We're going High-Tech at 2009 Summer Camps - Come and connect with us at ESU 10! Join us for these two-day workshops as we create a project around one of the standards using the latest tech tools to integrate into your classroom.

This would be a great adventure for families as well as classrooms!  Check out http://www.negpp.org/!  there is a challenge there to visit all of the 15 listed Nebraska state parks!  If you want to participate, you must register there on the web site. 

This might be a great summer project to continue to engage students in Nebraska Geography! Have your own Great Park Pursuit!  Challenge your next group of students (any age would love this) to get to as many of Nebraska's parks this summer as they can.  Once they get there, have them take a picture of the park sign and two more pictures from inside the park.  They must then email those pictures to you, the teacher.  You can create a map in Google Earth and mark their travels using the pictures they took!  This would also make a great competition between class sections or maybe between conference schools!  (They could even use their cell phones and send those pictures if your cell plan will handle that!)

Most importantly, encourage your students to get out and enjoy Nebraska's state parks!

http://www.negpp.org/

footnote.com

View online documents from history from the revolutionary war to the 2000’s.  Site includes photocopies of historical documents and photographs.  There is a Premium account that you can purchase to get access to all files otherwise you are limited to their free documents which still gives you a wide range of files.  You can also add to the collection as well.

Here is a site that you may have heard of before but I think it is worth mentioning again.  Digital History (http://www.digitalhistory.uh.edu/) looks like a great resource for teachers of American History. 

This site is a development of the presidential libraries called The Presidential Timeline of the Twentieth Century (http://presidentialtimeline.org).  This has some great stuff on the presidents of the 20th Century.  Another great resource for History teachers containing video clips, audio clips, documents all from the presidential libraries.

Let us know what you think of these sites!

Heard this is a great game.  You can play the demo for free.  Here is the blurb from the site:

   PeaceMaker challenges you to succeed as a leader where others have
   failed. Experience the joy of bringing peace to the Middle East or the
   agony of plunging the region into disaster. PeaceMaker will test your
   skills, assumptions and prior knowledge. Play it and you will never
   read the news the same way again.

http://www.peacemakergame.com/

Here is a Delicious bookmark list from Kate (@mrsbrowndog on Twitter) that I thought you might get some use out of.  there are over 60 links here.  http://delicious.com/mrsbrowndog/SocialStudies

Just in case you are wondering, Delicious is much like Diigo.  Diigo has more features allowing you to highlight and take notes on certain sites.

Here are some web sites that I thought you would be interested in.  Let us know if these are worthwhile or which ones are not good.

• News site for students - http://www.dogonews.com/
• Skype wiki; site with other teachers worldwide that use Skype - http://skypeinschools.pbwiki.com/
• Map Skip; maps to create stories on - http://www.mapskip.com/
• Turn photo into a virtual puzzle - http://www.flash-gear.com/puzzle/
• Listing of comic/cartoon creating web sites - http://www.freetech4teachers.com/2009/02/7-resources-for-creating-cartoons-and.html

Today we are going to do some sharing in this workshop.  I would like you to share here, your favorite lesson, technology tool or web site! 

Just found this blog.  It talks about using Political Cartoons to teach current events to students.  It contains links to other political cartoon sites.  Thought you would all like this one! 

http://www.freetech4teachers.com/2009/01/activities-for-understanding-political.html

Have you heard about social networking but haven't been brave enough to try it out?  Well, here is your chance!  Check out the NING site http://iteachsocialstudies.ning.com/. Ning is a company that hosts user created social networks. Social networking sometimes get a bad name because it sounds like something our students would go to to just hang out.  In this case, this social network is all about teaching social sciences!  Find lesson ideas and make connections that you might not otherwise make using this web site.  If you have been wanting to exercise your global awareness muscles, this is the place to start!  Happy Globetrotting!