20/02/2025

Before learn

Before we learn

My Top Ten Tools for Social Studies Teachers and Students

My Top Ten Tools for Social Studies Teachers and Students

A few years ago I printed a listing of my preferred instruments for social studies academics and pupils. Considering that then a several points have modified, specifically Google has shuttered a couple of interesting instruments, so I imagine it’s time to update the list. In no unique get, in this article are my leading ten applications for social research instructors and pupils. 

Timeline JS
Timeline jobs as as old as heritage courses themselves. It employed to be that timelines have been only manufactured on paper. Right now, college students can establish timelines that include films, audio recordings, shots, and interactive maps. Timeline JS is the best instrument for earning multimedia timelines currently.

Readlee

Just one of the troubles of giving students main or secondary supply articles or blog posts to read through on their have is recognizing how extended it really will take them to read the content and how properly study them. Readlee is a assistance that solves that difficulty. With a absolutely free Readlee account you can assign content articles to students and they have to read through them aloud to their computer systems. Readlee tracks the pace at which students read alongside with details about full words and phrases browse and unique text examine. Here’s a online video overview of Readlee.  

StoryMap JS
StoryMap JS is made by the exact folks that make Timeline JS. StoryMap JS enables college students to inform tales as a result of the mix of maps and timelines. On StoryMap JS you generate slides that are matched to spots on your map. Every slide in your story can involve photographs or films together with textual content.

Google Earth
Google Earth is offered in two variations. The Professional model is the edition that you can set up on your desktop. Which is the edition that I prefer if supplied a option mainly because it involves additional options that the internet browser variation. Google Earth Pro can be utilised by college students and teachers to file narrated tours and to layer historical imagery on major of current map sights. Here’s one particular of my preferred Google Earth functions for middle college and higher university. And this is my on the web program all about Google Earth and Maps. 

Google Guides
This is an often neglected search device. Google Guides gives pupils with entry to thousands and thousands of free of charge books and periodicals. Google Books really shines when you start searching for do the job that was released in the 19th Century and early 20th Century. One of the best features of Google Books is the capability to search in a guide for a phrase or keyword.

DocsTeach
DocsTeach is a no cost support supplied by the U.S. National Archives. By DocsTeach you can build on the web routines centered on primary supply artifacts from the Countrywide Archives. Your students can total the routines on-line. Never permit the fact that the provider is supplied by the National Archives fool you into wondering that it can only be utilised for U.S. Heritage lessons. You can add any key source artifact that you like to your DocsTeach account to acquire an on line history action. DocsTeach delivers much more than a dozen action templates that you can abide by to produce your most important supply-based mostly lessons. Check out this movie to understand a lot more about DocsTeach.

EDpuzzle
When I taught social experiments I preferred to use video clips as section of current functions classes. I also appreciated to use excerpts from documentary movies. If you use videos in the identical way, EDpuzzle is a device that you need to have to consider. EDpuzzle allows you incorporate concerns immediately into the timeline of the video clip. Here’s my video overview of how to use EDpuzzle

WeVideo
If you want your learners to make quick documentary-type videos, WeVideo is tricky to defeat. It is effective on Chromebooks, Home windows, Android, iOS, and Mac (while if you have a Mac, iMovie is just as good). People who have upgraded WeVideo accounts can even use it to make green screen movies.

Scribble Maps

Scribble Maps is the multimedia mapping tool that I advocate each time another person asks for an choice to Google Earth or Google Maps for college students. Scribble Maps is a cost-free software for producing customized, multimedia maps on the internet. Scribble Maps delivers a assortment of foundation layer maps on which you can draw freehand, add placemarks, include image overlays, and kind throughout the map. Scribble Maps will operate in the web browser on your notebook, Chromebook, iPad, or Android tablet. In the movie embedded below I provide an overview of how to use Scribble Maps.

Canva

Canva can be utilized for generating everything from an infographic to a presentation to a site to a online video and a entire good deal of points in amongst. In the context of social experiments I have applied Canva to build multimedia timelines and to create classic travel posters based mostly on public domain imagery uncovered in these collections.

https://www.youtube.com/enjoy?v=H7i8G2y0wmY