News for December, 2009

What a wonderful year it has been! Our biggest request has been for us to list our most popular links along the left sidebar, and that is exactly what we are in the process of doing. Starting in January, there will be a much more extensive list of links along the left side of each webpage. Enjoy, and happy new year!

News for November, 2009

Did the first quarter really come and go that quickly? Are we really shopping for turkeys already?

Our latest major project has to do with PowerPoint presentations. Several users have commented that they are using the older version of Microsoft PowerPoint (1997-2003), which goes under the file extension ".ppt", as opposed to the latest version (2007), which goes under the file extension ".pptx".

Here's the deal: We create all of our PowerPoints as .pptx files. Then we save them as .ppt files. This would be terrific, except that a lot of the fancy new features in PowerPoint do not work in the 1997-2003 version. The result is .pptx files that look terrific, and .ppt files that might not look so great. The complaint from users downloading .ppt files has been that they have had to waste time cleaning up the presentations before they could use them.

We have a better solution. And no, it doesn't require upgrading to the latest version of PowerPoint! Instead, we have saved each presentation as a .pdf file which you can read and display using Adobe Acrobat Reader. In fact, you can view and print the PowerPoints as .pdf files online (straight from your browser) without having to download them at all.

While we were at it, we went ahead and created student notes hand-outs of the presentations. Each page of the handouts looks like this: along the left side are three miniature versions of the slides, and along the right side are lines for student notes. These files are also in .pdf format, meaning that you can view or view and print them straight from your browser.

This project involves going through all of our PowerPoints and "redoing" them. We are more than halfway finished. We thank you for your patience and ask that you bear with us for just a little bit longer.

News for October, 2009

The weather here is changing very quickly! We hope that you are all well into the swing of things. Improvements and additions to the site continue. One of the new items this month is a PowerPoint presentation on the life and legacy of Macedonia's Alexander the Great: "Macedonia, Alexander the Great, and the Hellenistic World" PowerPoint Presentation - 18 slides including 7 review questions- Version PPT | PPTX. Enjoy!

News for September, 2009

A colleague recently proposed the idea of a newsletter for frequent users of this site. His suggestion is that we send out these monthly updates in emails, including complete lists of the month's newly posted teaching materials. We shied away from the idea because personally, we dislike mass emails, and tend to send email newsletters straight to the trash. What are your thoughts? Please use the contact button below to share your suggestions on this or any other relevant topic.

News for August, 2009

Is the summer really nearly over? If you're feeling the heat and humidity that we are feeling in the northeastern portion of the country, then you must be nearly as eager as we are for fall to finally arrive!

This upcoming school year looks to be full of collaborative opportunities to work on contributions to this site. As we pursue the idea of teacher-created materials to accompany standard junior and senior high school textbooks, we will add many more to our current listings. Keep your eyes peeled!

News for July, 2009

We hope that you are enjoying your summer vacation as much as we are. The textbook handouts, begun last month, are about one-third complete. If they are not completed by the end of summer, they will definitely be completed during the course of the school year (in time to keep up with course pacing).

We were saddened by the death of entertainer Michael Jackson. Despite the controversies surrounding his life and death, there is no doubt that he was extremely talented. We had the privilege of attending the vigil held in his honor at the old "Hitsville, U.S.A." Motown Museum in downtown Detroit, Michigan, and are sharing some of our photographs here.

News for June, 2009

School's out for summer! There are a lot of things that we are working on, including creating handouts to accompany the latest Prentice Hall history textbooks. We are first working on United States History: Reconstruction to the Present (2008). These are terrific textbooks for use in the classroom, with a lot of nice interactive features on their CD-roms, but we like having something a bit more practical--even "simple"--when working with students. Our first batch of handouts for this book, available here, are one-sided sheets containing the section checkpoints and terms. These are ideal for guided reading use in the classroom or at home.