Lesson Links

Blue Web'n has a searchable database where you can search for lessons, activities, and projects. However this site is based in California so adaptations will often be necessary. A more complete review of Blue Web'n is provided in the Other General Links section below.

Canada's Schoolnet offers links to many Social Studies resources, and other resources and programs of interest to Canadian educators.

Columbia Education Centre (CEC) is a small/ private educational service organization based in Oregon. Its site contains lesson plans from various disciplines including some interesting Social Studies lessons. There are some good lesson plans here that could be easily adapted to BC classrooms such as Music from Around the World that uses Billy Joel's song We Didn't Start the Fire to teach geography, and the Team Approach to Oral History. The site's main drawback is that the majority of lesson plans have an American focus (government, economic, history, etc.) but these lesson plans can be used to teach about the USA and the approaches to the subject matter can be used for a Canadian curriculum.

Critical Evaluation of a Web Site: Secondary Level helps students learn how to evaluate a web site by having them examine technical and visual aspects, content, authority, and then write narrative evaluation of the page. It provides a basic worksheet that is printable and that can be used to evaluate any web page, and would be a useful resource for students to have when using Internet resources.

Discover Learning is a site from BC Sympatico that contains Resources, Internet Projects, and a Daybook (lesson plans). The Daybook is a project from Telus Interactive and CUEBC (which is a PSA of the BCTF). The Daybook's Social Studies section appears to be a work in progress, and they are looking for good lesson plans so hopefully more BC teachers will submit lesson plans, field trip sites, etc. to make this a strong resource for BC teachers. Let me know if there are more Social Studies lesson plans added and I'll update this review.

The Educator's Reference Desk (formerly known as AskEric Lesson Plans) contains a searchable index of over 2000 lesson plans.

Education World is an American-based free education resource that contains lesson plans among other things. Many of the lesson plans are not all that relevant to a Canadian curriculum but their Best Of... pages within the curriculum areas offer different and creative ways to teach Current Events, Geography, etc., and the site also has a SEARCH ENGINE for Education sites.

Edsitement contains many lesson plans (click on Lesson Plans), and links to Humanities resources. Two learning guides that might be of interest are the ones on Historical Evidence and Political Debate. The Historical Development includes lessons on Evaluating Eyewitness Reports, What Portraits Reveal, and Mapping the Past. The Political Debate guides includes an Argument in an Athenian Jail: Socrates and the Law. There is also a lesson on Exploring Arthurian Legend. This is an American site so the lessons will have to be adapted to varying degrees, but the lessons themselves look quite promising.

Engaging Students in Problem Solving Using a WebQuest (Winter 2001) by Christie, Reid, Renee Labonne, and Susan Gibson is an online article that appeared in Canada's National Social Studies Journal. The article discusses the potential of WebQuests to engage students in Social Studies classrooms, and describes its features. The site also provides an example of a WebQuest using a Grade 6 unit on ancient Greece.

GEM (The Gateway) contains quite a few lesson plans in the Social Studies section, but many of those lesson plans are from other sites such as MSN Encarta. However, this site is still worth looking at because a brief overview is provided for the individual lesson plans from the various sites, and then you can just link directly to the lesson plan so it's not actually that repetitive. The Modern World History: Propaganda link may prove interesting.

Historica: Your Place In History tries to promote Canadian history throughout the country and they often do travelling exhibits. Their website contains 128 lesson plans that can be searched by grade, time period, province, etc.

History/Social Studies For K-12 Teachers covers just about everything relating to Social Studies from Diversity Sources to Nonwestern History Sites to Religion/Ethics Philosophy to Research/Critical Thinking to Media Literacy. I went to the Nonwestern History Sites section and clicked on China and Japan and got 107 links with brief write-ups to sites relating to China, and 54 sites relating to Japan. Critical Thinking is being emphasized quite a bit today so I stopped by that page and found 27 links to a variety of sites that can help you learn more about critical thinking and how to apply it in the classroom. A couple of the sites mentioned are the Photo Analysis Discussion Guide and the Critical Thinking Community. I did not go through and evaluate the quality of the looks but they look pretty good at first glance.

