I’m continuing my series of year-end “Best” lists with this one on Social Studies.

You can see all the previous mid-year and end-of-year lists Social Studies lists here. That link will also show you all my Social Studies-related resources.

Here they are:

The New York Times published a great feature celebrating The International Day of the Girl. It was headlined This is 18. It highlights images, music and commentaries from eighteen-year-old young women from around the world.

The Washington Post also published an excellent series recognizing the day: Girlhood Around the World

They wrote: Each week, we will offer a glimpse into the world of a girl in a different country.

Their first episode was headlined Two girls from Afghanistan show us their lives by sharing diary entries, photos and dreams.

The Best Resources For Teaching About The Mid-Term Elections is a recent “Best” list I published.

Eight thousand Bosnian Muslims were massacred in the 1995 Srebrenica Genocide, also called the Srebrenica Massacre. I already have resources about it on The Best Resources For Learning About Genocide. Al Jazeera recently created the Srebrenica Web Genocide Museum, and it’s really an impressive site. When teaching about the Holocaust, I always talk about Cambodia, Srebrenica and Rwanda so that students understand that we’re not just talking about something that happened seventy years ago….

I added this video to The Best Sites For Learning About The World’s Different Cultures:

 

Here’s how My Life Elsewhere describes itself:

MyLifeElsewhere is a collaborative site that allows you to compare and contrast the country you live in… with other countries around the world. We’ll show you various statistics that differentiate your country from others, including cost of living, geographic size, and more. If you had been born in another country, what would your life have been like?

I’ve added it to:

The Best Online Tools For Comparing The Physical Sizes Of Different Countries

The Best Tools For Comparing Demographics Of Different Countries

A new interactive from The National Constitution Center is called Rights Around The World. It shows what rights are guaranteed by which country’s constitutions, and fits right in with the activity I do each year in U.S. History where students create a Bill of Rights for their own country (that lesson is borrowed from ReThinking Schools). I’ve added to to both The Best Resources For “Bill Of Rights Day” and The Best Sites For Learning About The Constitution Of The United States.

How Much Hotter Is Your Hometown Than When You Were Born? is a New York Times interactive that lets you type in name of your hometown (or any town) and the year of your birth. It will then show you the number of increased days the temperature there has been over ninety and the anticipated increase into the future. It’s not a pretty picture. I’ve added it to The Best Sites To Learn About Climate Change.

Where do you fit on the global income spectrum? is a new interactive from The Washington Post that lets you identify “middle-income” in countries around the world. The Post also has an accompanying article headlined Does $60,000 make you middle-class or wealthy on Planet Earth?

I’ve added it to:

The Best Tools For Comparing Demographics Of Different Countries

The Best Sites For Learning About The World’s Different Cultures

Losing Earth: The Decade We Almost Stopped Climate Change is a massive story/interactive from The New York Times. There is also a good series of accompanying climate change lesson plans the Pulitzer Center has developed that can be used with or without the NY Time story.

Contested Lands is an impressive project from Pacific Standard Magazine. Here’s how they describe it:

Six Magnum photographers went out into remote regions around the world where indigenous communities are waging unseen battles against governments and commercial interests to remain on their ancestral lands. This is what they saw.

I’m adding it to The Best Sites For International Day Of The World’s Indigenous People,

Exodus: The Climate Migration Crisis is a project from the Weather Channel. It examines how climate change is forcing people around the world to leave their communities. They’ll be adding new stories throughout the rest of the year.

Canadian Geographic has unveiled an interactive called Indigenous Cultural Heritage. It uses Google Earth (and you don’t need to have it downloaded) to explore the different indigenous peoples of Canada.

I’m adding it to:

The Best Sites For International Day Of The World’s Indigenous People

The Best Sites To Learn About Canada

Comparing the demographics of different countries is something I do a lot of in Geography class, and there are several tools that help make that easier for students (see The Best Tools For Comparing Demographics Of Different Countries – I think NationMaster is the best one). Your Life In Another Country is another simple comparison site. It’s not particularly useful for teaching the concept of demographics, but it might be a nice and easy introduction to the idea before you move on to the more complex tools.

Refugee Flow tracks the flow of refugees through a 3-D visualize of the world. I’m adding it to The Best Sites For Learning About World Refugee Day.

Native-Land shows the territories and languages of native peoples in North America and in Australia.  I’m adding it to The Best Sites For International Day Of The World’s Indigenous People.

I’m adding this new BuzzFeed video to The Best Sites For Learning About The World’s Different Cultures:

I’m adding this video to The Best Sites That Show Statistics By Reducing The World & The U.S. To 100 People:

This TED-Ed video and lesson is on “The breathtaking courage of Harriet Tubman.”

I’m adding it to The Best Teaching & Learning Resources About Harriet Tubman.

 

Power In Numbers is a project of the PBS NewsHour and has teens producing video stories of other teens organizing for social change.

Here’s a video explaining their work:

I’m adding this info to The Best Resources Sharing The History Of Teens Organizing For Justice.

I’m adding this tweet to our US History class blog where we discuss Sally Hemings and Thomas Jefferson:

ProPublica has published the Facebook Political Ad Collector.You type in the preferences you want – age, state, political leanings – and it will show you what ads a person with that profile would see on Facebook.

Destination World is a series of videos from National Geographic Kids about the different continents.

You can see all of them here.

And here’s their latest one:

I’m adding the playlist to The Best Geography Sites For Beginning & Intermediate English Language Learners.

Segregation In America is a very impressive interactive website documenting – in multimedia – the history of…segregation in the United States. It was unveiled by the Equal Justice Initiative, who last year released an equally impressive site on Lynching In America (see Google Supports Development Of New “Lynching In America” Interactive).

