ideas That Changed The World is an interesting site on Google Arts and Culture.
Native Land Digital - Resource link locate indigenous lands
Population.IO - This interactive site lets you put in your age and country to explore how you fit into the world's population, and compare between different countries and times in history.
200+ Resources For Learning About The World’s Different Cultures
Ten Tools For Comparing The Demographics Of Different Countries
World101 I Modules on the Issues, Forces, and Actors That Shape Our World The renewed focus on civics education in this country provides a promising path for readying students for the challenges of twenty-first century citizenship. The Council on Foreign Relations has created a free curriculum to facilitate this critical work. Educators are invited to explore the library of curriculum units —Global Era Issues; Regions of the World; and How the World Works—and Sometimes Doesn’t.
Infographic: “Visualizing Women’s Economic Rights Around the World”
A New Guide To Help Teachers Integrate Google Arts & Culture in Their Classroom Te ching Google Arts & Culture released today a new Teacher Guide packed full of educational resources and learning materials to help teachers make the best of Arts & Culture in their curricula. I spent some time sifting through the content of this guide and found it really helpful. The guide includes "ready-to-use handouts and customizable activity templates, and compliments other popular experiences on Google Arts & Culture that were designed with educators in mind. The guide is divided into three main sections: Get Started, Discover Content, and Activities for Students. In the Get Started section, you will learn about what Arts & Culture is, how to navigate your way around, and how to use it with your students. In the Discover Content part, you will learn more about the content shared on Arts & Culture including the three main groupings: Collections, Themes, and Experiments.
Google’s Arts & Culture app is a miniature mobile masterpiece, which anyone with even a passing interest in art will enjoy exploring. Launched in 2016, it was originally designed to complement the Google Arts & Culture website, which lets you virtually visit thousands of galleries and museums around the world. But the app, which you can download for free for Android and iOS, now goes far beyond that. It uses the latest technology to deliver an immersive, educational, and entertaining art experience. Let’s take a look at its highlights.
Wildearth Kids "We take kids ages 4-18 on free, live and interactive safari experiences, transporting them from wherever they are onto the back of a virtual safari vehicle! For 45 minutes, kids join safariLIVE and tour two of the most iconic wildlife areas in the world – the Kruger Park of South Africa and the Maasai Mara in Kenya. They interact with our expert naturalists in real time as they drive through the African wilderness, asking questions about what they see."
Teaching About Refugees A website of the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR), presents free and adaptable teaching materials on refugees, asylum, migration, and statelessness, as well as a section dedicated to professional development and guidance for elementary and secondary school teachers on including refugee children in their classes. The site’s sections are entitled “Words Matter,” “Facts and Figures About Refugees,” “UNHCR Media Materials and Reports,” “Teaching Materials,” “Including Refugees in Your Classroom,” and “Other Teaching Resources.”
Global Oneness Project offers free multicultural stories and accompanying lesson plansfor high school classrooms. From a Yup’ik man in Alaska teaching his grandson to fish, to the cultural displacement of Syrian refugees migrating through Europe, these stories situate day-to-day events within a larger, historical context.
Mapamundi An interactive that uses diverse data to compare countries.
Culture Crossing is a unique resource for information about different countries. It provides some basic demographics, but it also details about communication style, dress, gestures, etc. It’s unlike any other source of information about countries that’s on the web. I’ll certainly be having my students use it now when they develop reports about countries.
What The World Eats is a TIME Magazine slideshow with family photos from around the world and the food they eat.
Food Photos is a similar slideshow from NPR.
Here are portraits of 30 statistically average families with all of their worldly possessions displayed outside their homes.
Global Student Laboratory is a web-based, educational platform that enables students, teachers, and learners of all ages to pose questions and together find answers. With GlobalLab, teachers have, in one place, all the resources, tools, partners, and support to bring authentic investigations to classrooms and homes. Each project is a collaborative journey of challenges and discovery. In nine projects, step by step, students use math, graphing, and more to discover who they are as a community.
Explore.org produces and hosts high-quality documentary films and photographs. The films and images focus on exploring the world and the work of non-profit organizations around the world. The films and images are organized by location and by charitable and or environmental cause.
