Next Monday is Memorial Day. Students often confuse the origin and purpose of Memorial Day with those of Veterans Day. The following videos can help students understand the origins and meanings of Memorial Day and Veterans Day.
The Meaning of Memorial Day is a two minute video covering the origins of the holiday in the United States. The video is embedded below.
The U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs offers the following video overview of the history of Memorial Day.
Jocko Willink isn't everyone's cup of tea, but I enjoy his podcast and found this video that he released a few years ago to be quite moving.
My students here in Maine always think of our state as being a big place and it is big in relation to the rest of New England. Compared to our friends in the west, Maine is a small place. Similarly, they sometimes have trouble understanding the size of the lower 48 states compared to Canada. The following tool can help students understand the size of their countries and states in relation to others.
The True Size Of... is a free web tool that lets you quickly compare the size of two countries or two states within the United States. To compare two countries simply enter one into the search box then enter a second one into the search box. Both countries will be highlighted for you. You can then drag and drop one onto the other. The same can be done with states of the United States as is demonstrated in my screenshot below.
Late last week I got the following email from a reader:
Recently our district blocked Google Search. My teachers are frantic as to what to use for kid research etc....What are some of your go to search/research websites that do not link to Google?
My first sarcastic thought was to Google some suggestions :) But I didn't need to do that because alternatives to Google search is a topic that I've covered in many posts over the years. If you find yourself looking for alternatives to Google search, here are some options to try.
Bing
Bing is probably the most obvious alternative to Google search. In a side-by-side comparison you'll probably notice a lot of similarities in the ranking of websites by Bing and Google.
The latest version of Bing includes a chat function that is powered by ChatGPT. With this function enabled you can search and get results in the traditional manner or you can view results in a manner that is conversational. As you can see in my demo that is embedded below, using the chat-enabled search function in Bing might get you the information you want a little faster than just clicking through links on a search results page. Watch this video for a demonstration of how to use Bing with ChatGPT.
DuckDuckGo Duck Duck Go is an alternative to Google search and Bing search. The company claims to not track search activity. Again, in a side-by-side comparison with Google you'd probably find a lot of similarities in the ranking of websites. There are some search refinement tools in Duck Duck Go. An overview of Duck Duck Go search refinement tools is included in this video.
Wolfram Alpha Wolfram Alpha is a computational search engine. That means it is not a search engine designed to rank websites like Bing, Google, and DuckDuckGo. It's probably best known for helping students solve math problems. There's much more to it than solving math problems. Wolfram Alpha can be used to generate fact sheets, make comparisons, and much more. My brief overview of using Wolfram Alpha for social studies lessons is included in this video.
NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory website contains a large library of infographics that you can download and print for free. The library contains infographics about spacecraft, exploration missions, planets, moons, the solar system, and comets. I downloaded the What is a Comet Made Of? infographic that you see pictured below.
Applications for Education
If printed in color, these infographics could make a nice addition to your classroom walls. More importantly these infographics could provide a model for your students to follow as they create their own infographics about topics in space science. Canva is a great tool for making infographics. A set of 66 Canva tutorials can be found here.
The Wilson Center Digital Archive offers many collections of declassified historical documents. The documents contain memos and transcripts of communications between diplomats and country leaders. The collections are arranged into topics and themes. You'll find collections of documents related to the construction of the Berlin Wall, the origins of the Cold War, Sino-Soviet relations, and diplomatic efforts related to nuclear weapons.
Applications for Education
My first thought when looking at these collections of documents was to have students use these documents to fill-in the gaps in their history textbooks.
You could also give students some of the communications without the names of countries or diplomats showing. Then ask them to use their knowledge of the situation to determine which country or diplomat would have sent that communication.
