Newspaper Map

Newspaper Map- Here's a cool site that has front pages of hundreds of newspapers from around the world displayed on a Google map.  Click on a pin to bring up the front page of a particular paper. From here you can access the paper's website. You are able to filter by region/location and even language. You can even translate! Pretty awesome.

Educational value: I'm thinking it's an easy way to view papers from around the world and do a little study on how a hot news topic is being covered that day in various places. This would also be a great opportunity for language teachers to be able to acces language specific papers for their students. What better way to learn about Spanish than to read a Spanish newspaper?!

Kindle Fire Education Apps

Regardless of which tablet you own, there are good apps available for use in the education setting. If money wasn't a factor I'd have some form of a tablet in the classroom for daily use. In fact in my ideal world, every student would have a tablet, but that's neither here nor there. For Christmas I received a Kindle Fire. Although a little disappointed at first it wasn't an iPad or Galaxy Tab, I've come to really like it.  My only complaint- I wish it had a camera. So I thought I would post some apps that I've found that you might like if you have a Fire of your own or have access to any type of tablet as these apps are (more than likely) available for other devices.  

50 States- Learn about each state with maps, total population, the state flower, largest city, etc. Even test yourself with a quiz. 

Pocket Penguins- Peek in on the penguins at the California Academy of Sciences with this cute app that lets you check out three different views (including underwater!) of their habitat. Not only is it interesting to see how the penguins live and behave, but the experience can also provide story starters. Have language arts students use this app to inspire creative writing.

NASA Nowt- The app includes breaking news from NASA, the image of the day, topical news updates, and the latest news from their missions- including the International Space Station. Use this app in science classes, current events and other discussions. 

Geo Quiz-  A challenge in categories such as: countries and flags, capital cities of the world, oceans/rivers/lakes, mountains and peaks, forests/deserts/plains, extremes, the big picture, the great explorers, climate change, and food.  There is also the option of mixing the categories into a random choice of 20 questions. The quizzes are difficult, but still lots can be learned.

 



I forgot to mention best of all these examples are all FREE.

What About Me?

I've been a little obsessed lately with Infographics. I can't help,  I think they are great and that there are tons of educational value in them. A simple search will turn up many different kinds and although I hadn't realized it until a few months ago, infographics are a part of our daily life. They are everywhere.  Anyways, here's a great site to create an infographic about yourself. What About Me? is free infographic generator made by Intel. Using your Facebook, Twitter and YouTube activity, it creates an infographic about you. You'll find parts of your Facebook posts, what time you generally use any of the three networks and what you most commonly post about. What About Me? even tells you what the average tone of your messages are. Are you happy or angry most of the time when you post?  When you've completed your infographic you can even download. Go ahead, give it a try, you might be surprised at what you find out! 

PS. The educational purpose of this? Getting high school students to look at their digital footprint. The overall question, what are their social networking skills saying about them?

Check out my What About Me? below:

Black History Month Resources

February is Black History Month and it's not hard to find a ton of resources on the Internet. However, sometimes it might be difficult to find "good" resources or ones that you might actually use.  So here are few and one new one that I'm particularly excited about, Mission US: Flight to Freedom!

The History Channel's Black History site has a great collection of quizzes, videos, images and information.

The National Archives. I've mentioned this in previous posts, but it's truly a fantastic site and they have put together a great set of resources that can be found here.

Letters of Note. I came across this site while reading through a blog. Letters of Note is a collection of "letters, postcards, telegrams, faxes and memos that are original and historical. Set up in a blog type format, it's a collection of confirmed tidbits of history that has the primary source material to go along with it. Pretty neat if I do say so myself and the reason for it being on this list- there's a letter from a former slave to his former master.

Mission US: Flight to Freedom. This is the one I'm most excited about! Mission US: Flight to Freedom is a fun and interactive role-playing game. It is the second in the series created by the people at Thirteen WNET. The first one was Mission US: For Crown or Colony. Players of Flight to Freedom assume the role of Lucy King who is a 14-year-old enslaved girl living in Kentucky in 1848.  The object of the game is to work to navigate her escape and journey via the Underground Railroad to Ohio.  The game can be played directly online or can be downloaded and installed on a computer.  FREE! Need to mention that word here. FREE! There is also an amazing set of teacher resources to go along with the game. You'll find DBQs, primary sources, visual aids, writing prompts and more. Take a look it's well worth it. Even if you don't plan to use it for Black History Month, you could use it for studying the Civil War. 

State of the Union 2012

I know, I know. Why on earth am I posting about the State of the Union? A few reasons. It's important. As a child, ages 5-18, we always talked about it in some way shape or form in school.  I'm a Social Studies, History geek. It's important. Whether you "like" or "dislike" the President, he had some good points. It's important. Have I said that enough? Alright you get the point. I'll spare you my personal thoughts on the actual address, but I did watch the whole thing and I did listen. But there are some things that you may find of use for discussions on the State of the Union.

The White House website contains the entire video of the address. You can even download the video.  Also on the White house website there is a print copy of the President's address.  The NY Times has also put together a play by play of the address. You'll be able to search through a list of topics and find the corresponding video segment that goes with it. 

(Image created using Tagxedo. I took the words of the address, copy and paste them into Tagxedo, chose the US as a shape and there you go. An instant word cloud that shows the most commonly used words in bold.)

And the Race begins.. Bring on 2012

Happy New Year and welcome to 2012!  2012 brings much anticipation and speculation for the world and also the United States as it is a Presidential election year. So if you are looking for some information on the candidates and up to date information check out this site FiveThirtyEight. FiveThirtyEight a site all about numbers and is pretty cool. You'll also find links to the Primary Calendar, Poll Watch and various other information. This will be first of many posts that focus on the election this year, so be sure to check back!