Google Arts and Culture Basically it’s a database of artwork, objects, artifacts, and documents from thousands of museum collections and historical sites from around the world. Much of this content comes from Arts and Culture partners – public museums, galleries, and cultural institutions. These partners also provide such things as 3D tour views and street-view maps that allow you to “walk” through their actual brick and mortar sites. At the basic level, you can find artwork, history, and geographic places. But within that structure, there is so much more. Seriously. It is incredibly easy to stop in for a quick search and surface an hour later, having gotten sucked into whatever cool thing lead to the next cool thing that lead to a 3D tour of some cool place. But recent changes and additions make it even more useful. Need some great history, geography, or literature lesson plans? Start with their new 3 Tips for Teachers– a tutorial for using all of the goodness that is Arts and Culture. Then head over to the updated Learn With Google Arts & Culture page. You’ll find ready to use lesson plans, links to virtual field trips, and a wide variety of interactive activities.
X Degrees of Separation lets you select two works of art in the Google Arts & Culture collection and then see works that can connect them. The purpose of X Degrees of Separation appears to be to show viewers how cultures can be connected through art. Each image that appears in the connections is linked to an individual page that will include a bit of information about the work. Depending upon the work that you've selected you may not get much more information than the artist's name and the museum in which the work is displayed. (Richard Byrne)
Native Planet has several slideshows about the indigenous peoples of India.
Indigenous Venezuelan Tradition Sparks Debate is a New York Times slideshow.
Amazon Watch and Survival International are two groups working to assist indigenous peoples, and they both have multimedia resources (thanks to Willem for the tip).
Fighting For Survival is a short video about indigenous people in Kenya fighting against the effects of climate change:
The Ashaninka, A Threatened Way of Life is a slideshow from The Atlantic.
The Guardian published an interactive called Peoples under threat around the world: map. Here’s how they describe it:
Indigenous Tribe Rises up in Colombia is a TIME slideshow.
Brazilian Police Evict Indigenous Squatters from 2014 Stadium Site is a photo gallery from The Atlantic.
An Indigenous Way of Life Threatened by Oil Sands in Canada is a photo gallery from The New York Times.
Generation Global is a completely free resource that is designed to help students learn how to work across cultures. Cross-cultural dialogue is at the core and heart of what they do and how they believe we can better counter conflict and violence around the world. They have an excellent collection of resources and a wonderful platform for helping to bring students together to begin discussions.
Interactive Sites on Immigration K - 6
The Places We Live is a powerful collection of images, sounds, and stories of life in four of the world's poorest slums. The introduction to The Places We Live starts with a slideshow containing statistics from the UN regarding the world's population that lives in slums and the UN definition of the term slum.
Hispanic Heritage Teaching & Learning Resources
Indigenous People Resources
Breakfast around the world: How different countries start the day is from CNN.
The World Culture Encyclopedia
Syrian Journey: Choose Your Own Escape Route helps students to understand the real dilemmas that Syrian refugees face. This journey is based on extensive research and real stories of Syrians who have made the trek. Syrian Journey is a playable blog post with threaded endings. When they play Syrian Journey, students take notes on the decisions and choices made, and describe the difficulties and challenges faced. As Syrian refugees, students decide whether to deal with smugglers or take a dangerous raft ride across the Mediterranean Sea. The culminating activity involves the creation of a student journal that includes where, as refugees, they are headed and whether asylum is granted. It includes all the push and pull factors of immigration.
The Uprooted is a useful interactive map demonstrating the extent of today’s world refugee crisis.
Go Social Studies Go a series of multimedia books about common social studies topics. The site is divided into three main sections; U.S. History, World History, and World Religions. Click to open a book then click to open a chapter in the each of the books. Within each chapter there is a series of pages containing text, pictures, videos, and links to additional resources on your chosen topic.
Culture Crossing is a unique resource for information about different countries. It provides some basic demographics, but it also details about communication style, dress, gestures, etc. It’s unlike any other source of information about countries that’s on the web. I’ll certainly be having my students use it now when they develop reports about countries.
What The World Eats is a TIME Magazine slideshow with family photos from around the world and the food they eat
Glossary of Folk Musical Instruments & Styles from Around the World and the World Instrument Gallery.
The Places We Live is a powerful collection of images, sounds, and stories of life in four of the world's poorest slums. The introduction to The Places We Live starts with a slideshow containing statistics from the UN regarding the world's population that lives in slums and the UN definition of the term slum.
