The History Teacher's Tech Adventures

Week three of my technology class is wrapping up and it seems it took me all week to iron out the bugs for my assignment. This week is exploring Open Source, Freeware, and Shareware. At first I thought about using my free version of Quizlet to add an audio assignment using a reading of a primary source, such as Jefferson's original slavery clause that was cut from the Declaration of Independence per the "request" of the South. I may go back to this yet. However, In looking for images for a world history assignment I'm building, I came across ThingLink , which looks pretty cool. Essentially it is an image upon which you may add various other media by way of dots located on the image. For instance you may add text alone, a photo or image with a caption, a video, or Google 360. You may also embed the finished or published image to your site. Sounds pretty versatile, right? Wrong. At least not the free version. The free version is limited in type and number of media...

In researching the Revolutionary War, a.k.a. the American War for Independence (AWI), I found Rebecca Beatrice Brooks' blog that showcased board game pieces for actual old-fashioned army-man-in-hand tabletop war games. Fascinating! The figures looked a lot like Lego pieces to me, but what do I know about this kind of thing? Not only are there soldier figures, but there are instruction books for various tabletop strategy games as well. Maybe this appeals to my childhood playing board games or playing with dolls (no offense meant to wargamers!) or maybe it just appeals to those of us who are not digital natives, but if there wasn't so much cost involved, I probably would have ordered some of these miniatures and the books right then and there. But, alas, I am not made of money. Instead, I launched a free war game that was advertised on one of the blog pages, Call of War. I have not seen what WOW or World of Warcraft is, but I have heard it is a complicated and engaging past...