Brandon O'Neill

Brandon's Websites

www.mysocialstudies.com

This website offers research support for teachers and students. It offers links to both primary and secondary source material on a range of different social studies classes, including history and government. Primary source material includes historical archives, personal accounts of historical events, and links to news footage and other videos of 20th century history. The site also offers important information and links to culturally specific information, including African-American, Native American, and music history. It is a great site to help you find visual elements that can be utilized in your lessons, including maps and photos.

www.worldatlas.com

This site is a great resource for geography and other social studies classes. It provides teachers and students with a variety of different types of maps that will be useful for research, presentations, classroom activities, etc. The home page includes a global map that is interactive in nature. You can click on different portions of the map to pull up regional and country-specific maps. Students can explore the globe in a sense. It also provides information on oceans, rivers, mountains, and other natural features that are important for a variety of different social studies classes. The site includes data on these resources. Examples include the size of oceans, elevation of mountains, etc. It would be useful for teaching social studies at both the elementary and secondary level.

http://www.presidency.ucsb.edu/

This link takes you to The American Presidency Project. This project comes from the University of California at Santa Barbara. It is the go to site for any and all information on the U.S. Presidency. It contains extensive primary source material. Information available includes presidential speeches, executive orders, vetoes, signing statements, proclamations, and data on presidential approval. It also contains audio and visual files of presidential speeches, debates, and other important events involving U.S. presidents. The site is an outstanding resource for teachers and students in both government and U.S. history classes. Teachers will need to provide a bit of guidance to students for them to use it effectively, but overall the site is well designed and the information provided is extensive.

www.mrdonn.org

This site provides great social studies resources for teachers and students. It provides extensive information, presentations, games, and clipart. It also provides links to a variety of other websites providing more information to students. Students will enjoy the interactive nature of the games. The games cover a variety of social studies topics, including history and government. Teachers will find the clipart and powerpoint presentations very useful for planning and supplementing their lesson plans. The site also has extensive information for test review and research assistance. It’s a highly comprehensive site for social studies.

www.learninggamesforkids.com

This site is dedicated to learning games teachers can utilize for their students. It covers all major subjects and several secondary subjects including art, music, health, and keyboarding. The site has literally hundreds of games that teachers and students can use. The games are highly interactive. They provide a lot of useful information, yet are fun and can be used for friendly student competitions. A good aspect of this site is that the games offered are very widespread. It offers many different types of games, including word searches, matching, puzzles, and spelling. The sheer variety of games can be useful in keeping students attention and getting them interested.