Learning for Justice
Learning for Justice features curated resources to teach students about concepts related to social justice and equity. Resources offered touch on diverse topics including: race and ethnicity, religion, ability, rights and activism, bullying and bias, gender and sexual identity, immigration, and more.
Equity Literacy Institute
The Equity Literacy Institute offers free and downloadable resources designed by EdChange and the Equity Literacy Institute touching on topics related to multiculturalism, equity, and social justice.
So Just
So Just provides access to primary source documents on social justice. The site's collection features "historic speeches, songs, poetry, and manifestos on human rights and social justice. So*Just is a free resources from EdChange and the Equity Literacy Institute."
Macmillan Education Cultural Awareness Collection
Macmillan Education offers this selection of courses to use in class to teach students about cultural awareness.
Boulevard offers educators and students the opportunity to explore art galleries all over the world, fostering student discovery without leaving school and adding new energy to classroom discussions. On Boulevard’s Art & Culture page, students can access the world’s great art collections and cultural sites from their classroom. The customizable, user-controlled experiences are designed to encourage inquiry, exploration, and critical thinking. From its Educate page, Boulevard provides original, easily downloadable, and fully integrated curriculum for each of its museum experiences.
Portraits of 30 statistically average families with all of their worldly possessions displayed outside their homes.
Penpal Schools gives students from different backgrounds and countries the opportunity to engage in meaningful dialogue about hot-button issues, such as immigration and health care. In one instance, students from the “Rust Belt�%8
is a virtual meeting place where kids from all over the world can work and learn together.
Dollar Street, a project created by Gapminder, sent teams of photographers around the world to take photos of over 264 homes in 50 different countries and uploaded them onto the website, allowing us to see how different people live across the world at different income points. The project imagines the world as a street ordered by income…poor families live at one end and rich families live at the other. A team of photographers went out and photographed the everyday items owned by families of all income levels — shoes, toothbrushes, TVs, beds, lights, sinks — so that visitors to the site can see how much income affects how families live. There are filters to focus in on specific areas like homes, food, customs and more. video start at 15:45
Ideas That Changed The World is an interesting site on Google Arts and Culture.
Native Land Digital - Resource link locate indigenous lands
Population.IO - This interactive site lets you put in your age and country to explore how you fit into the world's population, and compare between different countries and times in history.
200+ Resources For Learning About The World’s Different Cultures
Ten Tools For Comparing The Demographics Of Different Countries
World101 I Modules on the Issues, Forces, and Actors That Shape Our World The renewed focus on civics education in this country provides a promising path for readying students for the challenges of twenty-first century citizenship. The Council on Foreign Relations has created a free curriculum to facilitate this critical work. Educators are invited to explore the library of curriculum units —Global Era Issues; Regions of the World; and How the World Works—and Sometimes Doesn’t.
Infographic: “Visualizing Women’s Economic Rights Around the World”
A New Guide To Help Teachers Integrate Google Arts & Culture in Their Classroom Te ching Google Arts & Culture released today a new Teacher Guide packed full of educational resources and learning materials to help teachers make the best of Arts & Culture in their curricula. I spent some time sifting through the content of this guide and found it really helpful. The guide includes "ready-to-use handouts and customizable activity templates, and compliments other popular experiences on Google Arts & Culture that were designed with educators in mind. The guide is divided into three main sections: Get Started, Discover Content, and Activities for Students. In the Get Started section, you will learn about what Arts & Culture is, how to navigate your way around, and how to use it with your students. In the Discover Content part, you will learn more about the content shared on Arts & Culture including the three main groupings: Collections, Themes, and Experiments.
Google’s Arts & Culture app is a miniature mobile masterpiece, which anyone with even a passing interest in art will enjoy exploring. Launched in 2016, it was originally designed to complement the Google Arts & Culture website, which lets you virtually visit thousands of galleries and museums around the world. But the app, which you can download for free for Android and iOS, now goes far beyond that. It uses the latest technology to deliver an immersive, educational, and entertaining art experience. Let’s take a look at its highlights.
- Match a Selfie to a PaintingThe best-known feature in the Google Arts & Culture app is undoubtedly Art Selfie. It finds your art lookalike among thousands of famous paintings.To discover whether you more closely resemble the Mona Lisa or The Laughing Cavalier, tap the camera icon and select Art Selfie. Take a photo of your face and Arts & Culture will locate matching portraits. Don’t expect the results to be exact doppelgangers, or even anyone you’ve heard of (though one of our matches was 28th US president Woodrow Wilson). Tap the picture for information about the subject, artist, and collection, then tap View artwork to see the piece in close-up detail.
