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The 50 Worst Inventions - Time Magazine
Grades
4 to 12tag(s): inventors and inventions (87)
In the Classroom
Challenge students to create a list of useless inventions or to invent one of their own. Display the slide show on your interactive whiteboard or projector and discuss if students agree with a product's placement on the list. Generate a list of characteristics that would keep an invention OFF this list! Have students create commercials advertising their new product (or the one they researched). Enhance learning by challenging students to create a video commercial. Modify classroom technology use by using FlexClip. FlexClip is designed to allow you to create short animated or explainer videos to share on YouTube and other social media sites. Share using a site such as SchoolTube.You must be registered and logged in to add items to your favorites.
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Historypin - We Are What We Do
Grades
4 to 12In the Classroom
Use as an enhancement to research projects of family, historic events, and world cultures by finding and uploading pictures to the map. Use Historypin as a resource to compare and contrast different time periods in the same geographic area. Demonstrate on the interactive whiteboard or projector how different places have changed over time. Have individual students or cooperative learning groups create podcasts using PodOmatic (reviewed here) to go along with the maps. ESL students will appreciate the ability to upload pictures and/or learn about their country of original.Add your comments below (available only to members) | Become a Member
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Archive It - Internet Archive
Grades
6 to 12tag(s): Research (80)
In the Classroom
Use this site to compare info from older websites with the ones today. Ask your students to visit the site and create a multimedia presentation from the information they learn there. Have students compare an "inactive" site and a newer site (on the same topic) and then highlight the differences using the Interactive Two Circle Venn Diagram (reviewed here). Alternatively, elicit ideas from your class about how websites have changed and then have the students take a look to see more differences. More advanced social studies classes can compare the historical perspective on events as recent as five years ago to see how points of view and presentation of information change over time.Add your comments below (available only to members) | Become a Member
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Climate Change - American Museum of Natural History
Grades
4 to 12tag(s): carbon (15), carbon dioxide (9), climate (97), climate change (112)
In the Classroom
Use this resource for some excellent background information. Search for more information on the Internet to determine facts and how these facts are used. Create Public Service Announcements outlining the key points. Create a campaign for making small changes in our lives that can add up to a big difference. Have students create multimedia presentations such as an interactive online poster using Visme. Research alternative energy sources and create proposals for change within your district.Add your comments below (available only to members) | Become a Member
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Youth Leadership Initiative - Center for Politics - University of Virginia
Grades
3 to 12tag(s): civics (127), congress (37), elections (84), senate (10)
In the Classroom
Use the site with an interactive whiteboard or projector. Have students work in cooperative groups and take part in the mock congress. They will develop critical thinking and collaboration skills as they research, draft, and pass original legislation. Use the downloadable campaign simulation software (free), and have your students role play and run a senatorial campaign. If you plan to have students register individually, you may want to create your own Gmail account with up to 20 subaccounts for each group of students (by code name or number) within your classes. Here is a blog post that tells how to set up GMail subaccounts to use for any online membership service.Add your comments below (available only to members) | Become a Member
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Teachable Moment Lessons - Morningside Center for Teaching Social Responsibility
Grades
K to 12tag(s): black history (128), democracy (26), politics (123), social and emotional learning (144)
In the Classroom
This site will fit perfectly into any social studies, history, or current events class. Use the lessons to discuss important events that are happening right now. Several of the lessons have links to video so use them with an interactive whiteboard or projector. In addition to lessons on current events, use the essays and ideas on teaching strategies to improve your teaching skills. Teachers of gifted will appreciate this site to help their students who are often well beyond their years in their concern over news events.Add your comments below (available only to members) | Become a Member
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Oil Spill Resources - TeachersFirst
Grades
3 to 12tag(s): disasters (35), environment (248), oil (21), oil spill (14)
In the Classroom
