Here are some resources I stumbled across in Curriki,

This website is one definitely worthy of more exploration.  It is a treasure trove of information.  It makes stories out of events and peoples lives and includes quotes and first hand accounts.  Definitely a site I will be spending more time on.

http://www.awesomestories.com/

Not sure how I would use this map but it sure is interesting.  It breaks down numbers of people killed by the death penalty in all the states by gender and race.  Check it out:

http://deathpenaltycurriculum.org/student/c/states/maps/death-exe.htm

My First Ever Podcast

http://podcastmachine.com/podcasts/13351/episodes/68328

Here is a link to my first ever podcast.  This is a sample podcast I would have my students listen to, and then I would have them create their own podcasts as other American presidents.  Their homework would be to listen to their classmates' work and then we would vote on who was the greatest president.

My thoughts on the podcast.  The initial set up is a little rough.  It would take quite a bit of work to make sure I had all the programs necessary to have my students complete this.  I would also have to find out if Podcast Machine is blocked at my school.  After I get through the initial set up issues, I think it would be quite easy to have my students making podcasts on all sorts of topics.   I think they would get a real kick out of posting their work online, and I bet that they would be more likely to go through and listen to each others podcasts than they would if all the audio was created by me.

http://www.kmlfactbook.org/#&db=ciafb&table=2002&col=2008& This is a link to a site I heard about from another blog called KML Factbook.  It takes information from the CIA World factbook and represents it on a world map.  At first glance it seems like it may be overly complicated for my classroom/ age level, but if anyone else sees a way to apply it in their own class let me know.

Are you typical?

This is a great video to show as an introduction to teaching China, Asia, or population.

Here is a link for the same video on the National Geographic website which (thankfully) is allowed through the school filter.

http://video.nationalgeographic.com/video/the-magazine/the-magazine-latest/ngm-7billion-typical/

The video is only about 3 minutes long and it is all text and music.  I showed it after I had the kids do a world continent population simulation that had them moving around, sitting on desks, and eating chocolate.  This really was the fastest way to have 37 wild 13 year olds shut up and pay attention.  A few kids even clapped at the end of it.

I love cartograms! For those of you who do not know what these are, check this out:

http://www-personal.umich.edu/~mejn/cartograms/

I had a great time with my students by giving them the topic of the next map on the page and having them guess the relative sizes of the various countries and continents before I scrolled down.

I am re purposing a blog I created for an earlier class to be a compilation of cool web resources that I have found throughout my teaching.  I plan to review these resources as I use them in my classroom. 

My Classroom Website

I created a website for my classroom using google sites.  The website is a work in progress and only contains a fraction of the material I teach.  However, I am completely blown away that in two days I created a functional website.

The hardest part was figuring out the software.  I have become more familiar with the way google designs their pages and set ups since the last class, but I am still not completely comfortable with the programs.  Much of the design work has been trial and error.  The most frustrating part has been spending time creating something and then finding out it isn't compatible with the website.  I created a survey on survey monkey and then was unable to incorporate it.  The google programs all work well together, but there are problems trying to integrate other programs in.  When I last left my site, it was having glitches brought on by some animated text I incorporated.  I am hoping it will work itself out before I am forced to erase it.  Another frustrating part was trying to find useful quality gadgets that do not contain ads in them.

I was nervous after using google sites to create a 4X2 project from the prior class.  Fortunately my worries were unfounded.  The most useful aspect of the google site program is how easy it makes it to add documents, presentations, and pictures stored on google.

While I will not be using this website this school year.  I am planning on working with it this summer to create a useful tool I can share with my students.  I would like to add pages on all the units I teach.  I will also be transforming my powerpoints in to presentations so that I can upload them to the website with ease next year.