- Transform Your Photos Into Artworks Even more fun than Art Selfie is the Art Transfer feature. This turns your photos into works of art in the style of specific painters. Select Art Transfer in the camera menu, then either capture a photo or use an existing one from your phone. Tap one of the thumbnails of classic paintings and historic artifacts, and Google will use its AI to apply that style. Options include Edvard Munch’s The Scream, Claude Monet’s Ninfee Rosa, Jean-Michel Basquiat’s Man from Naples, and self portraits by Andy Warhol, Frida Kahlo, and Vincent Van Gogh.Image Gallery You can apply a style to only part of your photo by tapping the scissors icon and tracing the desired area with your finger. The app also creates a GIF showing the transformation of your image into art. Tap Share to download and share your masterpiece.
- Insert Yourself Into Works of Art Google Arts & Culture is also one of the best augmented reality apps. You can see this in the Art Filter tool, which uses AR to turn you into a living work of art. Select Art Filter in the camera menu, then choose one of the five artifacts or paintings. These include a Japanese Samurai helmet from the 19th century, Van Gogh’s Self Portrait (again), and Vermeer’s Girl with a Pearl Earring. Tap Try filter to activate your camera and apply the filter, Snapchat-style. It will adapt to the position of your head and even your facial expression. Tap the circle to take a photo or hold it down to record a video.When you’re done admiring yourself, select View artwork to learn more about the original piece.
- Explore a Virtual Gallery From Home You can use the Arts & Culture app’s brilliant Pocket Gallery feature to explore some of the world’s best art without leaving your home.Select Pocket Gallery in the camera menu, then point your camera at a flat, well-lit surface and move your phone around slowly. As with Art Projector, a grid of dots will highlight the augmented reality area. Choose a virtual gallery from nine options including Meet Vermeer, The Art of Color, and Chauvet Cave. The size and scale of these tours means you’ll need to download them first, but this also makes them easy to revisit.Press Enter to step into the gallery, where you can tap and swipe your screen to explore the contents of each room. Alternatively, move your phone manually to look around.The name of the artwork and artist will appear as you “approach” a piece. You can also reverse-pinch your screen to zoom in and examine the craftsmanship.
- Play Art-Themed Games Although you can try Google Arts & Culture’s games on its website, tapping your phone's touchscreen makes them easier and more fun to play than with your mouse.For example, Art Coloring Book offers monochrome outlines of more than 20 famous paintings and photos, which you can color in using the palette of your choice. Just pick a color then tap a segment of the picture to fill it in. You can save and share the result.Puzzle Party creates jigsaws from hundreds of artworks, which you can either solve yourself or collaborate on with friends. Simply press the puzzle pieces and move them into place.
- Bring Ancient Creatures to Life If you enjoy viewing museum exhibits of fossils and long-extinct species, you’ll love Arts and Culture's Meet an Ancient Animal feature.
Wildearth Kids "We take kids ages 4-18 on free, live and interactive safari experiences, transporting them from wherever they are onto the back of a virtual safari vehicle! For 45 minutes, kids join safariLIVE and tour two of the most iconic wildlife areas in the world – the Kruger Park of South Africa and the Maasai Mara in Kenya. They interact with our expert naturalists in real time as they drive through the African wilderness, asking questions about what they see."
Teaching About Refugees A website of the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR), presents free and adaptable teaching materials on refugees, asylum, migration, and statelessness, as well as a section dedicated to professional development and guidance for elementary and secondary school teachers on including refugee children in their classes. The site’s sections are entitled “Words Matter,” “Facts and Figures About Refugees,” “UNHCR Media Materials and Reports,” “Teaching Materials,” “Including Refugees in Your Classroom,” and “Other Teaching Resources.”
Global Oneness Project offers free multicultural stories and accompanying lesson plansfor high school classrooms. From a Yup’ik man in Alaska teaching his grandson to fish, to the cultural displacement of Syrian refugees migrating through Europe, these stories situate day-to-day events within a larger, historical context.
Mapamundi An interactive that uses diverse data to compare countries.
