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Why is salt so important in the development of civilization? Why did the Romans pay their soldiers in salt? Here is a terrific two minute clip from the Big History Project that explains salt's preservation powers and its influence on our vocabulary. Salami, for example, comes from the Latin word "SAL"or "salt." And so do the words "sausage," "sauce, and "salsa". The host also points out that since salt saved lives by preserving food, it also led to salvation! 

Two websites, both ideal for creating web quests, review river civilizations. The River Valley Civilization Guide: This website has great short summaries on the economy, social structure, geography, buildings, tools, etc. for  the four river valley civilizations: Nile, Yellow, Indus, and Tigris-Euphrates.  The second site comes from the British  Museum.   Students can read about the adventure of King Gilgamesh, and explore different maps of Mesopotamia. They can also play an interesting game that teaches them the importance of water and irrigation by acting as a farmer in ancient Sumer.

Graphs don't lie. They are based on cold, hard numbers. Right? Wrong! They can be very deceiving but it takes careful analysis to see it as Lea Gaslowitz explains in this awesome TedEd talk , "How to spot a misleading graph." This is terrific for teaching point of view (POV)! My thanks to John Maunu for the link.  

Çatalhöyük or Çatal Höyük (pronounced "cha-tal hay OOK") is an ancient neolithic city located in south central Turkey. It  is important because it marks the transition from exclusively hunting and gathering  to domestication of plants and animals and tells us a lot about prehistory. Along with Jericho, it represents early neolithic communities currently under excavation and study. Here are some resources to help with that understanding. T he Çatalhöyük Research Project is a terrific site with images, maps and essays. The most interesting is the belief that religion may have originated at Çatalhöyük. That belief comes from the discovery of female figurines .  Khan Academy has a good site with background background. Finally,  here are three clips.  First is  a short seven minute clip that introduces the Neolithic site.  Second, you can watch a sixteen minute clip that goes into even more detail. Old Dominion University has a terrific 3D animation  which you can also see below

Here are a series of excellent essays (nine in all) about slavery in the Indian Ocean in the 17th and 18th Centuries.  All of them are written by Karen Williams for Media Diversified.  Williams works in media and human rights in Asia and Africa. Some of the essays are ideal for the classroom, especially in AP World when we cover the early modern period between 1450 and 1750. Two of my favorites include " The Indonesian anti-colonial roots of Islam in South Africa "and " Slave narratives from Dutch colonisation in Indonesia ." Williams explains how Islam spread to South Africa in the first essay.  She notes that exiled Indonesian scholars and royalty first spread Islam among South Africa's poor population. She traces the establishment of Islam to two key figures. One, Sheikh Yusuf,  was part of the anti-Dutch resistance and a key figure among slaves. She suggests that he established the first Muslim community at Colony in 1697. The other key figure in the develo

What is it?  A video platform for students Flipgrid is a website that allows teachers to create grids of discussion questions that students respond to by recording a short video using their smartphone. Each grid is like a message board and the student's 90 second responses appear on the grid as a series of tiles. Your class could be a grid and each grid could deal with one question. Questions are short prompts and can include links to websites. You can keep a completed grid private or you can make it available for your students to view. Here's a link to instructions on how to use Flipgrid. Cost Flipgrid One is free. You get one grid and as many topics as you want Flipgrid Classroom costs $65 a year and it gives you unlimited grids and responses. Possible Uses You might use Flipgrid at the beginning of the year and ask students to introduce themselves to the class. And it might give us teachers an easy way to match faces with names. Debate a topic or show what you know Could u

By St. Gil, Marc, 1924-1992,Public Domain, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=17119541 Educational consultant and author, Rick Wormeli, makes a strong case that it does not make sense to average grades. He suggests that finding the mode might be better. Consider this data: Cheryl gets a 97, 94, 26, 35, and 83 on her tests, which correspond to an A, A, F, F, and a B on the school grading scale. When the numbers are averaged, however, everything is given equal weight, and the score is 67, which is a D.  Wormeli argues that this is not an accurate measure of Cheryl's grades. The same logic applies to averaging two scores on the same test. Doesn't the student show mastery on the material if he or she scores higher on the second test. And if so, why then should we average the two scores? In addition, doing away with averaging should cut down on students trying  to game the system. [It] will help eliminate teacher concerns about students who “game” the system when their