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Photo Caption: John Rabe and the Nanjing Safety Zone Committee (Yale Divinity School Library, Ernest H. Forster Papers) An original version of this post was published on April 19 on Facing Today, a blog by Facing History and Ourselves . And here is a link to the blog on  the Facing History website . Written by Addie Male , history teacher, Upper House Humanities Department Chairperson, and dance ensemble advisor at Millennium Brooklyn High School in Park Slope, Brooklyn. ____________________________________________________ I have long wanted to develop and teach a unit on the Nanjing Atrocities for my students at Millennium Brooklyn High School. As a high school history teacher with an undergraduate degree in East Asian Studies, I see it as an important history that we seldom teach in the United States. It was wonderfully serendipitous last spring when, shortly after my proposal was approved for a new, senior elective entitled, “Turning Points in Global History,” Facing History and...

Green Revolution: Blessing or Curse? This short ten-minute clip clearly thinks it was a blessing arguing the lives saved through the genetic engineering of plants outweighs environmental concerns. In addition to this clip, students might also read this short essay from from International Food Policy Institute.

Here's a good primer on how to do a Socratic seminar. In the Teaching Channel video below, a 9th grade english class tackles the elements of a poem.

   Studying globalization?  Here are a couple of short video resources and a couple links to good websites.  The clip below is only four minutes and covers political, economic, and cultural globalization in an organized and engaging way. Emory University has an outstanding website . As you can see above, it's organized  by people, organizations, and issues. Finally,  here is a keynote address by the New York Times writer and author, Thomas Friedman, whose book, "The World is Flat," is all about the implications of globalization.

Studying the Renaissance. Here are several short clips that explain some of the important elements of the period including Machiavelli and his book, The Prince, Da Vinci and his design of a flying machine, the Mona Lisa, and Sir Thomas More.         

I love Storify as a vehicle for students to show mastery of content. The program allows you you to use social media to import tweets, website links, videos, and other resources into slides. If you were do a story about the the development of NATO, you could import a map showing the member countries, provide a link to a video clip about its development, and write a short summary. My students just completed a Storify assignment on the events of the Cold War. I got some terrific results which suggest that the project really deepened learning and in some instances, judging by the images, I think the kids had fun. Here's the assignment and directions that I created along with links to several completed stories. Storify Project #1 Storify  Project #2 And here's a short explanation of how to use Storify. 

Studying decolonization? Here's a nice clip that reviews the history of the Suez Canal.  It reviews the French company that built it to Britain's purchase of that company's concession in 1875 to its nationalization in 1956 by Egyptian leader Gamal Abdul Nasser. The clip comes from France 24.

Here are three short clips which examine the Tiananmen Square protest in 1989 The first clip comes from TestTube, the second from CNN and the third, which is a link, comes from ABC News. CNN Report on the Tiananmen Square Protests (start- 2:45) ABC News Report (2:19- end)