Darwin Endless Forms

The Fitzwilliam Museum in Cambridge, England, is hosting an exhibit entitled Darwin Endless Forms. The display merges Darwin's scientific discoveries with art inspired by his works. It's a nice fusion of art, science, and history. Podcasts (also available in iTunes U) feature experts from a variety of fields commenting on the pieces.

Free Audiobooks on Librivox.org

Librivox.org is a website that hosts audio recordings of books in the public domain. These are read by volunteers, so sometimes the quality isn't that great. But they are free and can be reproduced, which is very valuable for students who have trouble reading. This makes it easier to assign longer texts as required reading (like The Red Badge of Courage in a U.S. History class, for example). The catalog is fairly extensive right now and continually growing.

There is also a really cool iPhone app (Audiobooks) that lets download and listen directly on your phone. You need a wifi connection to download the books initially, but after that they are stored on the phone.

The Virtual Museum of Iraq

The Virtual Museum of Iraq is put together by an Italian group, but it has an English language version. Exploring the site is a lot like exploring the Museum of Baghdad. The artifacts are sorted into halls by period--Prehistoric, Babylonian, Assyrian, Islamic, etc. Each artifact has an interactive description and tools to look at it from different angles. Some have video presentations as well. The quality of the site is top notch and definitely classroom-ready.

An Online Rubric Builder

Rubistar is a cool program that helps you construct rubrics for a variety of assignments in all kinds of subjects. I'm sure as I get more experience it'll be easier for me to do these on my own, but this program is helpful. The best feature is how it provides suggested language for your fields, helping you keep your rubrics clear for your students.

Free PowerPoints

Pete's Power Points is a low-budget site that hosts a collection of PowerPoint presentations in almost any subject. Most of these are created by teachers, and some are better quality than others. Its potentially a good starting point if you need to plan a PowerPoint for a class. They're all downloadable, so you can find one you like and make it your own. 

Kathy Schrock's Guide for Educators

Kathy Schrock's site is really a collection of links, though there are a few articles she's written herself. There's not a lot of quality control determining what links are used, so you should have something specific in mind when you use this site and be ready to filter through stuff on your own.

World History for Us All

Developed by San Diego State University, World History for Us All offers unit and lesson plans for the entire scope of world history. It divides its content into 9 "Big Eras", though everything is searchable if you need something specific. It operates a lot like a textbook, with most of the lessons in PDF form. The digital media seems under-developed. There are student handouts and activity ideas that can be useful though.

Animated Battle Maps of the U.S. Civil War

These are cool. civilwar.org has put together images and maps into a handful of video presentations. These are an excellent supplement for teaching about key battles like Fredericksburg that might be a little dry for some students.

• Cedar Creek Animated Map
  
• Chantilly Animated Map
  
• First Day at Chancellorsville Animated Map
  
• Fredericksburg Animated Map
  
• Saving Bentonville Animated Map
  

They've also got a lot of plain old boring maps and a lot of other useful civil war related material.

Teaching Abraham Lincoln

The Abraham Lincoln Association has a handful of plain text lesson plans that revolve around Lincoln documents. There's probably better stuff out there on Lincoln, but these are good for boiling down part of the large volume of Lincoln's works and there are a few good suggestions for classroom activities. Several Obama tie-ins from the ALA-hosted Lincoln birthday bicentennial as well. 

Nothern Illinois University's Lincoln/Net has an interesting audio library of songs from the civil war era and some interactive maps that show voting results for presidential elections of the period. Their Teacher's Parlor hosts several lesson plans:

1. Lincoln-Douglas Debates of 1858

2. Lincoln-Douglas Debates of 1858: Interactive Map Activity

3. The Anti-Slavery Movement

4. The Black Hawk War--Reconstructing "Stillman's Run"

5. The Cherokee Removal

6. Lincoln, Patriotism and Protest

7. Songs of the Times: American Concerns in 19th Century Campaigns

8. Slavery and the Legal Status of Free Blacks: Rhetorical Analysis of Debates During the 1847 Illinois Constitutional Convention

9. Free Market Labor vs. Slave Labor: Debating the Mud-Sill Theory

10. To Come to Illinois — Or Not?

11. Was the Dred Scott Decision Judicial Activism? The Theoretical Foundations of Legal Reasoning

12. Diplomatic Misunderstandings: Indian Treaties and the Black Hawk War

13. Parties and Their Politics: Analyzing Political Party Platforms, 1840-1860

14. The Importance of Religion in Political Life in the 19th Century: Abraham Lincoln's Experience

15. Gender Roles in the Mid-Nineteenth Century: What Fiction Tells Us

House Divided - The Ultimate U.S. Civil War Resource

Dickinson College's House Divided website endeavors to be the most complete digital archive of the U.S. Civil War. They've got it all. Entering the site will automatically give you data for the events of exactly 150 years ago - events, documents, letters, even birthdays of prominent (and not-so-prominent) people, most with informative biographies and great images. The 150th anniversary of the war is coming up, so needless to say this tool will be invaluable in U.S. History classrooms.

All of the  data is fully searchable, of course. They have a blog (RSS feed) that currently has a cool post about teaching Abraham Lincoln. Also on the site they feature several teacher resources, including:

• a digital classroom for teaching about the underground railroad 
• several virtual field trips, some of which are under construction
  
• a video library featuring interviews with historians on emancipation, the Dred Scott case, the underground railroad, and more
• a digital library of a handful of first-hand slave narratives

www.econedlink.org

Economics is probably the weakest area of social studies for me. econedlink.org has some really useful stuff on it. There are almost 400 lesson plans, searchable by grade and by specific concept, including individual lesson plans designed around the most recent Federal Reserve press releases.

They've also got a current events page (with an RSS feed!), a page dedicated to providing up to date data, and a useful links library.