Intercultural E-mail Classroom Connections (IECC) is a free service that links teachers with partners in other countries for cultural e-mail exchanges. According to their count, they have 7 200 teachers from 79 countries participating. This site also offers short-term exchanges for classes involved in projects or surveys. You need to submit a request yourself to the site, and you can also search other people's postings. I have not tried the site out myself so I can't evaluate its actual use, but if anyone uses the site and would like to send me an evaluation I'll post the information.

Lesson Plans and Resources for Social Studies Teachers is a site from California that has more than 100 links to lesson plan sites with short descriptions. I have not evaluated the quality of all the individual links but there is good quantity of information there.

The Media Awareness Network is a site that promotes media awareness and offers support to educators and others. There is a section that teachable moments, lesson plans, and resource links. The site does not have a Social Studies focus but media education is multidisciplinary and some units such as the one on Canadian Peacekeepers take a historical approach. Another useful section of this site offers a variety of lesson plans and strategies that teach students how to evaluate Internet information.

Microsoft has a searchable index of lesson plans that used to be housed on the MSN Encarta site. Most of the lesson plans are submitted by teachers to the site.

If you're looking for an Internet project for your class then Montage may be the site for you to go. Montage is a series of interactive curriculum projects designed for use by teachers around the world. When you join they will e-mail you about new projects and other information, you can find a partner school to develop your own online project,. The is a from Australia and the UK but its focus is an international one. A quick browse through the topics section found the following sites that could be worthwhile projects for BC schools: Weather Station (to learn about the weather), Faces of War (annual competitions, publications, current issues, and a global art component), International River Project (local river research), and Human Rights (historical and contemporary developments).

National Council for Social Studies (NCSS) was founded in 192 in the US, and is devoted strengthening and advocating social studies. Classroom Focus is a regular pullout feature of the NCSS Journal Social Education. Some lessons of interest are No Easy Road to Freedom: The New South Africa, and Anti-Semitism: A Warrant for Genocide. Adobe Acrobat Reader required.

SCORE History-Social Science is part of a network of Online Resource Centres being set up in California, and it links teachers to Social Studies resources and lessons. It contains a searchable database, and online tutorial on how to use SCORE.

University of British Columbia Education Library web site contains lesson links, and also links to employment resources, research, and a variety of the resources. The site is not that extensive when it comes to lesson plan and resource links, but the site is currently being revamped so it might improve in this aspect.

United Nations' CyberSchoolBus contains teaching modules, classroom activities, and ongoing events on global issues such as Human Rights, Health, Land Mines, Environment, Women, and Poverty. Cities of Today, Cities of Tomorrow is a project that could be use in BC classrooms and its adaptable to different grade levels. Students ultimately create their vision of an ideal city through a 6-stage process. The project has an interactive quiz, and online resources with background information and city profiles. I didn't review the other projects closely but they could prove valuable in teachings students about the UN, its goals, and current issues of interest to the UN. If you've used any of these projects in your classroom let me know how it went and I'll post your comments here.

The WebQuest Page contains resources for creating WebQuests, as well as links to WebQuests in every grade and subject.

Yale-New Haven Teachers Institute has each participating teacher prepare a curriculum unit to be taught in the following year. "Guides to the curriculum units prepared each year consist of synopses written by their authors and contain recommendations of the school courses and grade levels where the units may best apply." Some units which may have lessons of interest are 1996: Multiculturalism and the Law, Race and Representation in American Cinema; 1989 - American as Myth; 1986 - Topics in Western Civilization: Ideals of Community and the Development of Urban Life, 1250-1700; 1985: Time Machines: Artifacts and Culture; 1984 - Greek Civilization; and 1983 - Greek and Roman Mythology.

 

 

Other General Links

North Central Regional Education Laboratory's The Amazing Picture Machine allows you to search for pictures. There is a lesson called Using Pictures in Lessons that teaches students how to "read" pictures.

