This Week's Online Find: The Google Art Project

Say what you will about Google -- and apparently a lot of people have a lot to say about Google (See Wikipedia’s Criticism of Google) -- but, for me, Google’s incredible tools have brought me the world, and I’m willing to put up with quite a lot for the pleasure of its company.

In its latest (at this writing : ) attempt to bring the world to my laptop, Google recently launched the Google Art Project, an online initiative to introduce me (and you) to some of the world’s most well-known museums and their most impressive works of art.

It’s hard to describe exactly how fabulous a visit to the Art Project is, but banish immediately from your mind pedestrian photographs of museum exteriors, and instead picture yourself virtually walking the corridors of The Metropolitan Museum in NYC, the National Gallery of London, Italy’s Uffizi Gallery, or the Palace of Versailles.

And don’t for a minute imagine yourself walking those corridors to view the tiny (albeit moderately enlargeable) thumbs of famous paintings that populate other museum web sites. Instead picture yourself -- if you can -- examining in minute, high-resolution detail the brush strokes of Van Gough or the symbolism of Gris; details you couldn’t see even if you were physically in the museum standing in front of the art itself.

At the Art Project home page, visitors can choose to virtually explore any of (currently) 17 museums around the world using Google’s famous Street View technology. They can view -- and navigate -- each museum’s interactive floor plan, learn about the museum’s location and history, and link to each piece of art in the museum’s online gallery, or to the museum’s own web site.

Or they might choose to examine one of the more than 1000 works of art displayed at the participating museums. A menu accompanies each piece of art, allowing visitors to read viewing notes for the piece, to learn more about the art and artist, and to link to more works by the same artist or at the same museum. Most impressive, however, are the high resolution images themselves, and the custom viewer that allows visitors to zoom into the paintings and view them in the kind of exquisite detail usually reserved for museum curators, noted art experts, and major donors.

In addition to viewing, examining, and enjoying the works of art at the site, the Google Art Project also allows visitors to create their own personalized collections and to share them with family and friends. The Google Art Project is truely an amazing place. Check it out for yourself!

And thanks, Google!

This Week's Online Find: Paper Cranes for Japan

While natural disasters, such as the recent earthquake and tsunami in northern Japan, impact all thinking people, children often are the ones most deeply affected by such tragedies. And I’m not talking only about children who live in areas directly affected by destructive forces of nature. Children around the world seem to react most strongly to images of human suffering and, perhaps because they are so acutely aware of their inability to control or change such situations, they also seem to be most strongly compelled to do something -- anything -- to help the victims. Teachers often are hard pressed to find projects that can fill their students’ need to help within the context of the typical classroom.

If you’re a teacher looking for something your students can do to help the victims of Japan’s recent earthquake and tsunami, your search for a meaningful -- and doable -- project can end at Paper Cranes for Japan. The project -- a partnership among Students Rebuild, DoSomething, and Architecture for Humanity -- is designed to “inspire young people worldwide to support their Japanese peers,” by turning paper cranes into dollars for reconstruction, and eventually, into an art project that will serve as a symbolic gift from students around the world to the children of Japan.

For every paper crane sent in to the project, the Bezos Family Foundation, will contribute $2 to Architecture for Humanity’s reconstruction efforts in Japan. The project hopes to reach its goal of 100,000 paper cranes -- and a $200,000 donation toward rebuilding northern Japan. If you’re shipping more than 50 cranes, Students Rebuild will even pay the postage!

The Students Rebuild site includes a description of the project, a video on how to make an origami crane, an explanation of the legend of 1000 cranes, an overview of the reconstruction efforts in Japan, and more. Check it out -- and invite your class to join the movement to rebuild Japan!

This Week's Online Find: Teachers' Domain

Are you feeling dull and depleted as the school year drags to a close? Are your lessons sounding lifeless and repetitive even to your own ears? Do you notice students dozing off as you try to elicit enthusiasm for the same old lesson types you’ve been presenting since September? Are you desperately searching for exciting multi-media lessons, activities, and projects that will help you finish up the school year with the same bang you started it with? If the answer to each of those questions is “yes,” then maybe it’s time for you to take a quick field trip to Teachers’ Domain, a free digital media service for educators from PBS and its partners.

