Myhistro allows students to create a story that places events on a map and on a timeline. Students will get not only the historical context, but also the geographic context as well. This site offers a wide array of uses for both history and language arts. The site does require an email and signup. Creations can be linked to in an email or embedded as below. An Example from the site: Add Comment Socrative is still a wonderful tool for the classroom (especially considering that it's free) but, after using it a few more times I'm running into some problems that I need to make you aware of and that I've already alerted the app producer too. In using it I allowed students to use their smart phones and the iPads I have in the classroom. The students using the iPads had virtually no issues, but those that were using their smartphones encountered some issues that prevented the experience from being positive. One, when viewing an activity on Socrative on their smart phones they often had to scroll up and down to see all of the questions and answer choices, and too often as they scrolled the program interpreted the scrolling as an answer selection. I contacted the app maker to suggest adding an "Are You Sure?" response to answering the question to avoid this. The other issue that happened more with smart phone users than laptop and iPad users was questions already answered would reappear. I also alerted the app maker to this bug as well. Considering both of these issues I've decided to only use Socrative when either all my students have an iPad in their hands or if they're working on something else and can pass the iPads I have in the room around to each other. If you're in a one-to-one iPad classroom, then you shouldn't have very many troubles at all. This is a nice easy site to support Web 2.0/PBL/technology teaching. Sometimes coming up with rubrics is the most time consuming part of the "I've got a great idea" moment. This site simplifies that process. Rubistar Most districts now provide an online platform for teachers to house course materials and complete activities. One of the best and most used among universities for online courses (at least in my area) is Blackboard. Blackboard also happens to be one of the most expensive, and has often been a casualty of budget cuts of late. Thankfully Blackboard also offers CourseSites which is a free version very similar to Blackboard that individual teachers can use. So if your district doesn't offer an online platform or the district has cut funding for it, CourseSites can come to the rescue. CourseSites is very similar to Blackboard, though the look of it is a little different. Since it is not a district wide platform you will have to invite and administer the students yourself which does add a certain level of responsibility. You still have the function of creating tests, surveys, discussion boards, blogs, etc. CourseSites also allows you to integrate published texts and their ancillaries at a certain cost. CourseSites Edsitement, and the appropriate puns, are brought to us by the National Endowment for the Humanities with some help from Thinkfinity and Verizon. The site offers a wide range of lessons in the humanities appropriate for history classes, language arts, foreign language, and art classes. I've only reviewed those lessons on the history side, but I'm going to assume the quality of lessons is ubiquitous throughout the site. Edsitement also provides a database of websites that they've checked for accuracy to use in lessons. Most of the lessons involve some element of 21st century learning whether collaboration, problem solving, or technology. Those that don't include such quality resources that they are easily modified to focus on these skills. http://edsitement.neh.gov/lesson-plans | "If you don't like change, you'll like irrelevancy even less"
Don Rumsfeld 
Jarred StewartAP US History Teacher 
One of my students asked "Is that Betty White?"
Nope, Justice O'Connor..but now I want a picture with Betty White.
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