Two Carnivals Involving History....I'm In Heaven

The midway over at the 44th History Carnival looks very full. I can't wait to dive in. It can be found here hosted by David Tiley at Barista.

Are you into ancient and medieval history? Check out Carnivalesque hosted by Even in a Little Thing here.

I've been doing some research into ancient African history and find it very interesting. The average person is aware of particular histories such as American, British, European, World.......but African history can be a mystery to some. I believe part of the problem stems from the fact that much of the history was oral and once imperialism reared its ugly head much of African history was lost or rewritten.

There's a whole other blog post in this ramblin'.....at any rate, go visit these carnivals.

You can never have enough history!

A Mixed Post: Presidential Tag Clouds, Ease History, and Bad History

This is SO WAY COOL! I’m so excited about it in a geeky kind of way. Dave over at Patahistory has linked to something called presidential speech tag clouds. You can link directly to his post here and read about it. You can link the tag clouds directly by clicking here. Once you are at the tag cloud site notice the button directly under George Bush’s name. Click on it and you will find it can move back to the left. As it travels left notice the tag clouds….they zoom back in time through all of the presidents.

This has many possibilities for research and classroom use. Have students compare and contrast tag clouds. When is terrorism first mentioned? Which president mentions war? Is there a president who doesn’t discuss the economy? Another possible activity could be to have students compare the tag clouds to actual events during a particular president’s administration.

Feel free to comment and post any additional ideas you can think of.

Ease History is a great find. Just where have I been? The website states Ease History is a rich online environment that supports the teaching and learning of history. It contains video clips regarding historical events and core values. It also includes campaign ads from 1952 through 2004. Go and explore to see how you can use this in the classroom!

The Carnival of Bad History is up over at Philobiblon. Not sure what bad history is?

Now is great time to find out.