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SITES ARE LINKED FROM EACH TITLE!
Descriptions are my own, any opinions or endorsements are straight from me!
Descriptions are my own, any opinions or endorsements are straight from me!
GAMES
FANschool: Turn current events into fantasy sports. Manage your team by drafting, trading, adding and dropping countries or states and rack up points based on their mentions and tone in the news. Customize your season with a playoff tournament and participate in special Olympic and Election challenges. FANschool is also developing a science game and has a system for connecting with and endorsing teachers at fan.school
Mission US: A role playing simulation that allows students to make decisions on behalf of teenage characters set in five different eras of U.S. History. It is a bit oversimplified at times, but it is an engaging and thought provoking way to practice problem solving, build empathy, and give historical context to middle school history students.
iCivics: Designed to engage students in learning about the often boring topic of Civics, this site offers fun games that teach the process of elections, creating laws, the court system, citizenship, and just about any other civics topic you can think of. I am completely guilty of playing "Win the White House" more times than I care to admit.
Mission US: A role playing simulation that allows students to make decisions on behalf of teenage characters set in five different eras of U.S. History. It is a bit oversimplified at times, but it is an engaging and thought provoking way to practice problem solving, build empathy, and give historical context to middle school history students.
iCivics: Designed to engage students in learning about the often boring topic of Civics, this site offers fun games that teach the process of elections, creating laws, the court system, citizenship, and just about any other civics topic you can think of. I am completely guilty of playing "Win the White House" more times than I care to admit.
REFERENCE
Zinn Education Project: I first became aware of Howard Zinn's work when I received A People's History of the United States as a gift heading to college to study Social Studies and History. What I did not realize until more recently is how thorough the Zinn Education Project's collection of resources and materials has become, and how helpful they are in teaching about marginalized groups, alternative viewpoints, social justice and action, and many more topics that are so clearly in need of more dedicated time in K-12 education.
Google MyMaps: Using the familiar and user friendly framework of Google Maps, MyMaps takes it a step further and allows the user to add markers, create colored shapes, annotate with text and multimedia, and share created and modified maps with other users. The possibilities for map creation in social studies classes are endless!
Geography Now! (YouTube Channel): In 2015, Paul Barbato began an ambitious plan to make an informative video about every country in the world, producing them in alphabetical order. The videos on this channel are full of information on Physical Geography, History, Demographics and Culture and are full of interesting side notes and hilarious jokes.
Google MyMaps: Using the familiar and user friendly framework of Google Maps, MyMaps takes it a step further and allows the user to add markers, create colored shapes, annotate with text and multimedia, and share created and modified maps with other users. The possibilities for map creation in social studies classes are endless!
Geography Now! (YouTube Channel): In 2015, Paul Barbato began an ambitious plan to make an informative video about every country in the world, producing them in alphabetical order. The videos on this channel are full of information on Physical Geography, History, Demographics and Culture and are full of interesting side notes and hilarious jokes.
ED-TECH
Flipgrid: Create short video prompts as a discussion starter and watch your students join in with videos of their own. Engages students with a medium for discussion they are comfortable with and can post on their own terms. Flipgrid's popularity seems to be growing immensely and I can proudly say I was an early adopter as early as 2017.
EDpuzzle: A free tool that allows teachers to embed questions into videos and assign for students. There are several question styles to choose from, students can be graded automatically, links directly with Google Classroom and monitors viewing progress made by students. I am a Certified EDpuzzle Instructor.
Gimkit: I used to love Kahoot! Then I discovered Quizizz and I loved that. Now I am discovering that I love Gimkit, a site used to build and play review style games that takes the best features of Kahoot! and Quizizz and somehow improves upon them. I am a big believer in the incentives of games and Gimkit does the best job of it for students by giving them money for correct answers that can be used on in-game power ups.
Awesome Screenshot (Chrome Extension): For all the times it would be so much easier if a student could simply show you an annotated version of their own screen, Awesome Screenshot is the perfect solution. It's free, easy to use, and allows you to select your entire screen or only certain areas and modify with additional text, arrows, drawings or labels and save as independent images.
The Libby App: Offering a diverse, high quality classroom library can be difficult, especially when you want multiple students to access multiple copies of a title. The Libby App allows anyone with a public library card to access audiobooks and ebooks from their local library for free!
Flipgrid: Create short video prompts as a discussion starter and watch your students join in with videos of their own. Engages students with a medium for discussion they are comfortable with and can post on their own terms. Flipgrid's popularity seems to be growing immensely and I can proudly say I was an early adopter as early as 2017.
EDpuzzle: A free tool that allows teachers to embed questions into videos and assign for students. There are several question styles to choose from, students can be graded automatically, links directly with Google Classroom and monitors viewing progress made by students. I am a Certified EDpuzzle Instructor.
Gimkit: I used to love Kahoot! Then I discovered Quizizz and I loved that. Now I am discovering that I love Gimkit, a site used to build and play review style games that takes the best features of Kahoot! and Quizizz and somehow improves upon them. I am a big believer in the incentives of games and Gimkit does the best job of it for students by giving them money for correct answers that can be used on in-game power ups.
Awesome Screenshot (Chrome Extension): For all the times it would be so much easier if a student could simply show you an annotated version of their own screen, Awesome Screenshot is the perfect solution. It's free, easy to use, and allows you to select your entire screen or only certain areas and modify with additional text, arrows, drawings or labels and save as independent images.
The Libby App: Offering a diverse, high quality classroom library can be difficult, especially when you want multiple students to access multiple copies of a title. The Libby App allows anyone with a public library card to access audiobooks and ebooks from their local library for free!