Here is an excellent essay by the historian, Peter Frankopan, for AEON Magazine about the significance of silk from its accidental development in China to its use as a "symbol of extravagance and decadence" in Afro-Eurasia. It's a great story and the excerpts are for great for the classroom ..read more

  Here is an excellent overview of the conflict in the Middle East in six maps from the Wall Street Journal. Each of the six maps has a short annotation. The maps include: The Hamas attack on Israel Oct. 7 Gaza and the West Bank Lebanon-Israel Border Red Sea Iran Iraq ..read more

Here is a terrific list of YouTube channels from a history site called History Skills that specializes in different periods of history.  One channel that I particularly like specializes in World War 1. Another channel specializes in Islamic empires like the Mughals and the golden age of the Ummayad empire.  Here's a list of the first few channels.   ..read more

Have you tried the new AI app called Diffit. I love it—you can take primary sources that you find on the internet, paste in the URL and the program will generate the source with questions, both multiple choice and short answer.  You can adjust the length of the source. If it looks too long, just click "shorten."  Once you're satisfied, you can open it in google docs.  You can also adjust the level of reading. Some primary sources are just too long for our kids, so the "shorten" function really helps. Another useful function is the ability to generate the source by grade level ..read more

 Here is a website with terrific resources for the social effects of the industrial revolution. Ohio State University developed the website which includes both primary and secondary sources to help students understand the impact on family life because of the shift from a rural lifestyle to an urban lifestyle. One of the resources is a  graph showing the wages for both women and men at a textile mill in Halstead, England in 1825. The chart includes questions to help students understand the difference in the nature of work by gender. Another part of the website examines the ..read more

Esri's GIS Systems has developed a terrific spatial technology for the classroom.  Their software includes story maps for over a dozen titles in World History, including the Age of Exploration, the First  Crusade, Ancient Greece, and its geography, the Black Death, the Spanish Conquest of the Aztec Empire, Egyptian Funerary Practices, and many more. The story maps are engaging and include images, maps, graphs, and primary sources presented in an engaging manner like the excerpt below from the First Crusade story map. I looked at a story map about the First Crusade and was ..read more

Did civilization arise before religion or did religion arise before civilization? History books teach us that civilization arose with the Neolithic Revolution when hunter-gatherers first settled down because of the discovery of agriculture.  Settled life then led to cities, writing, and religion. The discovery of Göbekli Tepe in southeastern Turkey several years ago may change that story. Göbekli Tepe contains a series of circles with limestone pillars carved with bas-reliefs of animals like gazelles, foxes, and wild boar. The tallest pillars are 18 feet high and weigh 16 tons.  It ..read more

Studying the early development of humans?   National Geographic has a great interactive website with short stories about Lucy, Ida, and academic disciplines in archeology and paleontology. I created a short web activity based on the site And Nova has a great documentary about the origins of humans, called "Becoming Human." and a  terrific interactive website aligned to the video ..read more

Here is a really cool interactive Google Arts and Culture site all about the Timbuktu Manuscripts. Once you open the site, click "learn more about the manuscripts" in the lower right corner and it will take you here, where you can learn everything about the manuscripts. I especially like this section, called "Surprising Things you can read in the Manuscripts" which reviews how the manuscripts were first threatened and some of the material they cover. In another section, you can click on the different topics that the manuscripts cover and read a summary of what they say. Click on the history ..read more

Here are two excellent clips about the Egyptian Book of the Dead,  a book written mostly in hieroglyphics with vignettes and stories about the deceased and their journey into the afterlife. And here is a short activity students can complete after the videos. It includes some of the entries in the Book of the Dead and asks students to create categories for the entries. One of the clips comes from TedEd. The second clip comes from the World History Encyclopedia ..read more