Jun

25

Following the U.S. elections

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With the school year all but over (well, it’s probably over everywhere but here in Manitoba) this site may not be immediately useful but for those of you covering American Social Studies or History, this is a cool little site that you’ll come back to in the fall.

270 to Win shows which candidate got how many Electoral College votes in each election right back to when the system was first started. You can even find out the actual tally of the votes. There’s all kinds of historical data for the older maps, including a chart that shows the margin of victory by the color fo the state.

It’s a neat tool if you’re actively following the current election or if you’re researching the results of earlier votes.

Jun

11

Presidential TV Commercials

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I just found this site this morning on del.icio.us and it’s really neat. 4President.tv not only has current commercials of this year’s presidential election, but commericals going all the way back to 1952. To be able to see what the candidates looked and sounded like is a tremendous and fascinating resource for anyone interested in American history. It certainly brings the past to life in a way that a mere textbook cannot.

If you’re analyzing media over the years for a communications course, this videos will also fascinate you. After all, could you picture anything like this 1952 commercial being broadcast today?

Mar

26

An embarassment of riches

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Do you ever have your students find out that somewhere in the past someone made ten dollars and then the kids wondered what that would be worth today? Well, a long time ago I discovered a Canadian site that would help figure out how much something in the past would cost today after inflation was figured in. I’ve recently discovered two sites that will do that for American history

The Inflation Calculator will allow you to figure out the effect of inflation with amounts as far back as 1800 while the Cost of Living Calculator only goes as far back as 1913. The two sites come up with slightly different results for the same year and the same amount of money. I’m not completely sure why since they both seem to be basing their data on the same information from the U.S. Department of Labor, but maybe I’m missing something there.

Even with the slight variation, it’s nice to have both sites available in case one goes down. It also lends a voice of authority to papers your students may right if they can cite two sources for their currency conversions.

Of course, none of this can really show that today we have a standard of living that no one would have dreamed of 50 or 100 years ago. Straight currency updating doesn’t quite factor that in, and I can’t conceive of a website that could take that into account.

Sep

4

Creating Timelines

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My new best friend on the Internet is a website called Xtimeline.

As the name suggests, you use the site to make timelines. The timeline comes out looking fairly decent, but what I like is you can add descriptions of al the events on your timeline. This means that besides being a great way to help your students put order to all the disparate events in your history course, it’s also a great tool. You can give  neat, tidy summaries of everything you’d want your students to know in the box. All they have to do is click on the item on the timeline that they want the information on.

As well, you can add pictures to accompany the descriptions. So if you had Confederation as one of your events, you can insert a picture of the Fathers of Confederation.

I’ve begun work on a timeline on Canadian history. So far it’s not much to brag about (I’ve only got four dates so far) but it’s a beginning to what I’ll develop over the semester.

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