Teaching in the Age of Technology

We are so lucky to have a seemingly endless source of information and inspiration only a finger tip or two away! Everyday I find new mentors on the web, people who have been teaching for years and have sifted through their experiences, and then share what they have learned. I just discovered a site
http://www.socialstudiescentral.com/?q=content/best-practices
written by a guy who taught history at the middle school level for a number of years, then taught at a small liberal arts college for a few more and is now working for the state of Kansas doing staff development and training...and even though I am not a full time employee of SFUSD, and despite the fact that I don't live in (and am not sure I have ever been to) Kansas I can access this man's wealth of experience.

There are websites to create your own timelines-
http://www.teach-nology.com/web_tools/materials/timeline/
It could be helpful for a student to create their own so you can see what they thought was important and you can see

1.  what interests them 
2. what they need to know, but didn't embrace 
3. what you need to go back and review.

I have been previewing 7th grade history with my youngest son this summer and it has been helpful to build a timeline for every couple of chapters we cover and then to go back and see how the timelines intersect and cross over...what was happening in Europe and the Byzantine Empire at the same time as the Islamic Expansion and how they intersect. This has allowed him to see the relationship between the two histories which are covered very separately in textbooks.

• There are videos and computer generated images to make history come alive for kids today. 
• There are websites like nutshell math to help explain something a number of different ways so each child can learn the concept at their own pace and in their own academic language. 
• NY Times has an online Learning Network that suggests lesson plans based on today's paper and features a student opinion section that students can write to and have their work published. How awesome is that!