Teacher Resource Links Added

I have done some hunting on the blogosphere for history related content.  There is a ton out there.  I have posted three sites that I think will be excellent resources for myself and history teachers who come here.  Two more are technology in education sites.  Teach Paperless is just like it name implies.  The bloggers there are presenting ways to use less paper in the classroom.  I love the idea from an environmental and economic stand point.  Finally, I added Dangerously Irrelevent by Scott McLeod who deals with technology in education. 

More House Keeping

I have added some more links to the Student Resources section.  Two are for the Minnesota History Center and the Minnesota Historical Society.  Both are great research sites for students.  They also have events students can attend to learn more about history.  I highly recommend Murphy's Landing in the summer.  The two newest links are to pages of my creation.  I have now set up classroom Wiki and Flickr pages.  The Wiki page is for parents to sign up for upcoming events such as field trips.  I also envision it being used as a class project where students will create their own textbook chapter.  That project is still in the imagination phase.  I hope to start fleshing out the idea here soon.  The Flickr account will be used for students to share images they found interesting and may be useful to other students.  I also plan on using it to post pictures of classroom events such as field trips. 

Links are up

I've set up three different categories of links for people to follow.  First is Student Links.  These are resources I think students will find valuable in research.  The National Archive, Smithsonian and National Geographic sites are full of documents and images that  will help in research papers.  I posted the History and Biography Channels so students could see if there are any documentaries they might be interested.  For the record, I do not consider Ice Road Truckers history but that is a discussion for another day. This History Channel also posts "This Day in History," which has important events from the past for each day of the year.  Next are Teacher Resources.  I feel it important that teachers have a resource to quickly check the national social study standards.  It is also nice for students.  They can check the standards and see that there is a reason their teacher is having them do something.  Finally I created the Toy Department with links for some of my interests.  My reasoning for this section is to give students a glimpse of what makes me tick.  At the bottom of the page is an RSS feed from CNN, Google and the Star Tribune so visitors can check out the top stories from around the world and locally.  I imagine this list of links will grow and evolve along with the rest of the blog.  I am willing to take suggestions for other sites I should include for my links.

Here We Go

Welcome to Mr. Day's History Class.  This blog is starting out as a page for a college class.  I am hoping for it to turn into much more than that.  The last two years I have been staying home with my twins, Alexis and Aiden.  Before that I was teaching 7th Grade History at Paideia Academy in Apple Valley, MN.  To keep in contact with students and their parents we used a daily email.  Many days that email seemed to take up my entire prep hour.  A blog would have made life so much simpler.  I am hoping this will make communication quicker and easier when my career starts up again.  This blog is primarily to be used as a classroom tool for students and parents.  There will be links to educational resources for students, and teachers.  I'm also including some fun links.  This will not be a forum where I discuss any of my views on events of the day or my thoughts on history topics.  This is just a classroom blog. 

Please check back often for more updates.