“Oral History of the U.S. House of Representatives” reveals the rich heritage of the House through interviews with House officers, aides, committee staff, former Representatives, and others. Audio, video, and transcripts include insights about legislative processes and procedures, personal and political anecdotes, and recollections about the evolving nature of the House as a governing institution. An index of significant events in House history covers topics ranging from the Bonus March of 1932 to changes in Capitol security in the 20th century. The site also includes lesson plans, teaching tips, and educational resources designed to help teachers incorporate information from the oral history interviews in their classrooms.

 http://oralhistory.clerk.house.gov

UnitConversion.org is the ultimate resource for unit conversion. Use our free online unit converters to easily convert between different units of measurement. Simply select the appropriate unit converter from the lists below. Please spread the word about this completely free resource by linking to us. And don't forget to bookmark this site - you will probably need it in the future.

http://www.unitconversion.org/

“Exploring Bioethics,” from the National Institutes of Health, helps students grapple with ethical issues posed by advances in the life sciences. This supplemental curriculum for students in grades 9-12 (one of dozens from NIH) focuses on real-life cases involving vaccinations, genetic testing, and more. Six inquiry-based modules help students address questions such as: What are the ethical questions involved in these areas of science? And, who could be affected by these decisions? http://science.education.nih.gov/supplements/nih9/bioethics/default.htm

Read.gov, from the Library of Congress, is an online portal of free reading resources for children, teens, and even adults. It features online versions of out-of-copyright books for children, including “Mother Goose,” “The Arabian Nights,” “The Secret Garden,” “A Christmas Carol,” “The Raven,” and other classics. It also provides webcasts of authors, such as “Twilight” author Stephenie Meyer, as well as writing contests, suggested booklists, teaching resources, and more.

http://www.read.gov

The NACCP has launched a new web site called the NAACP Interactive Historical Timeline, a multimedia site that tells the story of the 101-year-old organization and documents the civil-rights movement in general through words, pictures, and video. Funded through a $500,000 grant from the Verizon Foundation, the site’s many multimedia resources also will be made available to teachers, students, and parents through Verizon Thinkfinity (www.thinkfinity.org), a free educational web site from the foundation. Each point on the timeline includes a written narrative, historic video or photos, and an audio narrative read by a celebrity, such as actor Lawrence Fishburne. http://www.naacphistory.org

In celebration of Black History Month, A&E Television Networks’ History Channel and its companion web site, History.com, have compiled several online resources. An interactive timeline of milestones in United States black history ranges from slavery in America in 1619 to President Barack Obama’s inauguration last year; clicking on any of the milestones takes users to video clips and additional information. Short video clips include a portion of Martin Luther King Jr.’s “I Have a Dream” speech, as well as footage of Jackie Robinson breaking baseball’s color barrier in 1947. Site visitors also will find profiles of 65 African-American icons, as well as interactive maps showing slave trade routes, the Underground Railroad, public school segregation by U.S. state in 1954, and more.

http://www.history.com/content/blackhistory

A new booklet released by the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) and other government agencies helps parents and teachers steer kids safely through the online and mobile-phone worlds. The booklet, titled “Net Cetera: Chatting with Kids About Being Online,” was unveiled last month at Jefferson Middle School in Washington, D.C., by FTC Chairman Jon Leibowitz, U.S. Secretary of Education Arne Duncan, and Federal Communications Commission Chairman Julius Genachowski. It tells parents and teachers what they need to know to talk to kids about issues such as cyber bullying, sexting, mobile phone safety, and protecting the family computer. According to the FTC and U.S. Department of Education, talking to kids about these topics can help them avoid rude online behavior; steer clear of inappropriate content such as pornography, violence, or hate speech; and protect themselves from contact with bullies, predators, hackers, and scammers.

 http://www.onguardonline.gov/pdf/tec04.pdf

Research suggests that peer teaching can be an effective instructional strategy, both for the students being taught and those doing the teaching.

In that spirit, Mathtrain.TV is a free educational “kids teaching kids” project from sixth-grade math teacher Eric Marcos and his students at Lincoln Middle School in Santa Monica, Calif. Lincoln students create math video lessons that are used for classroom instruction and also posted to Mathtrain.TV and other web sites, such as iTunes, YouTube, TeacherTube, and Google Video. The students use a tablet PC and screen-capturing software from TechSmith, called Camtasia Studio, to create the math tutorials. Anyone can use the tutorials as is, free of charge, under a Creative Commons license. All videos are reviewed (and sometimes further edited) by a credentialed math teacher, Marcos says. The Mathtrain site is powered by PHPmotion, a free video-sharing software platform, and viewers can rate and comment on the videos. Topics range from completing the square and prime factorization to finding the missing angles of a triangle.

http://www.mathtrain.tv

Elsa Sanchez greeted a recent visitor with a dimpled smile, a firm handshake and an air of maturity that belies her 18 years. She explained that she learned to project this confidence only a short time ago, at her high school.
In the first years at the school, the Manhattan Center for Science and Mathematics, she was reserved and participated in few activities. Then a social worker suggested she see Lesly Almanzar, a program director at the school’s branch of the Children’s Aid Society, a nonprofit group that is one of the seven agencies supported by The New York Times Neediest Cases Fund.

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