At Teachers' Domain, you’ll find more than 1,000 free media resources -- including video and audio, Flash interactives, images, and documents -- from such shows as NOVA, Nature, Frontline, Loop Scoops, and American Experience, as well as a tremendous variety of high-quality support materials for classroom lessons, individualized learning programs, and professional development. Support resources include lesson plans, introductory essays, teaching tips, extension materials, and suggestions for student-oriented and community-service activities.

Users can browse Teachers' Domain resources
* by standards -- state, Common Core, or national;
* by K-12 subject -- Arts, English/Language Arts, Math, Science, and Social Studies;
* by Public Media Series Collections -- including Between the Lions, Get the Math, From the Top at Carnegie Hall, and The Supreme Court;
* by State and Local Collections -- ranging from "Alaska Native Perspectives on Earth and Climate" to the "Ohio Collection of Digital resources" to "Teacher Picks" of favorite Web content for classroom use; and
* by Curriculum Topics and Themes -- including Biotechnology, Civil Rights, Climate Literacy, Cool Careers in Science, and Middle School Literacy.

In addition, Teacher’s Domain’s professional development resources include online courses (categorized by duration, grade, and subject) and teaching strategies (arranged by subject and type).

You must register to download, share, and save resources at Teachers’ Domain, but registration is free and easy. And, once you register, you can create a public profile to connect with colleagues, and use "My Folders" and "My Groups" to personalize the site by saving and sharing your own favorite resources.

Whether you’re looking for new lessons or new ways to present old lessons, Teachers’ Domain quickly will become one of your favorite destinations. But don’t take my word for it. Check it out for yourself! You can “test drive” up to seven resources at Teachers’ Domain before registering.

This Week's Online Find: MathNerds

Remember when nerds were the super-smart, socially awkward kids no one else wanted to hang out with? Times sure have changed! Today’s nerds are the super-smart, socially-sought-after kids who understand things that everyone else wants to know. And -- who’da thunk it? -- many of those nerds are more than willing to share their smarts with the world.

Case in point -- MathNerds.com. This web site is a free service that provides students in kindergarten through college with help solving math problems. And the key word here is help. The math nerds at MathNerds don’t provide answers to questions or solutions to problems; they offer guidance and references that allow students (and teachers : ) to understand -- and solve -- problems themselves.

In fact, MathNerds – a volunteer network of mathematicians – won’t even help those who won’t help themselves. Although MathNerds will provide a basic hint to those who don’t even know where to start solving a problem, to receive significant help, users must have made a serious effort to solve the problem themselves and be able to show the work – right or wrong -- they’ve already done. According to the site, “the MathNerds equation is ‘no work shown from you = no help shown from us’."

MathNerds claims it isn’t a replacement for a classroom math teacher, but with prominent mathematicians standing by to help solve even the trickiest math problems within 16-24 hours, it seems like a pretty good substitute to me!

Only registered users can ask questions at MathNerds, but registration is free and easy and mostly intended to weed out spammers. And even casual visitors can view The Best of MathNerds to get a feel for the service.

Check it out!

This Week's Online Find: Mint.com

Do you want to make a mint? Save a mint? Begin planning to spend a mint? Or do you just feel as though you could use a little help tracking and managing your daily finances? Whatever your financial planning needs might be, Mint.com is a site you have to see.

This Intuit (TurboTax, Quicken) product is a safe, secure (with bank-level data security), and (amazingly!) free tool that allows you to bring together all your accounts (including checking and savings, credit card, brokerage, CDs, and IRA accounts) and see your entire financial picture in a single location.

But that’s not all! Mint also can automatically categorize all your financial transactions (using either its own hundreds of categories or your own); calculate average spending in any category to help you create a budget based on your spending patterns; compare your spending year-to-year or month-to-month; and help you plan for future expenses by determining which categories you can make spending cuts in.

