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Here's an interesting and entertaining take on the Sykes-Picot agreement from Adam Ruins Everything.

You might want to bookmark this short clip about ancient Greece for next year or use it as a review this year. This National Geographic primer reviews the political, militaristic, and artistic achievments of ancient Greece in just four minutes.

Here's a great TedEd lesso n from Leonora Neville.  Neville outlines the factors that distinguish the Byzantine Empire from European states and shows how it continued to remain a seat of the Roman Empire up through the Middle Ages.  Thanks to Bram Hubbell for tweeting the link.

Introduce Sikhism to your students with this terrific short graphic  novel by Josh Kramer.   The Wilson Quarterly published it in its fall 2015 issue.. Students will learn about Guru Nanak,  the founder of Sikhism, in the Punjab area of India around 1500CE. And they will also  learn about the tenth and final Guru, Gobind Singh,  who handed down the holy scripture called the Granth Sahib and also the customs and traditions that exist today. Those customs are called the Khalsa and include an interesting code called the 5 K's. Many people confuse Sikhs with Muslims and some Sikhs face discrimination and violence which is why students shuld learn about them.

Here are two terrific short animated clips from two ancient philosophers on how we should live our lives. Both come from BBC Radio 4 and  Open University. Aidan Turner, who played a part in The Hobibit films,  narrates the clips. Confucius reminds us why we should revere our ancestors and understand out place in the family.  Plato reminds us that expertise is more important in running a society than democracy.

Here are some terrific Google chrome extensions that will increase your productivity. For example, use your phone as a remote when you show a Google Slide presentation. Another extension, Screencastify,  allows you to create a video and capture your screen as you talk. You can save any web content to your google drive with the "Save to Drive" extension. Check it out. Thanks to Jen Giffen (@VirtualGiff ) for tweeting the link. She tweets a lot about technology for the classroom.

Here are several excellent clips that can enrich the study of Chinese communism under Mao. The Great Leap Forward Summary Mao's economic and social plan  between 1958 to 1960.  His goal was to rapidly transform China from a primarily agrarian (or farming) economy into a modern, industrialized communist society. The Cultural Revolution Mao Zedong  started the Cultural Revoltuion in 1966 to reassert his leadership after the failures of the Great Leap Forward. Tiananmen Square The Tiananmen Square protests began in mid-April 1989. Pro-democracy students and other protesters who wanted more political freedom in China started to gather in Tiananmen Square after the death of Hu Yaobang, a Chinese politician who was seen as a supporter of their cause on April 15, 1989.