I’m adding it to:

The Best Sites To Teach About African-American History

New & Revised: The Best Resources I’ve Used In Lessons About Race & Racism

The Best Resources For Teaching About Confederate Monuments

The Library of Congress has funded four online tools to help teaching and learning with primary sources:

Eagle Eye Citizen:

Eagle Eye Citizen engages middle and high school students in solving and creating interactive challenges on American history, civics, and government with Library of Congress primary sources in order to develop students’ civic understanding and historical thinking skills.

Teachers can create virtual classrooms to monitor student progress, and students can create their own interactives, too!

Engaging Congress:

Developed by the Indiana University Center on Representative Government, Engaging Congress is a series of game-based learning activities that explores the basic tenets of representative government and the challenges that it faces in contemporary society. Primary source documents are used to examine the history and evolution of issues that confront Congress today.

Kid Citizen:

KidCitizen introduces a new way for young students (K-5) to engage with history through primary sources. In KidCitizen’s nine interactive episodes, children explore civics and government concepts by investigating primary source photographs from the Library of Congress. They also connect what they find with their daily lives. KidCitizen includes cloud software tools that let educators create their own episodes and share them with students.

My CaseMaker:

Case Maker is a customizable system for inquiry-based learning for K-12 students using primary sources from the Library of Congress. Modeled after the ‘observe, reflect, question,’ framework developed under the TPS program, Case Maker guides students to challenge a question, collect evidence, and make a case.

Teachers can also create virtual classrooms here to monitor student progress.

I’m adding these resources to:

The Best Resources For Using Primary Sources

The Best Sites Where Students Can Work Independently & Let Teachers Check On Progress

Examples of Racial Microaggressions comes via Henry Wong. I’m adding it to New & Revised: Resources To Help Us Predominantly White Teachers To Reflect On How Race Influences Our Work.

The Human Reach and The Human Reach Atlas are interactives examining the world’s population and its implications for our planet. They are part of an on-going series of interactives called Living In The Age of Humans. I’m adding them to The Best Resources For Learning About Our World’s Population Of 7 Billion.

The New York Times has published an interactive on Japanese-American internment during World War II. It focuses on Mas Okui, who was imprisoned in Manzanar during the war and goes back to visit it every year. I’m adding it to The Best Resources On Japanese-American Internment In World War II.

Al Jazeera’s “AJ” division publishes, among other things, a video explainer series on current events called “Because Facts.”

You can see all sixty of them here, and I’ve embedded their most recent one below.

Anytime I show videos from media organizations that are funded by governments, as Al Jazeera is, I point that fact out to students.

Some of their Explainer videos are substantially tilted towards a progressive agenda, which I generally agree with personally. However, I probably wouldn’t use all of them in the classroom. Others are fairly objective. You probably want to be sure to watch any one first prior to showing it to students.

The NY Times just published some excellent resources related to Nelson Mandela:

What Nelson Mandela Lost

‘Hope Is a Powerful Weapon’: Unpublished Mandela Prison Letters

And they created this video, which they describe as “Four former political prisoners, including Angela Davis and a member of Pussy Riot, read excerpts from Nelson Mandela’s unpublished letters from prison.” One issue, however, is whether you admire Angela Davis or not, teachers need to be aware that showing her section might create some political “pushback”:

I’m adding this info to The Best Sites For Learning About Nelson Mandela.

Each July 4th recently, TIME has published the thoughts of different historians on “25 Moments That Changed America.” Here are their choices from 20172016 and 2015. This year, they did it a bit differently. They published The 25 Moments From American History That Matter Right Now. I’m adding it to The Best “Lists Of Lists” Of Influential People, Events & Ideas.

Many Voices, One Nation is an online Smithsonian exhibition that highlights objects from its collection to highlight historically the different “voices” that make-up the U.S.

I’m adding it to:

The Best Sites For Learning About Immigration In The United States (it’s not only about immigration, but much of it is)

The Best Resources For Using “Object Lessons” In History

“Let’s Talk: Big Stories, Told Simply” is an NPR video series sharing short and simple explanations of current events.

You can see all of them here. Here’s an example:

 

I’m adding it to The Best Online “Explainer” Tools For Current Events.

I’ve previously shared a number of Max Roser’s data visualizations, and now Bill Gates has asked him to create this video. It reminds me of ones created by the late Hans Rosling (see The Best Hans Rosling Videos).

All Sides seems to have a lot of outsized purposes and goals, with a touch of naivete thrown-in about bringing folks with different viewpoints in conversation with one another. But it also does, indeed, have some materials that could be very useful to teachers. One feature I like is offering articles that offer different perspectives on the same social issue. The other resource that stands-out offers simple lesson plans on some of these same topics. I’m adding it to The Best Tools To Help Develop Global Media Literacy.

This is a “must-watch” video from The NY Times about immigrant family separation (do note, though, that there are two “bleeped-out” words).

I’m adding it to:

The Best Resources For Learning About The Terrible Practice Of Separating Immigrant Parents From Their Children

The Best Resources On Japanese-American Internment In World War II

 

Conde Nast has a very interesting video series called “70 People Around The World.”

You can see them all here.

I’m adding this info to The Best Sites For Learning About The World’s Different Cultures.

Here are three examples:

USA Today publishes a series of short videos explaining current events.

They call them FAQs, and you can see all twenty-seven (so far) here.

I’m adding them to The Best Online “Explainer” Tools For Current Events.

Here’s an example of one:

 

Harming Students with “Slave” Assignments is by Kelly Wickham Hurst. I’m adding it to New & Revised: Resources To Help Us Predominantly White Teachers To Reflect On How Race Influences Our Work.