Danny's blog.

Multimedia Resources

CosmoLearning

http://www.cosmolearning.com/history/documentaries?sort=views – This link is an online database of almost 90 full length history documentaries, fully streamable and accessable from any internet ready computer. A powerful resource for a future socials teacher whose school history department or library may not have a large or well stocked documentary selection.

NFB Film Database

http://www.nfb.ca/explore-by/title/ – Similiar to the previous link, this is a link to the online, streaming database of films produced by Canada’s National Film Board. Everything from documentaries and features to animation and propoganda films from the war. Great visual aids when teaching many courses (socials, art, english, etc)

CBC Film Database

http://archives.cbc.ca/for_teachers/ – CBC provides this resource for teachers. Its a very large collection of pre-made lesson plans on any number of topics (history to business to english.) They tie all lessons in with storys and multimedia and examples from Canadian history and culture. Great, great resource for instructors.

Early Canadiana Online

http://canadiana.org/hbc/sources/sources_e.html – This website is a great resource for primary historical documents related to Canadian history, First Nations people, american history and relations with Canada. Useful for teachers in schools in smaller schools without large librarys with primary documents.  Also a large section for teacher resources, specifically lesson plans.

Open Culture Audio and Video Vault

http://www.openculture.com/2009/01/the_educational_audio_and_video_library.html – This website offers tons of free and open/copyright infringement free podcasts, lectures, university courses, videos, and novels. Dont have access to a class set of George Orwell’s 1984? This website has a free audio book. Not the same as teaching it from a tangible novel but easy to access and share with students.

Christian Classic Ethereal Library

http://www.ccel.org/ -The Christian Classic Ethereal Library is an amazing resource for primary documents from the long history of the christian faith, tying into topics present in maintstream curriculum like the reformation, renaissance, the dark and middle ages, etc. Offerings are free to use and offer teachers powerful resources to combat under stocked librarys.

Google Books

http://books.google.com – Google, in its bid to rule the world, has began amassing a mind boggling collection of scanned and sorted full length books. Some books online through thsi site require pay or membership to access, but there is many full length books available for free. The great search engine allows users to filter results by whats free and full length as well. Another great source of primary documents.

BC Archives

http://www.bcarchives.bc.ca – BC archives website, maintained by the Royal Museum. Great resource for period images, historical documents and research guides. Some material does cost for physical reproductions, but there is free material as well.

Historical Atlas of Canada

http://www.historicalatlas.ca/website/hacolp/index.htm – The Historical Atlas of Canada is an awesome website full of interactive maps based on several factors – i.e. political maps, aboriginal territory, resources, geographical, etc. Lots of interactive maps that can be used in a lab lesson with students, and lots of maps to take off and print for class lessons.

Canadian Census

http://www.statcan.gc.ca/edu/edu01_0000-eng.htm – Statistics Canada publishes these resources for us by educators based on recent and historical census data. Tons of great information, including visual aids like maps, charts, graphs, etc. Great data for planning lessons around demographics, changing face of Canada, immigration and emmigration, etc. Also offer some full lesson plans.

Atlas of Canada

http://atlas.nrcan.gc.ca/site/english/learningresources/lesson_plans/index.html – Another resource of Canadian and North American maps. Full lesson plans based on a number of map themes and topics.

National Geographic Education Foundation

http://www.nationalgeographic.com/foundation/ – National Geographic is another publication that compiles multimedia and lesson plans in a network of educators for distribution to other educators. Great resources for maps, pictures, lesson ideas with a wider focus than the Canadian atlas, etc.

BBC History Database

http://www.bbc.co.uk/history/worldwars/ – Video and multimedia database of WW1 and WW2 information compiled by the BBC. Also full databases for British history, aincent history, etc. Another great database.

Picturing History

http://picturinghistory.gc.cuny.edu/ – Online database of free historical pictures and images with lesson ideas. More USA based, but still offers resources on lots of relevant topics such as slavery, aboriginal life, among other things.

Not digested yet:

http://www.medialit.org/

http://hnn.us/

Academic Resources

BC IRPs and PLOs

http://www.bced.gov.bc.ca/irp/ – A link to the BC IRP, prescribed learning outcomes, evaluation, etc. Useful to always have on hand for lesson planning and evaluation questions.