Artcyclopedia: The Guide to Museum-Quality Art on the Internet contains links to 6 000 artists. You can conduct an Artist Search or Browse by movement, medium, subject, nationality, alphabetically, monthly top 30, art museums worldwide, and a picture search (links to 11 fine art, and image search engines). You will get links to artists' works contained in Museum and Art Galleries, and Other Web sites (biographies, etc.).

BC Stats contains a variety of statistical information on British Columbia. Some of the topics on the site are: community fact sheets, maps, census information, tourism statistics, and much more.

Blue Web'n is an excellent source for online resources. They regularly update the site but you can also subscribe to their mailing list, and they'll e-mail you weekly about hot education sites on the Internet with brief descriptions and links. The site itself contains the same information for the past few years, and has a searchable database of about 1000 learning sites that are categorized by subject area, audience, and type (lesson, activities, projects, resources, reference, and tools). Blue Web'n tries to choose the most useful sites, and focusses on online activities targeted at learners. However this site is based in California so adaptations will often be necessary.

Canada's National Social Studies Journal is a journal for Social Studies teachers that contains online columns, articles, features, and book reviews from Fall 2000 to the present. Each issue has a theme: Globalization (Fall 2000), Technology (Winter 2001), and Citizenship Education (Spring 2001).

Canada Heirloom Series: Canada's Heritage on the Web is based on a series of books originally published in 1986, and it is made up of the following volumes: I) Canada: From Sea Unto Sea, II) Canada's Native Peoples, III) Allegiance: The Ontario story, IV) Pathfinders: Canadian Tributes, V) Wayfarers: Canadian Achievers, VI) Visionaries: Canadian Triumphs, and VII) Canada at the Millennium: A TransCultural Society. Each volume contains a forward, introduction, and several chapters. The chapters are nicely illustrated, and suitable for student reading levels.

Canada's Digital Collections (CDC) program pays young people to create websites featuring significant Canadian material in the public domain. There are over 270 sites on this page, and they are an excellent resource for Canadian images. Some of the links on the page do not work so you may have to search for the correct URL.

Canadian Education on the Web tries to bring together everything related to Canada and education on the Internet. The site contains links to Boards of Education, Education Journals, Jobs, Distance Education, etc.

Canadian History on the Web is a site maintained by the University of British Columbia and Susan Neylan. The site's content is self-explanatory but I'll give you a brief overview anyway. The site contains links in the following areas: Canadian History (Content-Based Sites), Historical Documents, History Related Graphics, Fun and Games with Canadian History, Other History (or Related) Resource Pages of Note, Canadian History Promotional Websites, and Museum, Heritage, and Archive Sites. I took a quick glimpse through this site and it contains a good number of useful links, and looks like an excellent place to start finding Canadian historical sites.

Canadian Information by Subject is "an information service developed by the National Library of Canada to provide links to information about Canada from Internet resources around the world." It is a good source of links to Canadian information, and students should also find the site useful.

Canadiana Quick Reference comes to us from the National Library of Canada. It is a selection of answers to quick reference questions that regularly come to the library. Parts of the site that you might find useful are General Canadiana (Mottoes of Canada and the provinces {very interesting and quite telling}, Origins of Canadian words, and Provincial and Territorial symbols), and Canadian History (Constitutional dates, and Prime Ministers of Canada).

CanPix Gallery: Great Canadian Image Base is a free section of ITP Nelson's web site. It claims to have 3 500 pictures and audiovisual resources for Canadian studies that you can browse, view, and extract. Images are from pre-1760 to the present in the categories of people, places, events, and culture. There is also a page of Symbols that includes flags, coats of arms, flowers, maps, and anthem. I took a quick look through, and it actually has a very good selection of Canadian images and the maps sections contains a lot of large historical maps that could be quite useful. I would give this site a try if you're looking for Canadian images.

CanText Library is also a free section of ITP Nelson's web site. It has a collection of original documents ranging from 987 to 1996, as well as documents in Culture & Humour and Accounts & Histories.