Mint also provides lots of charts and graphs to help you track income, spending, net worth, and account balances over time. And if you’re too busy even to read the site's graphs, Mint will send you a weekly update summarizing the week's spending and saving activity.

And there’s more! Mint also offers more than 20 alerts to help you track your spending, protect your credit rating, and avoid overdrafts or late fees. For example, Mint can notify you if you’re going over budget, if bills are coming due, or if an account balance is getting low. It’s almost like having a full-time accountant in your computer -- and on your mobile phone.

Did I mention that Mint is free?

Mint, by the way, is a "read-only" service, meaning you can see, organize, and analyze your finances, but you can’t move money with this tool. Mint is compatible with all operating systems.

Check it out!

This Week's Online Find: UJam

You’ve read about Teachers Who YouTube. You’ve heard, I’m sure, of the Rapping Mathematician, the Singing Science Teacher, the Harmonious Historians. And I’m sure you’ve thought, as have I, “If only….”

“If only I could read music.” “If only I could sing.” “If only I weren’t tone deaf.” “If only I could make music the way they do.” Well, my latest online find can’t make a musician out of a tin ear, but it can make music where none existed before -- even in your classroom!

UJam is a new, free, easy-to-use, cloud-based tool that allows users -- even those with no previous musical or instrumental skills -- to compose, produce, and publish their own music. And honestly (I promise!), anyone can do it.

First, sing a song or recite a poem or read a speech -- or just hum a little -- into your computer’s internal mic. Once you have a recording you like and accept, you’ll have the opportunity to turn that recording into a rap or a ballad or any of a large variety of musical styles. Choose a style, from 90 Tronics to Jazz Cat to Strumming Guitar to Happy Birthday Orchestra, a speed, and an instrument, and you -- or your students -- will be ready for next year's Grammys. Or next week's math lesson.

I can’t begin to tell you all the fun things you can do and create with UJam, but I can tell you that I had a ball with it. And I flunked piano lessons in fourth grade.

Check it out!

This Week's Online Find: Teaching Resources

OK, I confess. This week's site selection isn't really a new find, but it's one that's growing so rapidly -- and so brilliantly -- that I felt I had to let everyone know what's going on at Laura Candler's Teaching Resources site.

Laura isn't a stranger to Education World. She's been contributing articles and other resources to our readers for years. Those resources include (my favorite!) a three-part series on Goal Setting, with thoughtful and highly effective worksheets; an article on a terrific community service project called Rainforest Rescue; The Heart of Mathematical Thinking, an engaging math activty for Valentine's Day; and more.

Laura might not be a stranger to you either. Her Teaching Resources Facebook page is always busy, and bubbling with great new ideas from Laura and her fans. This year, however, Laura has assumed a new challenge. She's taken the year off from teaching to develop even more exciting resources for educators. Some of those resources -- her books (all of which can be previewed online), her Teaching Resources workshops, and her new (and, one hopes, first of many) eLearning slidecast course on classroom book clubs, for example -- bear a modest cost. Others, however, are free, and also well worth a visit!

Free resources include Candler's Classroom Connections, a weekly newsletter full of timely activities and useful and usable teaching materials; Teaching Strategies -- introductions to, instructions and learning materials for, a variety of teaching strategies, including mastery learning, cooperative learning, management, and more; and Laura's File Cabinet full of printables for nearly every subject area.

I could go on -- and on and on and on -- but you'll want to check out the site for yourself. Laura is simply one of the most creative teachers I know. If you're not quite as creative as you'd like to be -- or even if you are -- Laura's Teaching Resources will knock your socks off, and make teaching easier than ever. Check it out!

This Week's Online Find: Guide to Going Google

Say what you will about Google, they are where they are because they do things right. And the latest thing they've done right is their Guide to Going Google for Google Apps for Education.