Culture Crossing is a unique resource for information about different countries. It provides some basic demographics, but it also details about communication style, dress, gestures, etc. It’s unlike any other source of information about countries that’s on the web. I’ll certainly be having my students use it now when they develop reports about countries.
What The World Eats is a TIME Magazine slideshow with family photos from around the world and the food they eat.
Food Photos is a similar slideshow from NPR.
Here are portraits of 30 statistically average families with all of their worldly possessions displayed outside their homes.
Global Student Laboratory is a web-based, educational platform that enables students, teachers, and learners of all ages to pose questions and together find answers. With GlobalLab, teachers have, in one place, all the resources, tools, partners, and support to bring authentic investigations to classrooms and homes. Each project is a collaborative journey of challenges and discovery. In nine projects, step by step, students use math, graphing, and more to discover who they are as a community.
Explore.org produces and hosts high-quality documentary films and photographs. The films and images focus on exploring the world and the work of non-profit organizations around the world. The films and images are organized by location and by charitable and or environmental cause.
Google Arts and Culture Basically it’s a database of artwork, objects, artifacts, and documents from thousands of museum collections and historical sites from around the world. Much of this content comes from Arts and Culture partners – public museums, galleries, and cultural institutions. These partners also provide such things as 3D tour views and street-view maps that allow you to “walk” through their actual brick and mortar sites. At the basic level, you can find artwork, history, and geographic places. But within that structure, there is so much more. Seriously. It is incredibly easy to stop in for a quick search and surface an hour later, having gotten sucked into whatever cool thing lead to the next cool thing that lead to a 3D tour of some cool place. But recent changes and additions make it even more useful. Need some great history, geography, or literature lesson plans? Start with their new 3 Tips for Teachers– a tutorial for using all of the goodness that is Arts and Culture. Then head over to the updated Learn With Google Arts & Culture page. You’ll find ready to use lesson plans, links to virtual field trips, and a wide variety of interactive activities.
X Degrees of Separation lets you select two works of art in the Google Arts & Culture collection and then see works that can connect them. The purpose of X Degrees of Separation appears to be to show viewers how cultures can be connected through art. Each image that appears in the connections is linked to an individual page that will include a bit of information about the work. Depending upon the work that you've selected you may not get much more information than the artist's name and the museum in which the work is displayed. (Richard Byrne)
Native Planet has several slideshows about the indigenous peoples of India.
Indigenous Venezuelan Tradition Sparks Debate is a New York Times slideshow.
Amazon Watch and Survival International are two groups working to assist indigenous peoples, and they both have multimedia resources (thanks to Willem for the tip).
Fighting For Survival is a short video about indigenous people in Kenya fighting against the effects of climate change:
The Ashaninka, A Threatened Way of Life is a slideshow from The Atlantic.
The Guardian published an interactive called Peoples under threat around the world: map. Here’s how they describe it:
Indigenous Tribe Rises up in Colombia is a TIME slideshow.
Brazilian Police Evict Indigenous Squatters from 2014 Stadium Site is a photo gallery from The Atlantic.
An Indigenous Way of Life Threatened by Oil Sands in Canada is a photo gallery from The New York Times.
Generation Global is a completely free resource that is designed to help students learn how to work across cultures. Cross-cultural dialogue is at the core and heart of what they do and how they believe we can better counter conflict and violence around the world. They have an excellent collection of resources and a wonderful platform for helping to bring students together to begin discussions.
Interactive Sites on Immigration K - 6
The Places We Live is a powerful collection of images, sounds, and stories of life in four of the world's poorest slums. The introduction to The Places We Live starts with a slideshow containing statistics from the UN regarding the world's population that lives in slums and the UN definition of the term slum.
Hispanic Heritage Teaching & Learning Resources
Indigenous People Resources
- Big Myth you can watch and listen to creation stories from indigenous people from around the world.
- Native Planet has several slideshows about the indigenous peoples of India.
- Indigenous Venezuelan Tradition Sparks Debate is a New York Times slideshow.
- Native voices from the heart of Alaska is an audio slideshow from the World Wildlife Fund.
- Culture Quest is a interactive from the National Museum of the American Indian that helps you learn about indigenous people throughout North and South America.
- PBS has an interactive map showing the indigenous roots of many place names in the United States.