Community Learning Network is part of BC's Open Learning Agency, and its purpose is to help K-12 teachers integrate information technology into their classrooms. The information on this site is organized according to themes such as Social Studies, Aboriginal Studies, Current Events, and Multiculturalism.

Council for Canadian Unity's web page contains links to such sites as This Day in Canadian History, and links to Constitutional documents, governments, the Supreme Court, Canadian symbols, and the Education subsection contains 1 300 national and provincial links to lesson plans, organizations, school systems, wired schools, etc.

Classic 164 Currency Converter may come in handy sometime it can convert currency from a long list of currencies to another currency from 1990 to the present. The site also contains a Historical Currency Table, but you can only have 2000 days difference between the two dates. There is a cheat sheet for travelers on the site.

Creative Impulse: The Artist's view of World History and Western Civilization is an excellent site from the University of Evansville. It provides links in any historical era that you could want (except Canadian history, of course), and some of the sections covered are Prehistory, India, Rome, Byzantine and Islamic, Renaissance, Explorers, Industry, Recent, and everything in between. Each of the pages contains two sections of links; the first lists historical links dealing with the people, places, events and resources of the time, and the second section contains links for the Art, Music, Drama, Literature, Daily life and Culture of the period.

D & W's Teacher Resource Page is a bit different from the other web pages I've examined. The site has education clipart, links to educational sites and educational software (freeware, shareware, and commercial), and a lovely section of free stuff. The educational software contains History/Social Studies freeware downloads of the following programs: Exploring North & South America, Exploring Europe, European Geography Tutor, Guide to England, World Maps Clip Art, Gravity Box World View, and various American programs. Free Stuff also includes a link to the Chalkboard (free education resources from corporations) which conveniently has sections for North America, Canada, and British Columbia.

Education Index is a guide to Education-related sites. The links are divided into subject areas, and listed alphabetically. It looks like they have a pretty good selection here.

Ethnologue: Languages of the World is the Internet Version page of a printed work. The site is commercial in that it promotes the sale of the print version, and other related products but it does contain a variety of interesting information on language.

EuroDocs: Primary Historical Documents From Western Europe is an online collection of documents, from a library at Brigham Young University, that are "transcribed, reproduced in facsimile, or translated." The site is divided into countries, as well as containing a section on Medieval & Renaissance Europe.

Filamentality comes from the same folks who created Blue Web'n. I haven't tried the program out fully but it does look interesting. This site will have you choose a topic, a learning goal, and activity format then the site will create "Web-based learning pages that include the teacher's choice of Internet links and activities" focused on achieving that goal. Once again, this site is California-based so adaptations will be necessary. I'll update this review when I get a chance to try Filamentality out for myself (or if someone gets a chance to try it out before me then let me know, and I'll add your review).

Fordham University has put collections of public domain and copy-permitted historical texts on the web in the following sourcebooks: Ancient History, Medieval, Modern History, Byzantine Studies, African, East Asian, Indian, Islamic, Jewish, Women's, Global, etc.

Grade 12 (Canadian) History Internet Resources for High School Teachers in Saskatchewan comes from the University of Saskatchewan, and provides a good selection of Canadian History links. The site has links beginning with First Nations and ending with "Challenges and Opportunities."

Herstory is a site from the University of Saskatchewan that offers short biographies and photographs of Canadian women in the categories of society, arts & leisure, professions, and politics. There is not a great deal of information on the site but it is a good starting place for finding women prominent in Canadian history.

Historia: Heritage Minutes is a website that provides short articles on each heritage minute as well as some suggested teaching strategies, and links to other history-related sites.

Historica: Your Place In History tries to promote Canadian history throughout the country and they often do travelling exhibits. Their website contains 128 lesson plans that can be searched by grade, time period, province, etc. There is also a Teacher Talk forum on the site, a few games, and links to some other online resources.

The Historical Atlas of Canada Online Learning Project is based on the four volumes of the historical atlas. I own a print copy of the very large first volume and it is an excellent atlas that contains a wealth of historical information. There are still some sections that are under-development but there is enough here that the site is worth looking at.

