A bunch of maps you didn’t know you needed

I’ve been on a maps kick lately. So today?

No strategies. No teaching ideas.

Just some fun maps that you didn’t know you needed.

If you’re a maphead, this post’s for you. And yes, you may discover that there is an  . . . mmm, interesting term used to describe the act of looking at fun maps you didn’t know you needed. And yes, it is a legitimate term. So if your school’s filter blocks out some of the links below, tell your tech admin to lighten up. It’s just maps.

Really.

White House missing its insides and the historical process

Okay. I’ll be honest. Since I first started this particular post, it’s been re-written multiple times. It started out as a short, fun little piece on an interesting period of American history that I wasn’t familiar with. It morphed into a commentary on how to teach historical thinking. It took a short detour into how kids analyze primary source documents. And now . . . I’m not really sure.

(Part of the problem was the fact that I was without my laptop for a week, going commando with only an iPad. And in case you’re wondering – iPads and WordPress don’t play nice. I may have used some grownup words in front of small children at one point.)

So.

I would love for you to hang around for the entire thing but I’ll understand that at this point you might just want to go back to watching basketball.

Still here? Great. First, a little context.

Google Story Builder – one more cool tool in your toolkit

Just over two years ago, Google used the Super Bowl to highlight a very cool tool they had created called Search Story that used their Search feature to, well . . . tell a story. I spent a few minutes sharing how you might be able to use Search Story to help kids summarize all sorts of information and to discuss historical people, events, and ideas. I thought about how you could use it to create hook activities or have kids create end of unit type products.

The bad news? Google is no longer supporting Search Story.

Sigh.

But . . . they’ve created a replacement. Google’s latest fun tool called Story Builder is up and running.

Gooru: A search engine for learning

I’ve had the chance for some incredible learning opportunities lately, both formal and informal. Two conferences, the National Council for the Social Studies in Seattle and the Association of Educational Service Centers in Tampa, provided some great ideas and networking in a formal way.

But November was also a great month for informal learning through my PLN, with other ESSDACK folks, and with two marvelous people from New Zealand. Ali Hughes and Derek Wenmoth spent several weeks in the US and I had the opportunity to pick their brains last week.

What I learned from them would fill a month of blogs and together with everything else I’ve run across in the last four weeks, my head’s on emergency download mode. So lots to talk about!

Today? Something simple. What the creator calls

A search engine for learning.

DocsTeach lesson plans aligned to the Common Core

Seriously. If you haven’t made it over to the National Archives Education page, you are missing out. Lesson plans. Professional development stuff. Handy graphic organizers. It’s one of those sites that is non-negotiable for social studies people. If you’re not taking advantage of all of that goodness, you’re not as good a teacher as you could be. It’s just that simple.

But NARA has lots of other goodies out there.

DocsTeach is one of the those.