Use these resources together with your class to help students find ways they can contribute to a greater good after such a devastating event spreads across the news. Extend the opportunity to teach about persuasive writing (letters to legislators or the editor), careers in environmental science, and more.Add your comments below (available only to members) | Become a Member
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September 11 Resources - TeachersFirst
Grades
2 to 12In the Classroom
Include one or more of these sites as your observe September 11 in your classroom or make the link available on your class web site for students who ask about the events of this pivotal day. You will find many specific project or class activity ideas within the reviews themselves.Add your comments below (available only to members) | Become a Member
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Alaska Oil Spill Lesson Bank - PWSRCAC
Grades
K to 12tag(s): disasters (35), environment (248), oil (21), oil spill (14)
In the Classroom
Use the whole curriculum in environmental science classes or pick and choose pieces that you want to incorporate into your curriculum. Have students research and understand about oil spills in general using this tool, and then have students enhance their learning by comparing and contrasting the Exxon spill to the BP spill in 2010. Have students create Venn Diagrams using a tool such as Interactive Two Circle Venn Diagram, reviewed here, to compare these two spills or other oil spills.Add your comments below (available only to members) | Become a Member
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Lesson Plan: Oil Spill Solutions - TryEngineering.org
Grades
8 to 12tag(s): environment (248), oil (21), oil spill (14)
In the Classroom
Introduce the concept by talking about current events such as the British Petroleum oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico. Provide students with the student worksheets. Have the students work through the laboratory, and debrief by having students discuss their answers to questions. Have students relate their solutions to attempts to clean up real life oil spills. Enhance learning by having students create a class wiki using TWiki, reviewed here, to discuss oil spills and clean-up options. Not comfortable with wikis? Have no wiki worries - check out the TeachersFirst's Wiki Walk-Through.Add your comments below (available only to members) | Become a Member
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Tracking the Oil Spill in the Gulf - NY Times
Grades
6 to 12In the Classroom
Use this site as a springboard for discussions about the environmental impact of oil spills and, in a broader sense, of human activity in general. Use the map on the interactive whiteboard or projector to show students the physical location of the spill, as well as where the spill has had an immediate impact.Add your comments below (available only to members) | Become a Member
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Oil Spill Lesson Plans and Resources - NOAA
Grades
3 to 12In the Classroom
Take advantage of the free lesson plans and classroom activities on this site! Be sure to save this site as a favorite to allow for easy retrieval later on. Students can select different aspects of oil spill cleanup and mitigation and play the role of experts in a mock blog post playing their role. Use Blogger, reviewed here or Straw.Page, reviewed here for your students blogging tool. Have students continue their role play by commenting on each other's posts.Add your comments below (available only to members) | Become a Member
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Prince William Sound: Detecting Changes 25 Years After the Exxon Valdez Oil Spill - NOAA
Grades
6 to 12tag(s): 1980s (21), disasters (35), environment (248), oil (21), oil spill (14)
In the Classroom
Use this site as a springboard for discussions about the environmental impact of oil spills and, in a broader sense, of human activity in general. Share some of the text portions on a projectir or divide up the site among different student groups. Have student groups explore various aspects of oil spills and report to the class, perhaps sharing visuals from this site on an interactive whiteboard or projector. Have students create a multimedia presentation using PowerPoint Online, reviewed here. This tool allows for to narrating and adding text to a picture. Challenge students to find a photo of the oil spill, and then narrate the photo as if it were a news report. To find Creative Commons images for student projects (with credit, of course), try Vecteezy, reviewed here.Add your comments below (available only to members) | Become a Member
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Voice of America - Broadcasting Board of Governors
Grades
4 to 12tag(s): news (221)
In the Classroom
View news stories and compare them to similar stories in different news media. Discuss the differences and similarities of these stories and use a Venn diagram to portray. Try using the tool "Interactive Two Circle Venn Diagram" (reviewed here).Discuss the focus of each article and reasons for the focus. Answer what the reporter is trying to convince and possible bias in various stories. Create an essay, letter, or blog post outlining viewpoints and linking these various sources for greater understanding of issues and how they are represented in the media. Have students share their letters or essays on a podcast using a tool such as (reviewed here).