Historical Photographs Online is a site from the University of California, Riverside. The site contains links to historical photographs. There are sites included from a number of different countries including Canada, and there are a variety of topics covered by these photographs. This site could prove useful.

History in Film lists several films but most seem more suited to an American curriculum than British Columbian but it does contain information on Cleopatra, Spartacus, and Schindler's List. The site gives a very basic plot outline, cast information, and some discussion questions that aren't all that creative, but its strengths lies in the historic timelines provided on the events in the film.

History/Social Studies Web Site for K-12 Teachers is a tad confusing but it offers a variety of good links. I think there are some lesson plan links in there but you'll have to look for them. It main feature is that there are a lot of sections and subsections that offer links to variety of History/Socials sites. If you already have a unit in mind then you come to this site and probably find a good number of relevant links.

How Government Works: A Primer is a fairly basic site from the government of Canada on how the government works. The site is divided into 10 chapters, and the chapters are further subdivided.

HyperHistory Online presents world history with a combination of graphics, lifelines, timelines, and maps. There are over 1 800 files that are interconnected throughout the site. In addition to that HyperHistory provides several hundred links to the world wide web. The sites major sections are People, History, Events, and Maps. Students would probably like the site, and its nice that you go from the timeline to web sites on events or people just listed on the timeline.

Images of Canada: Picturing Canadian Culture contains images in Gone Fishing, Trains, Plains, Gone Paddling, and 9 other photo essays.

Implicit Association Test are tests from UW and Yale that you and your students can take to examine the implicit associations that you make in regards to Race(black-white), Age (young-old), and Gender (gender-science). I took the Race(black-white) test and it was a 5 minute Java-based test that leaves you with something to think about. If you do decide to have students take the tests, I believe that there are links to associated research provided on the site so you can put the tests into context for your students.

Internet Movie Database claims that it contains everything you ever wanted to know about every movie ever made. This is one of my favourite sites because it really does contain a lot of information and allows you to search the site by movie or television title, actors, actresses, directors, etc. The site provides plot and cast information, running time, trivia, articles, and links to other sites. Excellent resource.

Internet Public Library come from the University of Michigan's School of Information. This site offers links to online texts, newspapers, magazines, serials, and also has a teen section with educational and entertaining links. Teachers and students should find this site useful because the sites have been evaluated, described, and categorized by librarians.

K-12 Library and Learning Resources Links comes from teacher-librarians in the Coquitlam School District. The site offers links in most subject areas and also contains professional resources, and other information. There are only 5 Social Studies links but the Multi-Subject page contains some good links. Unfortunately, the site has not been working lately so you may be unable to access it. I'll check periodically to see if they've fixed the problem.

K-12 Sources - Curriculum - Lesson Plans contains a plethora of links divided into General, Project Sites, Commercial sites, and 170+ Lesson sites. There's a lot of information here but you'll have to comb through the sites on your own.

Killeen Ninth Grade Center Harker Heights High School in Texas has 3000 links (with short descriptions) in 40 categories in their Social Studies Web Links page. From the Social Studies Web Links page you can also find a page of World 1 and World War 2 links that is incredibly long. You should be able to find most resource links you're looking for on this page, and take a quick look at their World History Course page if you're thinking of putting a class online. It's a pretty impressive site.

Kodak offers 12 Social Studies lesson plans most of which you probably won't use but a few have potential, and if you're thinking of using photography to teach Social Studies you might get some good ideas here.

The National Library of Canada offers more substantive information on Canadian women within specific areas. The National Library chooses a theme each year to celebrate Women's History Month (October). A brief biographical sketch highlight's each woman's life and achievements, and photographs are included. A list of suggested readings of works follows each biography. The following themes might be of interest: Women in Canadian Life and Society, Music and Literature (1995), and Then & Now: Women in Canadian Legislature (1997).

Outline Maps contains basic black and white outline maps from around the world.