Canadian Council for Geographic Education

http://www.ccge.org – The Canadian Council for Geographic Education is a group connected to Canadian Geographic Magazine. It is dedicated to providing educators and the public with resources to increase geographic knowledge and learning. Offer free lesson plans, activity ideas, and resource links for teachers.

Canadian Geographic Learning Tools

http://www.canadiangeographic.ca/atlas/learningtools.aspx?lang=En- This website is a great resource for lesson plans and ideas acriss all grade levels, regions, and topics in the realm of geography. The searchability based on age level of students, regions, and topic makes it incredibly useful and quick/easy to use.

Globe and Mail: Classroom Edition

http://www.classroomedition.ca/ - The Globe and Mail has undertaken the classroom edition as a tool to give educators to promote the discussion of current events in the classroom. The website offers current articles followed up with premade lesson plan ideas and resources to present the article as an assignment or discussion in the classroom. Great for teachers trying to tie in themes to current events. Current topics cover things like economics and contemporary social issues.

Curriki

http://www.curriki.org – Curriki is an online resource/community of educators that contribute free worksheets, lesson plans, and curriculum ideas. It offers a great resource to find useful activities and things for a future educator to modify and apply to their own lesson plans.

Media Awareness Network

http://www.media-awareness.ca/english/teachers/index.cfm – Media Awareness offers tons of lesson plans and ideas for every grade and subject area. Their goal is to raise media awareness and consciousness and educate students on things like bias, consumerism, etc. Excellent resource, especially for socials and civics.

Canadian Mysteries

http://www.canadianmysteries.ca/teachers/indexen.html – Canadian mysteries is a website documenting historical questions that are left open, and they have a ton of teacher resources and lesson plans, as well as a lesson plan exchange, for all of these mysteries. Teachers do have to sign up but uts wirtg the resources.

PBS for Teachers

http://www.pbs.org/teachers/ – The US Public Broadcasting Station produces these resources for teachers across all grade levels and disciplines.  Clearly with an American focus, this site has lots of great and catalogued lesson plans, video resources, and professional development material for teachers trying to improve their breadth of knowledge.

LessonPlanet

http://www.lessonplanet.com/ – This website is a HUGE database of lesson plans across all subjects and grade levels. Over 150,000 peer reviewed lesson plans, for free. For instance if you are interested in employing critical thinking pedagogy lessons there are over 90 different lessons available for that one fairly obscure topic alone. Searching for History, middle ages, yields 4000 results. Awesome resource.

Teaching Tolerance

http://www.tolerance.org/- Teaching Tolerance is a foundation/group dedicated to promoting tolerance and understanding in society. Offer a wide range of tolerance education lesson plans, professional development activities, and resources online for free across many subjects and grade levels.

BCTF Aboriginal Education Resources

http://bctf.ca/IssuesInEducation.aspx?id=13404 – The BCTF produces this website with the aim of increasing the proficiency of its members in the realm of aboriginal education. Lots of links to aboriginal produced books and material and resources to give an aboriginal perspective on historical topics

BC Education Aboriginal Ed. Resources

http://www.bced.gov.bc.ca/abed/documents.htm – The Ministry of Education’s in house resource for the ever-growing topic of aboriginal education in BC. Lots of lesson plans and ideas for integrating aboriginal ed. into existing PLO’s and IRPs

UBC Student Teacher Lesson Plans

http://www.library.ubc.ca/edlib/lessonplans/sec/ssed314/lessonindex.html – Worth a look. Each semester students place their lesson plans up here for public consumption. Good resource to learn from other student teachers and gain ideas.

Access Canada

http://access.ca/home.html – Online database of socials resources for Canadian socials teachers.Articles Lesson Plans, Historical Documents, Artifacts, Photographs, Art, Maps, Online Activities, Dramatizations, Documentaries are all available through the search engine. Another awesome resource.

Technical Resources:

Standards Toolbox

http://www.standardstoolbox.com/ – Standards toolbox is a free open source piece of software that runs on linux and offers a comprehensive lesson plan generator for teachers to streamline the process of creating a day to day classroom plan. Also has extensions if used by school administrators, and allows you and colleagues to coordinate your work and lessons easily via email and web publishing. A very dynamic and useful tool.

