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The 100th anniversary of the end of World War I has spawned a number of new resources about the war. Two of those resources remind us of the global nature of that war.  Both come from writers on twitter who tweeted the nature of the war in China and Africa I snagged both twitter threads and used a service to embed them below. My thanks to Angela Lee for tweeting both. The first comes from Eileen Cheng-yin Chow, Director of Shewo Institute of Chinese Journalism. Chow notes that although China contributed much to the war effort, including an untold story over 140,000 Chinese laborers who fought on the European frontlines beside French, Russian and British troops,  she got few concessions at Versailles. The thread includes some interesting links including a trailer for a new movie from Yellow Earth Productions called "Forgotten" that is about China during the war. Another link takes you to a fascinating National Post Story about Chinese Labor Corps during the war. The second tw

NOTE: I changed the title of this post from "European Explorers and their Tools in the Age of Discovery" to European Sailors and Navigational Tools in the Age of Encounter and Exchange. I did so because of an excellent essay by Bram Hubbell,  an AP World History teacher in New York. Hubbell notes that referring to the period between 1450 and 1750 as the age of discovery is misleading because it "implies that Europeans were the first to reach the Americas." And, notes Hubbell, Da Gamma, Magellan, and other Europeans were not really explorers,  "They were playing catch up & learning about Indian Ocean navigational knowledge that others had known for 1500 years already!" Studying European sailors in the 1500's? Here are two good resources, both of which might work for short web quests. One includes the Mariners Museum lets you explore the instruments of exploration as well the explorers by time period.  During the Age of Discovery, you can look at s

Images offer students a great way to understand history. The AP World History chat recently asked teachers to suggest images they used in their classes.  Here are a few that I snagged. Bram Hubbell tweeted the handout below for analyzing images which ask students to consider the context, audience, and message of each image. The nine images below cover all periods from post-classical to the early 20th century. The image below represents the Danse Macabre, or the Dance of Death, painted in the 16th century during the Black Death. Here's an image from the Song Dyansty scroll which shows society and urban life in Song China. Here is a 1918 image from an Indian Home Rule pamphlet. It shows the British keeping Indians off Wilson's boat of self-determination. The image below from Puck in 1899  shows Japanese perceptions of the West. The image below come s from a Chinese newspaper in China on western colonialism and the response of the Qing court.  According to the essay from which th