Puzzlemaker is the site for you if you want to create puzzles for your class as a review exercise or to help them learn new material then this is the site for you. All you have to do is enter in the information and the puzzle will then be created for you. There are several different types of puzzles so you're students won't get bored of seeing the same type of puzzle over and over again. The puzzle types are Word Search, Word Search with Hidden Message, Criss Cross Puzzle, Double Puzzle, Cryptograms, Letter Tiles, and Fallen Phrase.

QUIA: Where Learning Takes Place is a neat little site that lets you create online activities for your students or even have them create review activities for each other. You can create the following activities: matching, flashcard, concentration, and/or word search, challenge board, columns, hangman, jumbled words, ordered list, picture perfect, pop-ups, rags to riches, and scavenger hunt. I only tried to the hangman activity but it was very easy to use, and all I had to do was register and fill in the information.

ResourceED comes to us from the Faculty of Education at York University, and the page includes sections on Geography, History, and Societal Issues. The Geography links sections is the strongest of three sections with 42 links that are identified as Canadian and non-Canadian for easier viewing.

Ron MacKinnon's Educational Bookmarks contains a relatively small number of lesson plan links buts its strength lies in the site's easy maneuverability. There are links for individual subject areas, and a page on Canadian educational sites.

Social Studies Resources contains links to a number of sites, and comes from the Pitt Meadows School Library.

Statistics Canada is a site from the government of Canada which contains a lot of useful statistical information about Canada.

Teaching & Learning About Canada is a site for teachers and students that provides information and links on Canadian Geography, History, Politics, Society, Culture, Wildlife, Time Zones, Graphs, Maps, etc. There is a map of Canada that allows you to click on a province to get links about it. The site also contains maps, Tables and Graphs based on data from Statistics Canada that is designed for use in the classroom. Some of the titles are: Population by Age Group, Population by Mother Tongue, Rivers of Canada, and Population Density within Canada. This is a good page to start looking for Canadian links especially history links which I know are still difficult to find on the Internet.

Teach With Movies provides teaching guides to a fair number of movies. You can search for a movie, or look at one of the 2 indexes (Heritage, and Character Development). The guides provide you with appropriate age levels, length, b/w or colour, year, description, benefits, possible problems, awards, featured actors, directors, etc., and USING THE MOVIE: background, discussion questions, and other links and resources. Some guides of interest might be: Casablanca, The Diary of Anne Frank, Gandhi, Animal Farm, Spartacus, Julius Caesar, Inherit the Wind, To Kill a Mockingbird, Smoke Signals, The Autobiography of Miss Jane Pittman, The Great Dictator, The Agony and the Ecstasy, Schindler's List, Lust for Life, Stalin, and Cry, The Beloved Country.

The Underground Railroad from National Geographic. The level of discourse on this site isn't that high, but the site does provide basic information on the Underground Railway in a very user friendly way. The sites contains The Journey (choose your own adventure type journey), Routes to Freedom (interactive map), Timeline, Faces of Freedom (with short biographies), and Resources and Links which will provide some more substantive information such as the site Testimony of the Canadian Fugitives which contains interviews from the 1850s with former slaves who fled to Canada. The site is easy to use, and provides a good starting point for learning.

Women in BC History is a site from the BC Archives: Time Machine. The site contains a Teacher's Container which describes the site as one that "examines the role of women in the development of British Columbia. Women's contributions to family, social institutions, community, political and cultural development are highlighted. The Teacher's Container also provides relevant learning outcomes. The site could prove useful by fitting within larger units of study.

The World Clock is a site that tells you what time it is in other parts of the world. It also talks about time zones, etc.

World Cultures is a site from Washington State University that tries to combine the reading and course materials for two web-based World Cultures courses. The course is designed for freshmen-level students, but the texts, glossary and learning modules are intended for use by high school students also. The learning modules are Tradition and Memory: World Civilizations to 1500, and Culture, Conflict, and Modern World Civilizations after 1500 (under development). The site is fairly easy to navigate and flexible enough that you can look directly at the Anthology of Readings, Glossary, Atlases, and Internet Resources pages. Both students and teachers should find this site useful.

 

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