Two Ways to Explore the News Through Maps

When teaching students about current events I have always tried to incorporate maps so that students can make a connection to the places that they are reading about. I do this if the story is about something happening in Africa or something happening twenty miles down the road from our community. Newspaper Map and the Breaking News map are both helpful in showing students the connections between story subjects and their corresponding locations.

Newspaper Map is a neat tool for locating and reading newspapers from locations all around the world. Newspaper Map claims to have geolocated 10,000 newspapers. To find a newspaper you can browse the map then click on a placemark to open the link within to read a newspaper. You can also locate newspapers by using the search boxes to locate a newspaper by title or location. Along with links to the newspapers, Newspapers Map provides links to translate the newspapers you find on the map.

Breaking News presents a constant stream of headlines from around the world. A map of story locations resides behind the news stream that greets you on the homepage. Click the tiny map icon in the upper-right corner of the news stream to find stories by location instead of by topic.

Applications for Education
A common assignment in social studies courses is to have students find, review, and share current events stories. If your students are studying a particular region of the world, Newspaper Map and Breaking News map could help them find stories related to that region.

A Visual Guide to Creative Commons Licenses

Copyright and Creative Commons Explained by Common Craft is one of my go-to resources when someone asks for materials that they can use to explain Creative Commons to students. This morning through Lifehacker I found a new resource that complements the aforementioned video. Which Creative Commons License is Right for me? is a poster produced by Digital Inspiration. The poster explains the restrictions of each type of Creative Commons license. The original work was created in Polish and was translated for Digital Inspiration. See the poster below.

CK-12 Offers New Apps and New Search Filters

The CK-12 Foundation has been busy creating new things this summer. A new CK-12 Android app was recently released. The Android app, like the iOS app, lets students develop and test their math and science knowledge through thousands of practice questions. Students can sign into a CK-12 account to keep track of their scores on the practice quizzes that they have taken.

The CK-12 website has been updated with new search filters. Teachers and students can now search for materials according to grade level, subject, category, and contributor. Documents found through the search tools no longer need to be downloaded because the CK-12 website has an updated, integrated document viewer. Watch the video below to learn more about searching for resources on CK-12.

The Week in Review - The Most Popular Posts

Image credit: Jen Deyenberg

Good morning from Maine where it is a nice summer morning for paddling. Earlier this week I spoke at the Ed Tech Teacher Summit in Chicago. On the webinar side of things I wrapped-up one Practical Ed Tech series and started another. We still have space available in Blogs and Social Media for Teachers and School Leaders starting in a couple of weeks, click here to learn more.

In short, this week was a busy one and I'm looking forward to a day on the water. Before I head out, here is this week's list of the most popular posts.

Here are the most popular posts of the week:
1. Ten Popular Ed Tech Tools That Were Updated This Summer
2. Three Things to do With QR Codes On Back-to-School Night
3. A Handful of Google Calendar Tutorials for Teachers
4. Blendspace Joins Wikispaces and TES - Premium Features Now Free!
5. How to Use Google Slides to Organize Research
6. Math Slicer - Fun Alternatives to Math Flashcards
7. MultCloud Provides a Single Dashboard for All of Your Cloud Storage Accounts

Would you like to have me speak at your school or conference? Click here to learn about my keynote and workshop offerings. 

Please visit the official advertisers that help keep this blog going.
Practical Ed Tech is the brand through which I offer PD webinars.
IXL offers a huge assortment of mathematics lesson activities.
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ABCya.com is a provider of free educational games for K-5.
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Boise State University offers a 100% online program in educational technology.
EdTechTeacher is offers professional development workshops in Boston, Chicago, and Atlanta.
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Hip Hughes History Goes on Location to Tell the Story of William McKinley

Keith Hughes, producer of the wildly popular Hip Hughes History video series, went on location this summer to create a video about the assassination of William McKinley. As always Keith entertains while educating us about a significant event in U.S. History. Keith explains why it's a notable event, check out the video below.