Igoogle

http://www.google.com/ig - Igoogle is a useful resource because it provides an organizational dashboard for teachers. A socials instructor showed it to his department during our 2 week observation and I immediately started using it. It provides quick access to your email, to-do list, calendar, weather, news (personalized), wikipedia and youtube search engines, and any number of other gadgets available (either user created or inhouse google applications). Incredibly powerful and usefule.

Google Reader

http://www.google.com/reader – Google Reader is another google application that offers a powerful organizational structure to educators. It basically harnesses RSS news feeds from almost any topic – history to recipes to current events to morning skate notes from NHL and junior hockey. These feeds can be organized into user selected topics/folders based on content or other criteria, and google reader will ‘file’ every new news story and hold onto them until the user is able to go back and flip through and mark them as read (similiar to email). This provides a busy teacher with a net to catch important and relevant material, literally without missing a thing. For teachers who have busy schedules, the ability to catch resources in a searchable format is unbelivably useful

Prezi.com

http://prezi.com/ – Prezi was described to me by a grade 11 student as ‘powerpoint on crack’. Basically, prezi is an online 3d mental map and presentation software. Rather than linear slide to slide transitions, Prezi allows the user to creat a 3d mind web that can fly concept to concept, zoom in and out for more detail (Depending on the depth of the composed presentation). For students who like to make spatial and visual connections, using Prezi will aid greatly in what they get out of a lesson. Students who enjoy power point will also do fine, as prezi just enhances the power point model.

Google Sites

https://www.google.com/sites – GoogleSites is another google offered service which allows quick web publishing for free with a simple design interface and pain-free user process that allows someone who uses other google products (specifically google docs) to quickly publish and share work. The degree of use an educator can get out of this is based on situation but in a class where a majority of kids have home internet access it can be a great resource for submitting assignments or returning electronically submitted work. Its also a great resource to keep kids up to date on class work and distribute work to students who are, for instance, on vacation or sick and away from school so they dont fall behind.

Google Docs

http://docs.google.com – Google Docs allows teachers to quickly develop, publish, and share course work,assignments, grading etc. You can set up different access to files based on users so you can, for instance, share lesson plans with other faculty while sharing assignment and notes with students. Also transitions into easy use with other google apps.

Koyote Soft

http://koyotesoft.com/ – Koyote soft is a company that offers a free FLV converter. FLV is the video format used by youtube and other free flash based video websites online. Their software allows you to basically download, piece together or cut apart, clips from youtbe and store them on your harddrive. This gives teachers much more power to bring technology into classrooms which may lack solid, reliable internet access by preparing and converting files and bringing them in via laptop or flash drive.

WebQuest

http://webquest.org/ – Webquests are structured internet activities to provide a more indepth searching and information manipulation activity for use in the classroom. Lots of examples, ideas, and lessons available for download and links provided to submit your own.

Rubistar

http://rubistar.4teachers.org/ – Resource to quickly create, alter, store, share and publish rubrics for assignments. Could be used in conjuction with your class to edit the rubric ‘live’ in class as part of a formative assessment strategy. In their own words “Want to make exemplary rubrics in a short amount of time? Try RubiStar out! Registered users can save and edit rubrics online. You can access them from home, school, or on the road. Registration and use of this tool is free”"

Image taken from wikipedia commons, uploaded by user dar56 for use with no restrictions

My images are the three dams built as a result of the Columbia River Treaty during the 1960s in the south eastern portion of British Columbia.  My group project will also utilize these images. The photos are quite useful to students because they can help relate the grand scale of the treaty requirements on the Canadian government and give a context to location. The pictures can relate to students the huge lasting impact building 3 large dams and resevoirs had on the British Columbia landscape and its connection to our provinces history.

Image taken from the Wikipedia Commons, uploaded and taken by Doug Robinson

To find the images I used both the google creative commons web search and the wikipedia commons. Once google had keyed me into the wikipedia image catalogue, I was quickly able to find pictures of the other two dams and download them for the purpose of this assignment.

Quick and painless.

Image taken from the Wikipedia Commons, uploaded by user DAR56