For those of you unfamiliar with Google Apps for Education, it consists of a core suite of communication and collaboration tools -- including Gmail, Google Calendar, Google Talk, Google Sites, Google Docs, and Google Video, as well as access to dozens of additional Google applications, such as AdSense, Blogger, iGoogle, Google Reader, YouTube, and many more. In fact, I highlighted several of those apps last October in a blog about Google for Educators.

Google, however, not content with the publicity generated by my modest blog -- or, apparently, by their own equally modest initial product promotions -- has truely outdone itself with its new Guide to Going Google.

The guide's K-12 edition outlines six steps to "going Google" successfully: Technical Integration (Plan your rollout), Outreach (Brand your system), Professional Development (Build training resources), Get the Word Out (Promote your migration), Launch (Go live), and Stay Up-to-Date (Keep current).

Included in this step-by-step (and steps-within-steps) guide are examples of how other schools have "gone Google," testimonials from current users, suggested timelines, videos, training strategies, handouts, user guides, and more. Nothing -- and I do mean nothing -- is left to the imagination. According to Google, "We designed this guide to be helpful for everyone from a 4th grade teacher who’s just learning about Google Apps, to a university CIO who’s been using Apps for years." Looks like they've succeeded.

And -- as usual -- Google Apps for Educators and the Google Guide are free.

This Week's Online Find: Tweet About Acts of Humanity

Now that you've read the recent Education World article Full Tweet Ahead: More Teachers Using Twitter, are you ready to use Twitter in your own classroom? Are you simply looking for just the right project -- one with demonstrable social and educational benefits? If so, I've found the perfect project for you -- the Tweet About Acts of Humanity Project.

"Tweet About Acts of Humanity" is a simple classroom project developed by Mandayam Thirunarayanan, an associate professor of education at Florida International University, who's written extensively about integrating technology into education at all levels. The purpose of this project, according to Professor Thirunarayanan, is to encourage people to use the potential of electronic social networking to share with one another the acts of humanity -- large and small -- that take place every day around the world.

Why not add yourself and your students to the number of people performing those acts of humanity -- and tweeting about them?

This Week's Online Find: The My Hero Project

Who’s your hero? Mother Theresa? John F. Kennedy? Paul Newman? Jackie Robinson? Michael Jordan? Oprah Winfrey? Who are your students’ heroes? Do you know? Do they? Doesn’t it seem as though heroes are becoming harder and harder to find?

Fifteen years ago, Karen Pritzker, Jeanne Meyers, and Rita Stern -- three mothers, writers, filmmakers -- concerned about the lack of positive role models depicted in the media, founded the My Hero Project, a child-friendly web site designed to encourage users to share the character and accomplishments of their personal heroes through original essays, images, and video. Today, My Hero is a global learning community whose mission is “to use media and technology to celebrate the best of humanity and to empower young people to realize their own potential to effect positive change in the world.”

The My Hero Project is particularly valuable to educators, offering many resources to help teachers help students find and emulate -- and share stories and images about -- their own heroes. Here you can find or submit lesson plans, access an educator’s guide to using the My Hero project, register for an educator’s account to receive additional (free) project-based learning resources, and -- a great feature for the classroom -- help students access resources about heroes from a monthly calendar.

Today’s featured stories are about heroes who stand up to bullying – including John Wallach, Bill Belsey, Erin Gruwell, and the Little Rock Nine. Who will tomorrow’s heroes be?

This Week's Online Find: Ad*Access

"Poor Millicent. Her smile's the kind...that men leave behind." Do you know why? If you've forgotten Millicent, perhaps you recall Seaman Gregory Grumph, the meanest man in the Navy? Are you stumped over Grumph? Bemused about Millicent? Then you clearly haven't visited Ad*Access, part of the Duke University Libraries' Digital Collection.

The Ad*Access Project includes more than 7,000 advertisements printed in U.S. and Canadian newspapers and magazines between 1911 and 1955. Not only are the ads great fun, they're also culturally and historically fascinating, and will make a great addition to many classroom units or research projects.

