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Gaming the Black Death in the Classroom (with cards instead of microbes) | BoardGameGeek. I had students in three sections of my Western Civ survey play a game I designed to try to simulate some of the psychological effects of the Black Death on people in 14th century Europe. Here are the rules: ComponentsThe game deck consists of four decks of standard playing cards plus 2 Jokers for a total of 210 cards. The role deck consists of 30 cards – 10 peasant role cards, 10 merchant role cards, and 10 noble role cards. The game is designed for exactly 30 players. Set-UpShuffle the game deck and role deck separately.

Playing cardsJokers – represent infection with the Black Death. Hearts – represent happiness and well-being derived from meeting with and talking with others. Spades – represent honor and status. Diamonds – represent wealth. Clubs – represent food. RolesPeasant – Peasant farmers always have to worry about the next meal. Merchant – Merchants engage in trade for profit. Nobles – Noblemen and noblewomen constantly try to increase their status and honor. Any comments? Amarna Letters. Animated interactive of the history of the Atlantic slave trade. Source: slavevoyages.org For the full interactive version, use a larger device. Interactive by Andrew Kahn. Background image by Tim Jones. Usually, when we say “American slavery” or the “American slave trade,” we mean the American colonies or, later, the United States.

But as we discussed in Episode 2 of Slate’s History of American Slavery Academy, relative to the entire slave trade, North America was a bit player. From the trade’s beginning in the 16th century to its conclusion in the 19th, slave merchants brought the vast majority of enslaved Africans to two places: the Caribbean and Brazil. Of the more than 10 million enslaved Africans to eventually reach the Western Hemisphere, just 388,747—less than 4 percent of the total—came to North America. This interactive, designed and built by Slate’s Andrew Kahn, gives you a sense of the scale of the trans-Atlantic slave trade across time, as well as the flow of transport and eventual destinations. There are a few trends worth noting. History, Travel, Arts, Science, People, Places.

What do Spanish, Hindi and English all have in common? They all descended from the same mother tongue: Anatolian, or more commonly Proto-Indo-European. In fact, there's about a 50 percent chance that any given person speaks a language from the Indo-European family, as Shoaib Daniyal recently reported for Quartz. Indo-European languages, a family that includes about half the languages spoken today. But there are still a lot of questions about who founded that original tongue, and when, and how it spread. Under one hypothesis, the ancestral tongue is 6,000 years old. Evolutionary biologists recently usurped this nomadic theory.

The video above, produced by Business Insider, maps this version of history, showing the spread and evolution of Indo-European from ancient Turkey around the world into the languages many speak today. Mr. Millhouse's AP World History Page. Jensen, David - Social Studies / Geography and Maps. 40 Maps That Explain The Middle East. Maps can be a powerful tool for understanding the world, particularly the Middle East, a place in many ways shaped by changing political borders and demographics. Here are 40 maps crucial for understanding the Middle East — its history, its present, and some of the most important stories in the region today. Middle East History The fertile crescent, the cradle of civilization The fertile crescent, the cradle of civilizationIf this area wasn't the birthplace of human civilization, it was at least a birthplace of human civilization. Called "the fertile crescent" because of its lush soil, the "crescent" of land mostly includes modern-day Iraq, Syria, Jordan, and Israel-Palestine.

(Some definitions also include the Nile River valley in Egypt.) People started farming here in 9000 BC, and by around 2500 BC the Sumerians formed the first complex society that resembles what we'd now call a "country," complete with written laws and a political system. The Middle East today Israel-Palestine Syria. Global History and Geography 9.

GLOBAL HISTORY - The Learning Network Blog. One example of the new Science Take video series. As our regular readers know, the mission of this blog is to find New York Times content suitable for teaching and learning — then, via lesson plans, writing prompts, quizzes and more, suggest ways for teachers to use it. In the course of our daily scavenging, we naturally pay close attention to the sections and features that most people think of first when they think “New York Times”: breaking news, Op-Eds and editorials, reviews, multimedia and photojournalism, important special reports and, increasingly, video. But we also regularly search a number of other, less well-known features of the paper that reliably yield curricular gold. When we present them at workshops and conferences, however, many teachers tell us they’re hearing about them for the first time.

Below, we’ve compiled our essential list, categorized by subject area. How do you use these features? What else would you add to our list? Smarthistory: a multimedia web-book about art and art history. Documents/Unit_1/Roman Senate Simulation Directions.pdf. Simulating the Senate: Classics Course Immerses Students in Roman History and Government | Bowdoin News. A meeting of the Roman senate in Michael Nerdahl’s class “The Republic of Rome and the Evolution of Executive Power” (Illustration credit: Abby McBride) “All in favor?” Says Lucius Manlius, surveying a sea of raised hands in the Roman senate.

“Thus granted. Sweet.” Manlius, a.k.a. Bowdoin senior Luke Lamar, was recently elected as consul by his fellow senators — otherwise known as the students of Classics 214, “The Republic of Rome and the Evolution of Executive Power.” The students are immersed in a month-long simulation of the Roman senate of 190-187 B.C., in the aftermath of the Second Punic War. Taught by Lecturer in Classics Michael Nerdahl, Classics 214 might just be the world’s most lively history and government class.

Each Monday and Wednesday afternoon the newly minted senators convene in a classroom in Adams Hall, where they debate and vote on domestic and international events, with an eye toward maintaining the welfare of Rome and advancing their own political success. Www.mapsofwar.com/images/EMPIRE17.swf. Global History and Geography 9. World History Connected | Vol. 10 No. 1 | Clara Webb: Beyond Memorization: Rethinking Maps in the History Classroom. As teachers, it's hard not use our past experiences as students as a barometer for what we do in our classrooms.

When I think about using maps in my history classes, my mind often replays a memory from my own ninth grade Western Civ' experience: Mr. Johnson distributed blank outline maps of Europe. Like good honors students, we dutifully looked up and labeled each country. We memorized the map. We took a test. We repeated this process for each continent until we had memorized every country in the world. Maps can be powerful visual tools that provoke us to think about the how and why of history. If our goal is to prepare students to work, communicate, and solve problems in today's world, then we need to move them move beyond memorizing.

As history teachers of particular courses, we may not be able to teach every dimension of geography, but we can get students in the habit of analyzing issues—past and present—through a geographical lens. 1) What is the theme and time period of the map? Records :: CrashCourse World History Poster (3 of 3) 18 TEDTalks for World History Classrooms - Angela Hamblen Cunningham.