Open Culture

Open Culture is a blog I just heard about from David Andrade, The Educational Technology Guy. This is site that offers free cultural and educational media from the Web. Since I've been using/creating my own PLN, I've seen how much that we can learn from people all over the world. This site does a nice job of bridging that gap.



Give OC a look by clicking here.

Culture Crossing

Culture Crossing is a site I just learned about from Larry Ferlazzo's blog, and truly a great site for history/geography teachers/students.

CC takes a rather unique spin on your typical mapping site. It gives the user an abundance of information that is otherwise hard to get to. For example, if you want to find out what kind of clothes students wear in Japan, or what their school hours typically are, CC is where you would look. What makes this so great for students are the different facts they can gather by clicking on: Class Rules, Socializing, or Misc.



Below is an example of the Class Rules info from New Zealand.



Culture Crossing is w/out a doubt one of the best sites around to learn about a specific place. Plus, there is a quiz section that students can take to make sure they have learned their country. I would suggest using CC w/ Shmoop for the ultimate historical/geographical experience.

For more info click here.

Visualizing Cultures

Visualizing Cultures is a site from the guys at MIT (Scratch) designed to illuminate social and cultural history. The closest thing I can describe this site to is Digital Vaults and Europeana but that's not really that accurate.

VC uses the web as a platform to: (1) examine large bodies of previously inaccessible images; (2) compose original texts with unlimited numbers of full-color, high-resolution images; and (3) use new technology to explore unprecedented ways of analyzing and presenting images that open windows on modern history. (this is straight from their site)

After exploring this site I can only say you really need to check it out. The user interface is completely unique, it's totally interactive, and it is filled w/ multi-media videos/images throughout.

For more info click here. (Free Tech 4 Technology great blog on VC)