Actively Learn - resources for middle and high school ELA, science, and social studies teachers, including interactive text and video assignments as well as PhET sims.

Actively Learn is an excellent resource for teachers and students, providing middle and high school teachers in ELA, Science and Social Studies, resources to help their students. Resources include interactive text to help reading comprehension, videos and simulations from PhET.

Here are two overview videos as well:
Teacher overview video
Student overview video



It offers a searchable catalog of thousands of free assignments with embedded media, standards-aligned questions, scaffolding notes, and Teaching Ideas to save teachers time and drive deeper learning for students. Any teacher can create a free Actively Learn account that never expires by going to www.activelylearn.com.

Let’s say a teacher is doing a unit on cells. That teacher can come to the Actively Learn Catalog and find the Cells Topic page, which includes a variety of assignments related to cells like textbook sections, high-interest articles, videos, and PhET simulations. All of these assignments have scaffolding notes in the margins to describe concepts that may be challenging to students and standards-aligned embedded questions.

A screenshot of an assignment in Actively Learn with embedded media and scaffolding notes:


With Actively Learn, teachers are in the driver’s seat. On a free plan, teachers can:

• Customize any of the instruction in Actively Learn (edit questions or notes)
• Upload any Google doc, website, video, or PDF and turn it into an interactive assignment with their own embedded questions and notes
• Deliver feedback to students as they read and get real-time data on student reading progress

Students can:

• Create annotations in the text, share their annotations with their peers, and respond to one another’s notes
• Translate text into over 30 languages, hear text read aloud, look up words as they read, and read in “dyslexic mode”

Example of a student discussion in Actively Learn:

Some of the benefits of Actively Learn:

The instruction is designed to drive deeper learning. Questions are aligned to Depth of Knowledge and Common Core or state standards. It actually helps students to engage with their content instead of asking generic, “What’s the main idea?” questions. Scaffolding notes are designed to help fill gaps in background knowledge while students read so that they can make sense of their grade-level, rigorous texts.


Actively Learn:

• is a one-stop-shop for teachers of ELA, social studies, and science. 
• has a content catalog of novels, short stories, primary sources, science simulations, textbook articles, high-interest articles, videos, and more. 
• has content organized into topic pages that give teachers a full suite of options for their core content needs.
• saves teachers time by offering pre-created instruction and automatic grading for multiple choice questions. Teachers on the paid plan have access to suggested grades for short answer questions and can see student progress by standard and assignment type.
• offers the flexibility for teachers to create their own assignments or modify any of the ones in our Catalog. 
• integrates with Google Classroom and Canvas for even easier use by teachers.

Take a look and try it out: https://www.activelylearn.com/









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17 Iconic Newspaper Front Pages in 20th Century History

IJR, a news site, has an article with "17 Newspaper Front Pages that Depict the Most Iconic Days in 20th Century History". They include the Titanic, VE Day, The first Atomic Bomb, JFK's assassination, 9/11 and more. 

This could be a good resource for history and social studies classes to use. 

Take a look. 

Just an FYI to teachers - the site also covers political news and has sponsored links on the bottom that may not be appropriate for young students. 

Wolfram launches iOS app for Geography

Wolfram Alpha, the computational search engine has a new iOS app. Wolfram Geography Course Assistant App allows you to compare socioeconomic, demographic, and geographic data for any country in the world.



The app is $4.99 and available for iPhone, iPod Touch and iPad.

This could be a great app for Geography and Social Studies teachers and students.

To purchase the app, visit the iTunes App Store:
http://url.wolfram.com/2E.QkQ1m/

Giza 3D - great, interactive 3D recreation of the Great Pyramids

Gaza 3D is a very cool project that recreates the Great Pyramids in 3D online to view in your web browser.   It is a collaboration between the Museum of Fine Arts in Boston, Harvard University, and Dassault Systems (who make lots of great products including CATIA CAD systems).

The project is historically accurate and based on scholarly data. Documents from an expedition at the Giza pyramids were digitized and used to create the simulation.

There is a guided interactive tour on the site through 10 different areas on the Giza plateau with photos, object galleries and links to historical documents. You can zoom around the areas and click on object for more information.

This is a great resource for teachers and students studying the Great Pyramids in history or engineering classes to be able to explore them online. There is a tremendous amount of information here and it is a fun way to explore the Giza plateau.

Check it out: http://giza3d.3ds.com/#discover



Technical Note: You have to download a plugin to use it (the site will link you to it) and on Mac you will need to use Firefox in 32-bit mode. A broadband internet connection is also strongly recommended.

WhatWasThere - historical photos linked to Google Maps - visit the past!

WhatWasThere is an excellent resource for geography, history, and fun. It connects historical photos to Google Maps, letting you see what places looked like in the past. You can tour locations, browse photos and even upload your own historical photos.

This is a great way to explore the world historically, or just take a look at what your hometown looked like in the past. Social Studies, History, and Geography classes could use this as learning activities or projects.

Here is a photo of the Frisbee Pie Company from the early 1900's. Their pie plate throwing contest led to the original Frisbee.

CIA World Factbook - excellent resource about countries of the world

The CIA (Central Intelligence Agency) World Factbook is an incredible resource about the countries of the world. It's free and available online and you can also download a copy for offline viewing and access. Older versions (back to 2000) are also available, which can be good for history teachers looking for older information.

The site has information on the history, people, government, economy, geography, communications, transportation, military, and transnational issues for 267 world entities. The Reference tab includes: maps of the major world regions, as well as Flags of the World, a Physical Map of the World, a Political Map of the World, and a Standard Time Zones of the World map.. It's a great resource to find out information about the countries of the world and the CIA is constantly updating it.

Check it out and share it with your students. https://www.cia.gov/library/publications/the-world-factbook/

NationStates - free nation simulation game - create and run your own country

NationStates is a nation simulation game that allows you to create your own country with your own politics and ideas and then care for its people, "or oppress them".

You can also interact with other countries, participate in a type of united nations, and run your country as you see fit. There is a news and forum section also to share and get ideas and information.

This is a great way for students to really explore politics and government.

Here's a spotlight page on one of the countries.

Pearltree - Ben's Guide to US Government - great resource for K12

Pearltrees is a great, free site I wrote about in January that lets you organize web content in a visual pattern. There is a Chrome browser extension that makes it easy to add sites to your tree. Trees can be shared and even worked on collaboratively.

A member of my PLN (sorry, can't remember who now and I forgot to make a note of it) just shared a great Pearltree: "Ben's Guide to the U.S. Government for Kids."

The resources are sorted by grades: K-2, 3-5, 6-8, 9-12 and there is a page about Ben and a Parent and Educator section. Each section has information, links and resources about the US Government. This is a great resource for anyone teaching, or learning, about the US Government and how it works. 

Here's the main page for 9-12:

This is a great example of how a tool like Pearltrees can be used to create educational resources for students (or even have students create them as a project)