The advertisements have been made available for use in research, teaching, and private study, and may be reproduced for those purposes. So what are you waiting for?

This Week's Online Find: Kidblog

Kidblog.org is a blogging program for elementary- and middle-school teachers who want to provide their students with the benefits of blogging, without the safety issues associated with public blogging programs. Built by teachers, for teachers, Kidblog's tools and features are designed for safe and simple classroom use under close teacher supervision.

What do other teachers like about KidBlog?

* Setting up a classroom of bloggers takes less than 1/2 hour.

* Teachers have administrative control over all student blogs and accounts.

* Student blogs are private by default, but teachers can set up password-protected "semi-public" blogs to allow parents or other guests to view the blogs.
* No personal information is collected, and the site contains no advertising.

* Login is simple, requiring neither user names, passwords, or email addresses.

* KidBlog is -- as always -- free!

Kidblog is the perfect tool for teachers who want to safely integrate technology into their classroom writing program with an easy, engaging, interactive tool.

Check it out!

This Week's Online Find: Scratch

Got an itch to get your students' creative juices flowing? Scratch it!

Developed by the Lifelong Kindergarten Group at MIT's Media Lab, Scratch is a programming tool that allows users to easily create interactive media, including stories, animations, computer games, video, music, and works of art -- and then share their creations on the Web. And it's free.

But is it classroom friendly? According to its Web site, "Scratch is designed with learning and education in mind. As young people create and share projects in Scratch, they develop important design and problem-solving skills, learning how to think creatively, reason systematically, and work collaboratively." Those certainly are skills that belong on everyone's core standards list.

Anecdotal evidence suggests that students quickly figure out how to use Scratch, whereas their teachers tend to need a little more guidance : ) But the Scratch site provides plently of direction, including Scratch tours, video tutorials, and an online community where educators can help one another. There's also a Scratch blog, Scratch tweets, and a Scratch wiki. How can you go wrong?

So far, nearly 200,000 users ages 5 to 69 (peak ages are 11-15; check it out) have created more than 1 1/2 million Scratch projects. Yours could be next!

This Week's Online Find: REDU

Remember your old school? Whatever happened to the great schools we attended when we were young? What happened to education in the United States? What went wrong?

According to REDU, “We forgot about our schools. And now it’s time to remember them. It’s time to support great teaching and give teachers the tools they need."

REDU stands for rethink, reform, and rebuild education in the United States. Developed by Bing from Microsoft and “powered by people and technology, REDU is a movement designed to expand and encourage the national conversation around education reform by providing information and resources to learn, a community platform to connect, and tools and initiatives to act.”

REDU provides resources where users can Learn (articles about what’s going on in U.S. education today), Teach (information about teacher prep programs, licensing requirements, and job listings), Volunteer (information about organizations where you can make a difference), and Donate (current projects at DonorsChoose) to help improve U.S. education.

You can join REDU to receive a weekly Education Round-Up and learn about opportunities to get involved, or just visit to read about what others are doing... thinking...saying. Either way, if you care about education, this is a site that will provide the information you need to support it.

This Week's Online Find: FreeRice

You might think you already know about FreeRice, a non-profit website that, since its launch in 2007, has helped improve the vocabulary of millions of English-speaking students, while feeding millions of hungry people around the world. But if you haven’t been to FreeRice lately -- if you still think FreeRice is “only” a fun (and internationally nourishing) vocabulary game -- it’s probably time for another visit.

In the original -- and still popular -- FreeRice vocabulary game, players are asked questions about the meanings of increasingly difficult English words. Each correct answer earns ten grains of rice -- paid for by advertisers and donated to the hungry by the United Nations World Food Program (WFP).

Today at FreeRice, visitors also can earn grains of rice as they test their knowledge of art, geography, chemistry, and math, as well as French, Spanish, Italian, or German vocabulary. And thanks to a new social media component, registered users can engage in online competitions with friends and family as well. This year, why not celebrate the season of giving with a visit to the bigger -- and even better -- FreeRice?

