The shortlist of nominees for the Governor General’s Award for Excellence in Teaching History has been released. If you teach history it’s worth a quick look.  There’s some really cool projects in there.

Two of them in particular caught my eye. One was an adaptation of the Settlers of Catan and Risk to a new game that deals with colonization and settlement in Canada. Having bought the first English language version of Settlers in about 1995, this one really intrigues me.

The other was based around Father of Confederation puppet plays. (What could be better than puppet plays?) Apparently the kids make their own puppets as part of the assignment, and the ones shown on the Award announcement page look pretty cool.

It’s an inspiring collection of nominees. It’s nice to see how many cool ideas are being put to work to make Canadian history more exciting.