World-Shaker

todaysdocument:

mypubliclands:

The Federal Government on Tumblr

Increasingly, Federal agencies (like us here at the Bureau of Land Management) are using Tumblr to share photos, science, events, initiatives, and other great content with the Tumblr community.  Here’s a list of some awesome Federal government blogs you should be following on Tumblr.  It’s probably not exhaustive, but these are the ones we know about that post more than occasionally.  

Reblog and help share the word:

America’s Great Outdoors: The Department of the Interior (our parent agency) shares an amazing photo a day of your public lands.

Archivist of the United States: The Tumblr of our “collector in chief” at the National Archives, David S Ferriero.

Bureau of Reclamation: Reclamation, and Interior Dept agency, is the largest wholesale water supplier and the second largest producer of hydroelectric power in the United States, with operations and facilities in the 17 Western States.

Congress in the Archives: Since the First Congress in 1789, the records of the U.S. House of Representatives and the U.S. Senate have documented the history of the legislative branch.  The National Archives helps you explore this history.

Conservation at Work: The Natural Resources Conservation Service, part of the Department of Agriculture, posts photos of conservation on farms and other private lands across the nation. 

Fish and Wildlife Service: The Pacific Region of the FWS encompasses extraordinary ecological diversity.  Photos, science, and more.

Internal Revenue Service: Because who doesn’t want tax information on Tumblr?  Useful tips, videos, etc., straight from the IRS.

My Public Lands: The awesomeness of the Bureau of Land Management, which manages more than 245 million acres of amazing lands, as told by students, interns, and newer employees.

Our Presidents: One space to bring the past 13 Presidents together. Discover behind-the-scenes history here.  Managed by the National Archives.

National Archives: News and current events from the United States National Archives and Records Administration whose holdings include the Declaration of Independence, the Constitution, military records, Presidential records, and millions of other documents related to the Federal Government.

Peace Corps: Life is calling.  How far will you go?  Get up close with the amazing work done by peace corps volunteers.

U.S. Department of State: Videos, photos, testimony, and updates from the State Department.  Foreign policy updates on Tumblr—how cool is that?

Today’s Document: Highlighting interesting documents the National Archives’ holdings—both the well-known and the obscure—to observe historical events (usually the significant events but sometimes just the curious ones). 

USA.gov:  Government made easy.  On Tumblr.  Enough said.

US National Archives Exhibits: Images and stories from the National Archives related to “Searching for the Seventies: the DOCUMERICA Photography Project,” the newest exhibition on display at the Archives’ facility in Washington, DC.

But wait, there’s more!

Preservation at the National Archives: All things preservation at the National Archives and Records Administration. Posts to this site come from all of the Preservation Programs departments, including: Conservation, St. Louis Preservation, and National Preservation Programs. 

John F. Kennedy Presidential Library:  Dedicated to the memory of our nation’s 35th president and to all those who through the art of politics seek a new and better world.

LBJ Time Machine: Taking a trip through time, from the birth of Lyndon Johnson in 1908 through 2013 at the LBJ Library and Museum.

FDR Library: Follow the Franklin Delano Roosevelt Presidential Library and Museum as we count down to the rededication of the Roosevelt Library and the opening of the new permanent museum exhibits.

The Tumblrweed Times from the National Archives at Riverside, CA: We are the National Archives at Riverside—a unit of the U.S. National Archives. Our records document the Federal government in the western states of Arizona, southern California and Clark County, Nevada.

Awesome list!

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7 Good Virtual Tours for Students

So many great resources in here. This is one I’m toying around with now:

The Google Art Project uses Street View technology to take you inside dozens of famous museums. An extension of this is Hangout Quest on Google+. Hangout Quest is a game that allows you to go on a virtual scavenger hunt inside the Palace of Versailles. The object of the scavenger hunt is to find artwork and other objects in the palace. If you invite others to your Hangout you can compete against them in a race to find the objects first. Hangout Quest uses the Street View imagery of Google Maps to bring you inside the Palace of Versailles. Another cool piece of technology added to Hangout Quest is facial tracking. The facial tracking technology allows you to move around in the Palace of Versailles by just moving your head instead of clicking around with your mouse.

Here’s a video of a hip-hop song about Alexander Hamilton (!) that was performed for the POTUS at the White House Evening of Poetry, Music, and the Spoken Word, all to emphasize the importance of education and writing.

(via This Is How I Would Love To Learn History - Edudemic)

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This is what 1 byte of data used to look like.

