Hip Hughes History Helps Students Review U.S. & World History

We're getting close to final exam time for many high school students. If you teach U.S. History or World History, consider referring your students to Hip Hughes History for some great videos to help them review the year. Hip Hughes History is produced by Keith Hughes, a high school history teacher in New York. As Keith points out in many of the videos, they're not a replacement for reading or paying attention in class, but they are great reviews of key topics in history.

The U.S. History playlist is available here.


The World History playlist is available here.

News Map - An Interactive Collage of Current Events Stories

News Map organizes and displays news stories from around the world. News Map uses Google News to source the stories displayed in the grid so the content is frequently updated. The stories are displayed in a color coded grid reflective of how popular or important a story is at any given time. You can select the country or countries from which you would like to see the news. You may also select which type of news stories, (world news, national news, sports, etc) you want to see displayed. By selecting multiple countries you can discover patterns in the news across the world.

Applications for Education
News Map provides a good way for students to recognize similarities and differences between how a news story is covered in one country versus another. It is also a good tool for showing students how a story that is popular in one country may be insignificant in another. This is particular true if you select the entertainment news option.

Physics 4 Kids - Short Physics Lessons

Rader's Physics 4 Kids is part of a series of Rader's 4 Kids lessons about science. Physics 4 Kids takes students on tours of different sub-topics of physics. After each stop on the tour there is a quiz that students can take to test their understanding of each topic. Along with text and image information there are some short videos about different physics concepts along the tour.

Applications for Education
Student-directed tours like the ones offered on Physics 4 Kids are great tools for differentiating activities within the classroom. Physics 4 Kids is a good resource for science teachers to link to a class web page or blog so that students and parents can study and test themselves outside of the classroom.