Around the world

Damage in Miyako, Iwate Pref. (12) in Japan

360 Cities offers spectacular 360 degree pictures from around the world. The above comes from Japan.
The panoramic pictures could be used for writing prompts and/or introductions to places around the world that figure in the texts students read.

Why tweet?

Twitter might seem ridiculous.....updating the quotidian of your life in 140 characters. Who cares if you're brushing your teeth or watching TV? True.

But Twitter doesn't have to be about the mundane and the banal. Many people on Twitter tweet links to interesting resources. Below is an example of a different kind of tweeting: Artwiculate.

The twitter-based Word of the Day competition that helps clever people look clever and helps the rest of us learn new words.

To play, just use today’s word in context in one of your tweets. That’s it. Your tweet will appear here where people can tell you if they like it. You’ll get points if they like it or retweet it.

Points mean kudos. Oh, and if you follow @artwiculate, we’ll tweet you with today’s word and store your profile here so you can see your vocabulary improve over time.

In effect, Artwiculate is a way to learn vocabulary by tweeting.

Favorite Poem Project.

Poetry, deeply rooted in human culture, is intricately connected to many disciplines, such as visual art, music, history and religious and social studies. The Favorite Poem Project shows a great deal in particular about American culture at the end of the twentieth century—through the poems people choose, which span ages and cultures, and through the stories they tell, which are often connected to other art forms, social and cultural questions, politics and war and other aspects of contemporary life. (from the Favorite Poem Project website)

Click on the above hyperlinked text to find resources for teaching poems across content areas.

24 hours in pictures

A selection of the best images from around the world. (from the guardian.co.uk) This is how the guardian.co.uk describes its 24 hours in pictures feature. The description doesn't even begin to get at how interesting and compelling these images are.

To look at the images from yesterday, click here. They, or any of the pictures, would work well as writing prompts as well as for discussion of current events.

These slideshows can be shared via Twitter and Facebook; they are, unfortunately, not embeddable. That means you'll have to visit the site, to look at the pictures.

Sources and resources

Welcome to HistoryBuff.com, a nonprofit organization devoted to providing FREE primary source material for students, teachers, and historybuffs. This site focuses primarily on HOW news of major, and not so major, events in American history were reported in newspapers of the time. In addition, there is information about the technology used to produce newspapers over the past 400 years. Our latest addition is panoramas of historic sites in America.(from HistoryBuff)

The above comes from the HistoryBuff website. To learn more, click here.


To keep up with Internet resources for education, check out Free Technology for Teachers.

Poetry across the curriculum

Poetry offers so many varieties for expressing information and emotions. There are forms and types for every classroom setting, and none have to concern love. Poetry doesn’t even have to rhyme if you choose. Just because poems are not essays, does not mean students don’t have to think when they write. Poems are concise through the best words available for an explanation, they are vivid with imagery, and they challenge the writer to think, plan, create, and analyze. Place poems in a classroom setting every day and you develop student minds so that they become intellectual, descriptive scholars. There are worlds of possibilities for engaging students when you learn how to use poetry across the curriculum. (Pamela Rice-Linn at Bright Hub)

To learn more, click the above hyperlinked text.

April is National Poetry Month

National Poetry Month is a month-long, national celebration of poetry established by the Academy of American Poets. The concept is to widen the attention of individuals and the media—to the art of poetry, to living poets, to our complex poetic heritage, and to poetry books and journals of wide aesthetic range and concern. We hope to increase the visibility and availability of poetry in popular culture while acknowledging and celebrating poetry’s ability to sustain itself in the many places where it is practiced and appreciated. (from the Academy of American Poets' FAQ page)

The Academy of American Poets' website if teeming with poetry resources. To take a look, click here.