British Library Timelines: Sources from History

If you have ever wished that you could just leap through some of the most important written works in history like the pages of a book, now is your chance!

The British Library has been generous enough to create an interactive, 3d timeline that includes some of the most influential written works in the history of the world, laying them out across time and space, and sortable by topic and category. Not only can students (or teachers) see how these different documents related to each other across time, but from within the timeline you can open up the documents themselves, and see high-res scanned copies of documents such as the Magna Carta, Leonardo Da Vinci's notebooks, the Declaration of Independence, and original Sherlock Holmes manuscripts.

All of these documents that normally are secured in London, at your fingertips and available to your students through the generosity of the British Library.

Too Late to Apologize: A Declaration

Great hook to pull kids into talking about the Declaration of Independence, or the Revolution in general. Personally I think the production value is higher than the original by Justin Timberlake.

Extremely clever song, and well worth a listen!

Top 48 ads that would never be allowed today

Do you think ads today are racy? Too revealing for young children? Offensive? You have no idea.

A bit hat tip to Mark for this link, to some of the most dated ads from the mid-20th century I have ever seen. I have actually used a significant portion of these in the past week of my New American Studies class, in a unit that I call "Selling the Sixties: Advertising Social Change in an Age of Free Love." For the intro lesson, I provided students with a certain advertisement, and had them inform me what decade they believed it was produced in, and justify their answer.

Some of the reactions not surprisingly were pretty amusing among the students, who were really amused at how outdated the ads were, and how ineffective they would be at selling anything today

Top 48 ads that would never be allowed today

TeachingHistory.org | Home of the National History Education Clearinghouse

Not surprisingly, anything that involves the words "History" and "clearinghouse" in the same phrase catches my eye pretty quickly, and this site is well worth the time.

Offering a wide range of teaching materials, history content, and examples of teaching techniques, the National History Education Clearinghouse should be a resource that every history teacher stores in their pocket full of tricks when having difficulty creating a tough lesson, or finding a new way to teach content.

Teaching History.org