I’m continuing with my mid-year “Best” list posts…
You can see all previous Social Studies lists here.
Here picks for this year – so far:
A BEGINNING LIST OF THE BEST RESOURCES FOR LEARNING ABOUT THE COLLEGE STUDENTS’ GAZA PROTESTS
THE BEST RESOURCES FOR TEACHING ABOUT THE 2024 PRESIDENTIAL ELECTION
Here’s how People Are Culture describes itself:
Are you a teacher or parent looking for engaging, thought-provoking, and inspiring stories that bring to life the subjects of Geography, History, Social Studies, and World Cultures? Or a lifelong learner who is intrigued with the human condition?
People Are Culture is an anthology that explores the definition of culture, and its relevance and role in daily life, through people’s personal stories. With interviews and feature profiles, we reveal the meaning and relevance of traditions and customs, and demonstrate the real life impact of historical events and social change.
We present first-person accounts of different cultures around the world that enliven the concepts of cultural identity; emigration; indigenous culture; life during war; and religious and spiritual practices.
I’m adding it to The Best Sites For Learning About The World’s Different Cultures.
Road Trip Nation is a free site that offers a lot of different resources. I liked their “Road Map” feature the most, which is an accessible tool students can use for career exploration. I’m adding it to The Best Websites For Students Exploring Jobs and Careers.
Backdrop hosts a number of free, and cool, geography games, including ones that show you paintings and you have to identify on a map what location is depicted in them. Its sister site, TripGeo, also hosts some more straightforward geography games. I’m adding them to The Best Online Geography Games.
Where Might I Live? lets you identify community characteristics that are important to you, and then lists the places in the country most likely to have them. It says it categorizes them by county, but you can also search by city. Unfortunately, it doesn’t do an analysis by census tract or zip code. If it did, I could use it in A Lesson Highlighting Community Assets — Not Deficits. You could also find similar data at The Best Tools For Analyzing Census Data.
Mission US has many free online historical simulations for teachers and students, with a high-production quality. I really liked using their one on the American Revolution when I was teaching U.S. History, but then they really went in the wrong direction in their simulations about the underground railroad and another on Native Americans (see MISSION US UNVEILS NEW IMMIGRATION GAME – IS IT A WINNER OR A LOSER?). Since my last post, they’ve unveiled new ones on Japanese-American Internment (Imprisonment) and on the Civil Rights Movement, and they have an upcoming one on indigenous Americans. I haven’t yet checked these out, but I have to assume (hope) they they learned their lesson from all the critical feedback they received from their earlier games. Let me know what you think if you’ve used them. I’m adding this info to The Best Online Learning Simulation Games & Interactives — Help Me Find More, where you can also find many additional resources about how careful we need to be when using historical simulations in the classroom.
10 Million Names is an impressive site that collects the stories of enslaved people. Here’s how the site describes itself:
10 Million Names is dedicated to recovering the names of the estimated ten million men, women, and children of African descent who were enslaved in pre- and post-colonial America (specifically, the territory that would become the United States) between the 1500s and 1865. 10 Million Names is engaging a collaborative network of expert genealogists, cultural organizations, and community-based family historians.
Here’s a recent video sharing some of their audio stories:
I’m adding this info to USEFUL RESOURCES FOR LEARNING ABOUT THE 400TH ANNIVERSARY OF BRINGING ENSLAVED AFRICANS TO AMERICA.
The OER Project has a nice collection of historical comics, or graphic histories. You can find them all here. You can read more about them here, and see a lesson plan on how to use them here.
The Library of Congress and Story Corps has announced an initiative to collect audio stories of Americans’ experiences during the COVID epidemic. Teachers could have students interview their classmates, family members, and community residents. You can read more about it, and get practical details, at:
Library of Congress launches covid oral history project is from The Washington Post.
WE’RE BUILDING AN AUDIO ARCHIVE OF AMERICAN EXPERIENCES WITH COVID-19 is from StoryCorps.
Stories from the COVID-19 Pandemic: A Resource Guide is from The Library of Congress.
“Genocide” is a word and charge being used quite a bit in the context of the Israel/Gaza War. The PBS NewsHour did this segment that could be useful in high school classes.
I’m adding it to The Best Resources For Learning About Genocide.
You might also be interested in The “Best” Resources For Learning About The Israeli-Palestinian Conflict.
The International Institute For Strategic Studies has published the IISS Conflict Trends Map, which shows where there are armed conflicts throughout the world – and why. I’m adding it to The Best Resources Showing Conflicts Around The World. You might also be interested in TWO INFOGRAPHICS ON RISKS TO THE WORLD THIS YEAR.
Many teachers are familiar with the Preview/View/Review instructional strategy, where a preview of the lesson is provided to students in their home language, the lesson is then given in English, and it’s then reviewed in the home language. For many teachers with both ELLs and English-proficient students in their classes, especially content classes, it’s not feasible to use all facets of this strategy. However, it is often possible to at least give students some kind of preview of the lesson in their home language. There are many places to get home language text and video materials on just about any lesson, and you can find those resources at The Best Multilingual & Bilingual Sites For Math, Social Studies, & Science. If you or your school subscribes to Brainpop, and your students are Spanish-speaking, I don’t think you can really beat their Spanish-language videos. I have students first watch the videos in Spanish, then watch the English-language version, and then take the English language quiz. Academia Play is another option. It’s a YouTube Channel with many Spanish-language videos. I wish they were a shorter, but you can’t have everything, I guess.
The Phersu Atlas says that it “covers the entire World day by day from January the 1st 3499 BC to November the 20th 2022 AD.” Pretty wild claim to make, if you ask me, but it does have a lot of info….
Forced Migration is an interactive map showing the journeys of enslaved people. I’m adding it to USEFUL RESOURCES FOR LEARNING ABOUT THE 400TH ANNIVERSARY OF BRINGING ENSLAVED AFRICANS TO AMERICA.
The American Museum of Natural History previously put out a version of this video, which can be found at The Best Websites For Teaching & Learning About World History. They’ve now published this updated version:
Photogrammar is a collection of historical photos taking during the Great Depression by photographers under contract to the U.S. government. It’s searchable by county, which makes it particularly interesting, and most are in the public domain. I’m adding it to The Best Historical Photo + Video Map-Based Sites.
I’m adding this video from ELT Buzz to The Best Sites That Show Statistics By Reducing The World & The U.S. To 100 People:
History Travels is a mashup of map tech and Wikipedia. Type in an address, and it will show you a list of (and links to) “historical” sites within whatever radius you choose. There are some non-historical sites in the mix – the search engine isn’t that precise – but it’s still pretty interesting. I used it to find sites near our school, and something like that could be a nice class lesson.
I’m adding this video to The Best Websites For Teaching & Learning About World History:
Language World Map lets you see where different languages are spoken around the world, and also lets you compare different ones. I’m adding it to The Best “Language Maps”
An illustrated history of the world’s deadliest epidemics is an impressive interactive from The Bulletin of Atomic Scientists. I’m adding it to A BEGINNING LIST OF THE BEST RESOURCES FOR LEARNING ABOUT COVID & OTHER EPIDEMICS.
I’m continuing with my mid-year “Best” list posts… You can see all previous Social Studies lists here. Here picks for this year – so far: A BEGINNING LIST OF THE BEST RESOURCES FOR LEARNING ABOUT THE COLLEGE STUDENTS’ GAZA PROTESTS THE BEST RESOURCES FOR TEACHING ABOUT THE 2024 PRESIDENTIAL ELECTION Here’s how People Are Culture describes best of the year, social studies Larry Ferlazzo’s Websites of the Day…