This Week's Online Find: Cranberry Station

During Thanksgiving week, you and your students might enjoy wading through The Cranberry Station, the online version of The Cranberry Experiment Station, an outreach and research center charged with "maintaining and enhancing the economic viability of the Massachusetts Cranberry Industry through research and outreach."

On the site, maintained by The University of Massachusetts at Amherst, visitors can learn how cranberries grow, read about the quality of this year's crop, explore weather conditions for the current year, and learn how to test soil and plant tissue. Chart Books explore insects and diseases that affect cranberry growers, and document each year's efforts to maintain the quality of the crop. In addition, visitors can read about a variety of current research projects, as well as news and events affecting cranberry growers. And, of course, there are recipes!

This probably isn't a site you'll want to visit at other times of the year, but it will offer students a timely and fascinating glimpse into the science of agriculture.

Are We Teaching Our Teachers Well?

This week (November 14-20) is American Education Week. According to the NEA (National Education Association) web site, the week's theme, Great Public Schools: A Basic Right and Our Responsibility, is a reminder that "all students deserve an education that will allow them to achieve and succeed," and that all "parents, community members, business leaders, elected officials, and students have a part to play in supporting great schools."

As a former teacher, and Education World's Professional Development Editor, my primary concern is always how we can support teachers in fulfilling that responsibility.

As an educator -- and a parent -- I've had lots of opportunities to observe lots of teachers in action. And I've come to the conclusion that the primary challenge teachers face in educating the students entrusted to their care is establishing and maintaining a classroom climate conducive to learning. I've always believed -- and so far have seen no reason to change my mind -- that a good teacher can, in fact, teach a pig to whistle. But a poor teacher -- no matter how brilliant or learned in the subject matter -- will teach very little to even the brightest students. And the difference between a good teacher and a poor teacher is, and always has been...a drumroll, please...the ability to manage a classroom.

Effective classroom management is a skill that, I believe, the very best teachers are born with. Those are the super teachers, the individuals who can walk into a classroom cold and immediately own it. Their students are always engaged and involved and well behaved; their students' parents are grateful and laudatory; their administrators are predictably relieved.

Most teachers, however, aren't that lucky. Most of us have to learn effective classroom management skills and, after we learn them, we have to follow the directions to Carnegie Hall...practice, practice, practice! Moreover, unlike musicians, most teachers arrive at their classroom doors with limited time in front of a classroom and limited opportunities to practice classsroom management. And we all know how hard it is to recover from an unprofessional performance in front of a classroom of professional students -- of almost any age!

You'll hear lots of reasons why new teachers leave the profession, but I believe the most significant reason is that no one has actually taught them how to teach.

This week, a national panel of education leaders, policymakers, education-school deans, and others will present a report calling for changes to teacher education in the United States. Reportedly, Transforming Teacher Education through Clinical Practice: A National Strategy to Prepare Effective Teachers, will recommend that schools of education revamp their existing programs to "prioritize clinical practice and partnerships with school districts"...to provide, one only hopes, significantly more opportunities for aspiring teachers to "practice, practice, practice" before ever opening the doors of their own classrooms. Let's hope they get it right..and that those who need to hear their report are paying attention. Because we have to get it right in this country very soon, and the only way to get it right is to do a better job of teaching our teachers to do a better job of teaching our kids.

By the way, if you're struggling with classroom management, Education World has lots of resources to help. Check out our Classroom Management 101 page, our Classroom Management Tips, or our brand new Classroom Management in a Minute feature. Or just search our site for Classroom Managment. We all need a little help sometimes.

Tech Babies

The other day, I read an article in USAToday about technology use -- specifically the use of iPods, smartphones, and iPads -- among the very young. According to the author, many of today's tots "start waving their pudgy little hands over those glowing screens before their first birthday." The article featured several 2- 3- and 4-year-olds who apparently are more proficient with their parents' current toys than they are with the toys their parents played with when they were 2-, 3-, and 4-years-old.