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Newspaper Blackout - Austin Kleon
Grades
4 to 12tag(s): creative writing (126), poetry (192)
In the Classroom
This poetry activity (aka Found Poetry) opens the doors to so many learning objectives. In a social studies or history classroom, you could direct your students to search for newspaper or magazine articles on topics that you have been studying, or current events. Suddenly you have social studies poetry! In an English language arts lesson, you might instruct students to blacken out all the words that are not nouns or verbs or select other parts of speech. You could change the task to eliminate any word that is not part of the simple subject or predicate and simultaneously teach or reinforce main idea. For classrooms with individual computers, students could access articles online. Copy the text into a document. Then, instead of blackening out words with markers, they could get the same effect by highlighting over them with black or changing the font color of the text to white, and printing them or saving a screenshot image. Another option is for students to email their Newspaper Blackout poems to the teacher. Each poem could then be put into a Power Point slide show for the class to see on a projector or interactive whiteboard. Use this site to offer your students a new twist on Poetry Month (April). Enhance classroom technology use and take your new poetry collection to the world by uploading the PowerPoint to Voxer, and have each student record a reading in his/her own voice. Make poetry a participatory experience, no matter what the subject. If your school permits, have students take photos of their paper poems -- or screenshots of ones done on the computer --and share them on Voxer. You may want students to start saving their work in a digital portfolio. Suggestions are Mahara, for high school students, and Seesaw, for younger students.Add your comments below (available only to members) | Become a Member
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The Story of Stuff Project - The Story of Stuff Project
Grades
6 to 12tag(s): environment (248), sociology (24)
In the Classroom
Useful in classes on economics, ecology, consumer living, sociology or current events, the film would provide a wonderful discuss lead-in on topics ranging from consumer decision making to the environment. Because the site operates under the "Creative Commons" copyright agreement, you can download your own copy of the film for educational use or order a DVD copy.Add your comments below (available only to members) | Become a Member
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World AIDS Day - National AIDS Trust
Grades
9 to 12tag(s): difficult conversations (53), diseases (59), hiv/aids (15)
In the Classroom
Include this site as one of several resources as student research HIV/AIDS in health class or as part of lessons in awareness of the global economic and personal impact of HIV/AIDS in Africa and elsewhere. Invite your students to "tell an AIDS story" visually using Image Annotator, reviewed here, , or to plan a community HIV/AIDS event for World AIDS Day.Add your comments below (available only to members) | Become a Member
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Teach MidEast - Middle East Policy Council
Grades
5 to 12tag(s): arab (9), maps (222), middle east (51)
In the Classroom
Use this site to help students identify misconceptions, discuss points of view, and search for information that is free from bias. Use many of these topics as springboards for projects, additional blog posts, public service announcements, letter and video campaigns, etc. Have cooperative learning groups create multimedia projects about one of the topics highlighted at this site. Gifted students, with their heightened sense of "fairness," will especially enjoy breaking through stereotypes using this site. Create a class wiki to discuss the topics. Not comfortable with wikis? Have no wiki worries - check out the TeachersFirst's Wiki Walk-Through. Have cooperative learning groups create podcasts demonstrating their understanding of one of the topics using a site such as podOmatic (reviewed here). Have groups narrate a photo using a site such as ThingLink, reviewed here. Challenge students to find a photo (legally permitted to be reproduced), and then narrate the photo as if it were a news report. To find Creative Commons images for student projects (with credit, of course), try Vecteezy, reviewed here.Add your comments below (available only to members) | Become a Member
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HIV and AIDS Resources - TeachersFirst
Grades
6 to 12In the Classroom
Find ideas and more as you plan for upcoming lessons on this powerful topic.Add your comments below (available only to members) | Become a Member
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English Central - englishcentral.com
Grades
5 to 12tag(s): listening (97), pronunciation (33), speech (66)
In the Classroom
Refer your ESL/ELL or speech articulation students to this site to use with a microphone to record their voices. Be sure to show them the demo so they can learn how to use the tools on the site and click to "allow" the mike to record. Help weaker readers by allowing them to see the text of film clips as they listen along, then speak the words back. As they practice English pronunciation, they will also be learning about current events and other topics. Save this site in your favorites on your classroom computer. List this site on your class webpage for students to access (and practice) both in and out of the classroom. Check you school policies before setting up any student accounts with identifiable information or real email addresses.Add your comments below (available only to members) | Become a Member
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