Questions for Class Four: I am excited to learn how to use Excel. I have used it as a spread sheet before, but I do not remember how to make it calculate anything. I would love to have a complex grading excel sheet like some of my fellow TA's do. I would also like to be able to make charts, and to use excel to run a budget (although that is not an educational goal.)

Great Web Sources

http://www.archives.gov/
Sources for primary documents and lesson plans

http://www.loc.gov/index.html
Another source of documents and lesson plans

http://www.thinkport.org/default.tp
Resources and lesson plans for Maryland Teachers

http://www.pbs.org/teachers/
Media resources and lesson plans from PBS

http://www.smithsonianeducation.org/educators/
Resources for teachers from the Smithsonian institution

https://www.cia.gov/library/publications/the-world-factbook/
A great resource for starting research project on other countries. Includes information like population and literacy rates

http://www.archive.org/details/prelinger

Prelinger Archives

The Prelinger archives is an online database of ephemeral films, from movies to commercials to educational films. This is a great place to find clips of "Duck and Cover" films for studies of the 1950's, advertisements from presidential elections, or films made by the government during the new deal. This is a truly huge collection, and is worth spending a few hours exploring.

My name is Grace Patterson. I am a history graduate student and I am also pursuing my certificate in education. I received my undergrad here at UD. I will be teaching Would Studies and African American history as a student teacher at Elkton High School next semester. My research interests include womens studies, agricultural history and material culture studies. My technology skills are pretty much limited to power point, so I am excited to increase my technological literacy. I am very interested in learning how to use smart boards, because my teacher will have one in his class room. I am also interested in creating interactive online lessons for my students. Most of the ones I have seen have not been of high quality, but I believe that the web really could be a great resource for teaching higher level thinking skills.

Grace's blog is not blocked