findingEducation’s Digital Teachers’ LoungeTips and insights from the findingEducation team.

Test your students’ knowledge of the notable events covered in findingDulcinea’s “On This Day” column this week with Quiztory. It makes a fun extra credit assignment.

1. Why did the Iraqi army take the passengers of British Airways Flight 149 as hostages in 1990?

2. Why were Michael Schwerner, Andrew Goodman and James Chaney, civil rights workers in Mississippi, arrested on June 21, 1964?

3. What did The New York Times call “a victory for organized labor” in 1993?

4. Which Supreme Court case ruled that an income tax was unconstitutional?

5. What was the nickname for the bomb dropped on Nagasaki?

What’s Coming Up?

Next week, “On This Day” will examine the discovery of Machu Picchu, the Air France Concorde crash, the first prosecuted computer hacker and the explosion at Atlanta’s Olympic Park. We’ll also take a look at the Empire State Building airplane crash, the USS Forrestal fire and the adoption of “In God We Trust” as the motto of the United States.

Subject: History, Other History, Social Studies, U.S. Government, U.S. History, World History
Tags: Quiztory

As the founder of the Global Coalition Project, Bill Reilly has united classrooms around the globe through his vision to promote peace and global understanding. A social studies teacher at Bethlehem Central Middle School in Delmar, N.Y., for the last 16 years, Reilly was named one of Disney’s Educators of the Year in 2006 for his exceptional ability to teach “real world” lessons. Two years prior to that, he was chosen by the American Councils for International Education to represent the United States in a Eurasian/American teacher exchange in Azerbaijan.

FindingEducation met Reilly while attending the New York State Council for the Social Studies (NYSCSS) conference last week. Reilly described watching his students meet another group of students in Belize for the first time through an online video conference. “It was like two groups meeting aliens for the first time,” he said. “They were such different and diverse cultures, and they had such an interest in learning about each other.”

fE: What made you become a teacher?

BR: I was an archeologist for a few years and then an owner of a rare coin store. So I always had a love for history. I then walked into a children’s home one summer, thinking that I would work with kids for a summer until I decided what business to go into, and I never left working with children after that. I teach ancient history to sixth graders.

(more…)

Subject: History, Social Studies
Tags: Educator Profiles

Did you take the Quiztory last week? Now it’s time to check your answers:

1. When Hiram Bingham discovered Machu Picchu, what mythical city did he think he might have discovered? Tampu-tocco

2. How many Concorde jets were built before the jets were retired? 20

3. How did Wells Fargo detective James B. Hume track down “Black Bart”? Through a handkerchief left at the scene of a holdup

4. The Empire State Building was constructed as a competition between which two men? Walter Chrysler and John Jakob Raskob

5. What was considered the de facto motto of the United States prior to 1955? E pluribus unum

Subject: History, Other History, Social Studies, U.S. Government, U.S. History, World History
Tags: Quiztory, The Answer Sheet