Tech Tools

Billings elementary librarian Ruth Ferris is my tech connection. She recently alerted me to some interesting tools.

Museum Box. Museum Box is a free Web-based service created in England for use in the history classroom that provides tools for collecting and presenting digital versions of primary sources. Students can use Museum Box to collect sources about historical eras, events, biographies, inventions, regions, fashions—in short about anything that can be digitally documented. More on Museum Box here.

History Pin. History Pin is a fairly new site that asks users to “pin” photographic images to a world map. The images can be of any location - outdoors or indoors - at any time in the past. According to their FAQ, if images “are taken outdoors, at street level and at certain angles, will be able to be layered onto Street View (this is a bonus, not a requirement).” The site has some sample classroom projects, and plans to expand its educational outreach in the next year.

Ruth is also turned me on to the blog, “Technology Tidbits,” which is where I saw a plug for Spliced. Spliced, according to the blog’s owner, David Kapauler, “is an excellent site for editing YouTube videos. … All a user has to do is enter a URL and then select their start/stop times to grab the clip of the video that they want.” (I haven’t explored this because the State of Montana blocks YouTube, but it sounded pretty nifty.)

Finally, I found this rave review of Dipity on the Montana Council for History and Civics Education Facebook page: "Looking for some neat technology tools? Here is a timeline maker that is interactive. From Dipity: 'Dipity is a free digital timeline website. Our mission is to organize the web's content by date and time. Users can create, share, embed and collaborate on interactive, visually engaging timelines that integrate video, audio, images, text, links, social media, location and timestamps.' " (MCCE is a fairly new organization, one that’s definitely worth watching, so like their page on Facebook.)