Online History Simulations

Students get more excited about history when they actually experience some of its drama. Back in the day games like Oregon Trail were the absolute best when it came to computer simulations, so it's incredible to see how many free, online games have become available since then. Below is just a small sampling of what's available.

Move It

Move It challenges students to use trains, ships, and wagons to move goods across 1850s England, with limited time and money.

If you're studying transportation, economics, or even math, this is a cool site to explore. (Check out a previous post for some financial literacy simulations).

Building a Sod House

Building a sod house is just one of the many interactives available from the Smithsonian Institute (see the Use Technology section at bottom).

A great activity for classes studying the history of the Great Plains through either a novel or social studies.

Design a Room

Design a room for one of three different historical time periods.

Like Virtual Village below, this site can be used to create an original illustration for a story. After the student sets the scene, a simple application such as Greenshot can be used to clip it and save it.

Trench Mission

In this World War I simulation, guide your private through the trenches to deliver a crucial message to the commander, all the while avoiding the perils of trench life. I needed four tries to do it! I'm sure your students could do better!

Virtual Village

Okay, not nearly as sophisticated as the Sims-type games that are out there, Virtual Village still allows students to create a cool little village using a number of buildings and landscape elements. One of my students used it to create a village scene which she then copied and pasted as an illustration into an original short story.

Evacuation Game

If you were evacuating World War II era London, which items would you need? This is actually a pretty cool site to investigate in connection with not only WWII era novels, but also The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe.

Tenement Museum

Students choose an identity and create a passport as they embark upon their journey to America in the early 1900s. Includes interactive portions as well as videos of reenactors who share information in the first person as immigrants. Many printable items and teacher resources are available.

Need more sites?

For some American Revolution interactives, check out the Crossroads of the Revolution post at my Teach with Picture Books site.

Please leave a comment below for your colleagues describing your favorite interactive history site.

PBS Activity Packs

PBS, that trusted acronym that brought us Sesame Street, continues to provide cutting edge learning tools with their embeddable activity packs. If you're a teacher with your own web site, web page, blog, or other media platform, read on!

What's an activity pack?

According to the site, "An activity pack is a set of educational resources focused on a theme and packaged in a widget-format that you can embed in your own class or social media web page. Each pack includes links to PBS websites and a set of activities by grade level."

In other words, it's a stand-alone app that you can easily install to your site which provides both links and activities for reading and language arts, social studies, science and technology, health and fitness, and the arts. You can either paste the embed code directly into your site, or simply choose a push-button adding feature if your site social media site button is pictured on the array.

While at PBS also check out their new Media Infusion Blog. Cool stuff!

Famous Failures

From the excellent Learning in Maine blog, a look at Famous Failures. Not bad company to keep!

Class Tools

Just this morning I had an excellent experience using an exciting interactive site called Class Tools which allows you to create games, activities, and diagrams in Flash (without knowing a thing about Flash!).

While covering an eighth grade social studies class, I informed students that they would be creating review games for an upcoming test. They were less than enthusiastic (and those of you who are familiar with the typical enthusiasm level of eighth graders will know that causing them to be even less excited was something of a real feat).

Hoping to rescue the moment, I asked if some of them would like to create a game online. Even this was met with grudging acceptance, but they agreed, perhaps considering it at least a momentary reprieve from creating another stale board game with markers and construction paper).

Well, in about twenty minutes time, I had some very excited eighth graders on my hands. Not only were they pleased with what they produced, but one exclaimed, "Wow, I actually know this stuff now that I had to type it in to create the game."

While I can't show you what they created, I'll show you one of the sample files from those posted on the site:

Click here for full screen version

As you can see, a Dustbin game requires you to sort words into their appropriate categories; this morning, for example, the students created a Dustbin about the Middle and Southern Colonies.

Another pair of students created an arcade game, which is playable in five formats (again, this links you to a sample at the site). I'd recommend you try several levels of the game option called Word Shoot.

In addition to the games functions, the site features several clever and adaptable utilities for creating other study aids. Teaching suggestions are provided for each, just in case you find yourself wondering, "Cool, but what can I actually do with this?"

Class Tools is well worth a look! Just one word of warning: be sure to save the game you've created before you play it! We learned that lesson the hard way.

Sticky Teaching in Action

I love to see a good "sticky lesson" in action. Check out this clip from Mr. Langhorst's 8th grade in Liberty, Missouri. See how many of the six elements of "stickiness" you can see spot (see the Teaching that Sticks sister site for a quick primer from Made to Stick: Why Some Ideas Survive and Others Die.



I love this approach! In my third and fourth grades, where I've taught the Revolutionary War as well, I've taken a slightly different approach. Students were presented with a letter from the school board, announcing that due to last year's low test scores several drastic measures would be put into place: extended school hours, summer school for all students below a 3.5 average, school on Saturdays, and no more Physical Education. Students became quite upset that neither they not their parents were in attendance at this meeting, and that they were being punished for last year's bad scores (purely fictitious as well). Seeing how distraught my students were, I graciously allowed them to draft letters to the testing coordinator (Mr. Itzall LaSham) expressing their feelings. Without fail, students created the most articulate, persuasive writing of their lives! When read aloud, the letters of protest were impassioned and convincing.

But then I wondered aloud, "I'm not sure if we should have done this. Perhaps Mr. LaSham will get upset, and call your parents. Are you guys really willing to take that risk?" Out come the erasers, but not for all. Most students are so adamant in their beliefs that they refuse to erase their names, no matter what the consequences!

It's usually at this point, although sometimes much earlier, that some student will exclaim, "This is exactly what happened to the colonists! We're being forced to live by rules that we didn't help to make." And eventually, of course, I do let students in on the secret: The letter is fictitious, and so is the testing director (Mr. It's All a Sham). We then discuss the similarity between their letters and the Declaration of Independence. Both documents express extreme dissatisfaction, but the latter is further expressing outright rebellion. Should the colonists lose this war, the bold Declaration will serve as King George's hanging list.

In nearly twenty years of implementing this lesson, students have been faithful to not share it with their siblings or friends, and each year's new class faithfully falls for the trick: hook, line, and sinker. But the real payoff is that years later, when students return from high school and college to visit, they'll ask, "Did you do the letter yet?" and they'll vividly recall every aspect of the lesson, including its point.

Now that's a lesson that sticks.

(If you're a social studies teacher, check out Eric Langhorst's blog for more great resources and insights. Thanks to John over at Teacher Toys for the link suggestions).