According to USAToday, "studies done at Adzookie.com, which places ads on smartphones, [found that] almost 5 million households with kids under 6 have smartphones. And 50 percent of iPhone moms let their kids use their phones; 29 percent of those moms have kids under 4. An additional 4.7 million households with kids 6 to 11 have smartphones." "And the number," says this writer, "is growing every month."

It isn't just preschoolers, of course, who are caught up in high-tech fever. According to a study reported by The Center on Media and Child Health (CMCH), 22 percent of children ages 6-9 have their own cell phones (five percent have their own smartphones); as well as 60 percent of tweens (ages 10-14), and 84 percent of teens (ages 15-18).

A recent WSJ article cites research by Nielsen Co., which found that the average 13- to 17-year-old sends and receives 3,339 texts a month (more than 100 a day!), with teen females averaging 4,050 texts per month, and males 2,539 monthly texts.

One wonders where they find the time -- although apparently most aren't just texting from home. The Pew Internet & American Life Project found that, even though most schools regulate cell phone use:
* 65 percent of cell-owning teens at schools that completely ban phones bring their phones to school every day.
* 58 percent of cell-owning teens at schools that ban phones have sent a text message during class.
* 43 percent of teens who take their phones to school say they text in class once a day or more.

More important than when they find the time, however, is the question of what today's kids, of all ages, aren't doing that they could/would be doing if they weren't texting...or browsing...or "waving their pudgy fingers over those glowing screens." And how is it going to affect them in the future?

CMCH reports on one study that found a link between cell phone use and low self-esteem, anxiety, and depression among teens. Other studies have suggested a correlation between heavy cell phone use and substance abuse. And what about the suspected link between sedentary technology use and childhood obesity?

The truth -- and the problem -- is that we just don't know what affect growing up tethered to iPods and iPads and smartphones and other technology toys and tools will have on today's tots and tweens and teens and those who follow them. In the USAToday article, Liz Perle, editor-in-chief at Common Sense Media, calls the use of technology by young children "the biggest experiment ever conducted on our children, in real time."

It certainly bears watching.

This Week's Online Find: DocsTeach

According to DocsTeach, "The National Archives has been encouraging teachers to use primary sources in the classroom since the late 1970s." One assumes with limited success -- until now. Because with the launch of DocsTeach, an online tool created in consultation with the National Archives, the process is so easy, it should be impossible for any history or social studies teacher to resist.

DocsTeach provides more than 3,000 primary-source documents from the National Archives, as well as seven easy-to-use tools to help teachers utilize those documents effectively in the classroom.

Users can find complete custom activities created by other educators for a variety of subjects and grade levels -- or they can use the DocsTeach tools to create their own interactive learning activities utilizing primary-source documents. All activities are categorized according to the National History Standards -- and Bloom's Taxonomy. Documents can be bookmarked and activities can be saved on the site.

The site also includes sections on how to teach with primary-source documents -- if you've never attemped it before -- including step-by-step instructions for document analysis.

This site is a no-brainer -- any teacher can use its tools to create valuable learning activities for demonstration, whole-class lessons, or individual or small group activities. You have to register to create activities -- although not to use existing activies -- but registration is free and the site is great fun!

This Week's Online Find: Dipity

Do you love timelines as much as I do? Maybe it's the orderly Virgo in me, but for me there's nothing quite like the steady visual progression of chronological events to bring an entire concept into focus. In fact, the only thing I've ever disliked about timelines was the need to arrange and space those tiny little descriptive boxes -- and the tiny little print needed to go in them.

But all that has changed with Dipity, a free online digital timeline creator. Dipity users easily can create interactive timelines integrating video, audio, images, text, links, social media, location and timestamps. Timelines can be private or public; timeline creators can allow no one, anyone, or a list of specific someones to view or edit their timelines -- so students can work on timelines individually, in small groups, or as an entire class.

But don't take my word for it. Check it out yourself. You have to register, but -- as always -- this featured timeline tool is free.