- How Stuff Works has numerous videos about Native Americans.
- Codetalkers is an interactive about Native Americans in World War II.
- The U.S. National Library of Medicine has a fascinating timeline of Native People’s Concepts Of Health And Healing.
- The Smithsonian has an impressive collection of teacher materials related to Native Americans.
- The Smithsonian also has a buffalo hide painting activity that I have used.
- The Library of Congress has brought together many resources for Native American Heritage Month.
- American Indian Responses To Environmental Challenges is an interactive from The Smithsonian.
- Amazon Watch and Survival International are two groups working to assist indigenous peoples, and they both have multimedia resources (thanks to Willem for the tip).
- Fighting For Survival is a short video about indigenous people in Kenya fighting against the effects of climate change:
- Fighting for Survival: Indigenous Peoples and Climate Change in Kenya from CTA on Vimeo.
- The Ashaninka, A Threatened Way of Life is a slideshow from The Atlantic.
- Latin American indigenous groups join forces to fight dams is from The BBC.
- Internet Indians: In Contextual Video Player is from Al Jazeera.
- The Guardian published an interactive called Peoples under threat around the world: map. Here’s how they describe it:
Breakfast around the world: How different countries start the day is from CNN.
The World Culture Encyclopedia
Syrian Journey: Choose Your Own Escape Route helps students to understand the real dilemmas that Syrian refugees face. This journey is based on extensive research and real stories of Syrians who have made the trek. Syrian Journey is a playable blog post with threaded endings. When they play Syrian Journey, students take notes on the decisions and choices made, and describe the difficulties and challenges faced. As Syrian refugees, students decide whether to deal with smugglers or take a dangerous raft ride across the Mediterranean Sea. The culminating activity involves the creation of a student journal that includes where, as refugees, they are headed and whether asylum is granted. It includes all the push and pull factors of immigration.
The Uprooted is a useful interactive map demonstrating the extent of today’s world refugee crisis.
Go Social Studies Go a series of multimedia books about common social studies topics. The site is divided into three main sections; U.S. History, World History, and World Religions. Click to open a book then click to open a chapter in the each of the books. Within each chapter there is a series of pages containing text, pictures, videos, and links to additional resources on your chosen topic.
Culture Crossing is a unique resource for information about different countries. It provides some basic demographics, but it also details about communication style, dress, gestures, etc. It’s unlike any other source of information about countries that’s on the web. I’ll certainly be having my students use it now when they develop reports about countries.
What The World Eats is a TIME Magazine slideshow with family photos from around the world and the food they eat
Glossary of Folk Musical Instruments & Styles from Around the World and the World Instrument Gallery.
The Places We Live is a powerful collection of images, sounds, and stories of life in four of the world's poorest slums. The introduction to The Places We Live starts with a slideshow containing statistics from the UN regarding the world's population that lives in slums and the UN definition of the term slum.
Learning for Justice
Learning for Justice features curated resources to teach students about concepts related to social justice and equity. Resources offered touch on diverse topics including: race and ethnicity, religion, ability, rights and activism, bullying and bias, gender and sexual identity, immigration, and more.
Equity Literacy Institute
The Equity Literacy Institute offers free and downloadable resources designed by EdChange and the Equity Literacy Institute touching on topics related to multiculturalism, equity, and social justice.
So Just
So Just provides access to primary source documents on social justice. The site's collection features "historic speeches, songs, poetry, and manifestos on human rights and social justice. So*Just is a free resources from EdChange and the Equity Literacy Institute."
Macmillan Education Cultural Awareness Collection
Macmillan Education offers this selection of courses to use in class to teach students about cultural awareness.
Boulevard offers educators and students the opportunity to explore art galleries all over the world, fostering student discovery without leaving school and adding new energy to classroom discussions. On Boulevard’s Art & Culture page, students can access the world’s great art collections and cultural sites from their classroom. The customizable, user-controlled experiences are designed to encourage inquiry, exploration, and critical thinking. From its Educate page, Boulevard provides original, easily downloadable, and fully integrated curriculum for each of its museum experiences.
Portraits of 30 statistically average families with all of their worldly possessions displayed outside their homes.
Penpal Schools gives students from different backgrounds and countries the opportunity to engage in meaningful dialogue about hot-button issues, such as immigration and health care. In one instance, students from the “Rust Belt�%8