If you were to open a plaintext document, press the spacebar once, and save it, you would still need about 300 of these to store that document.

(Source: reddit.com)

closed-for-winter:

littlestwampum:

Dossiers.

Trying to get students to understand a historical mystery? Try a dossier! Students get to play historical detectives for the day.

I manipulate and edit text books, magazine articles, etc. to create 5-10 individual strips of paper. I  usually change the font and color code different sections of the text. Sometimes I write them on index cards, sometimes I actually clip out magazine headlines, and toss in photos. You could even go wild and laminate some items. 

I mix up all the documents and stick them in an envelope. Then, I put a cheeky sticker like ” TOP SECRET” or “KEEP OUT” on it.  Multiply by 30 and you have a class set plus a few extras if a student loses a piece.

Students then try to organize the text and piece together the story while completing a Check for Understanding or Comprehension Questions worksheet.

What a great idea!

Clever!

"Steven Spielberg is sending free copies of his historical drama “Lincoln” to schools across the country so students can learn about President Abraham Lincoln. DVDs will be distributed to every public and private middle and high school in the country as part of an educational outreach campaign called “Stand Tall: Live Like Lincoln,” which urges youngsters to follow in the 16th president’s example."

— Steven Spielberg to send ‘Lincoln’ DVDs to schools

I’m ashamed at how much this made me laugh.

"[Mr. Thomas] and others are trying to build a movement to gather “the people’s history.” And their project could spawn a new model for massive open online courses, or MOOC’s. Since 2010, scholars and students at Nebraska and at James Madison University have organized a series of “History Harvests”—community events where families share their artifacts and stories with students, who document and digitize them. The idea is to make visible histories and materials that otherwise would be largely invisible, and to share them more broadly online. Scholars benefit, and so do students, who learn to apply their disciplinary skills in real-world situations."

—

‘History Harvest’ Project May Spawn a New Kind of MOOC

This is an awesome application of MOOCs.

Morley Safer: You, you, calling us historically illiterate.

David McCullough: Yes. I feel that very much so. I ran into some students on university campuses who were bright and attractive and likeable. And I was just stunned by how much they didn’t know. One young woman at a university in the Midwest came up to me after one of my talks and said that until she heard me speak that morning she’d never understood that the original 13 colonies were all on the East Coast. And I thought, “What are we doing that’s so wrong, so pathetic?” I tried it again at several other places, colleges and universities, same thing. Now, it’s not their fault. It’s our fault. And when I say our fault I don’t mean just the teachers. I mean the parents and grandparents. We have to take part. The stories around the family dinner table. I say bring back dinner if you want to improve how children get to know history.

Morley Safer: But are the teachers themselves semi-illiterate in history?

David McCullough: Well we need to revamp, seriously revamp, the teaching of the teachers. I don’t feel that any professional teacher should major in education. They should major in a subject, know something. [emphasis mine] The best teachers are those who have a gift and the energy and enthusiasm to convey their love for science or history or Shakespeare or whatever it is. “Show them what you love” is the old adage. And we’ve all had them, where they can change your life. They can electrify the morning when you come into the classroom.

I’m disagreeing only because teachers also need to know about pedagogy, diversity, accessibility, poverty, technology, and the countless other areas you’re typically only exposed to in an education program.

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The Education of U.S. Presidents [INFOGRAPHIC]

via ecollegefinder

Using Facebook Timeline to Teach History [VIDEO]

Absolutely BRILLIANT. I can’t explain how much I love this!

“I reunified the nation before it was cool.”

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How the United States Expanded in One GIF

Note: This fits Tumblr’s size limit for GIFs, but won’t play unless you actually click it.

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The black lines are drawn on a glass wall.

(Source: reddit.com)

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courtenaybird:

Are Smart Phones Spreading Faster than Any Technology in Human History? 

“These figures show that smart phones, after a relatively fast start, have also outpaced nearly any comparable technology in the leap to mainstream use. It took landline telephones about 45 years to get from 5% to 50% penetration among U.S. households, and mobile phones took around seven years to reach a similar proportion of consumers. Smart phones have gone from 5% to 40% in about four years, despite a recession. In the comparison shown, the only technology that moved as quickly to the U.S. mainstream was television between 1950 and 1953.”

Sometimes I feel like I won’t ever fully comprehend what life might have been like at the beginning of the last century. It took almost 65 years for a majority of Americans to have a telephone. Now 98% of college students start their freshman year owning at least one electronic device. It’s crazy to think about.