The last two days I have been at the SLATE conference in the Dells. When I go into sessions I hope to learn one thing I can use in my role and one thing I can share with others. Here is me sharing. I think these are two untapped, valuable resources that can increase the literacy across our building. AND increase the variety of text in our classrooms.
Google Cultural Institute
The Cultural Institute is an amazing site where you can take students to places you couldn't before. You have access to art exhibits and museum exhibitions. It includes online exhibitions showing the story, both pictorially and written, of historical moments in ways never done before. There is music, science, history, english, science, art, and the list goes on.
Google Books
There are some great classics on this site to download, for free, if you can't access them anywhere else. The coolest part of this site is the access to magazines. This site has EVERY edition of many magazines for free, including Life, health-based, Popular Science. The magazines don't just include the articles but every advertisement and picture in the magazine originally. You could have students study how advertising for certain products have changed over time, from cameras to cars, from fruit to cigarettes. You could have student research other things that were going on in the world at the same time as a huge event in the "social media" of that era. For example, what else was going on in the world when we landed on the moon or when JFK was assassinated.
