This 7th Grade Language Arts teacher uses Web Poster Wizard as a management tool.

Want to know how others are teaching and learning about particular subjects? The Slideshare search function works much like YouTube. A search for web tools, for example, brings up presentations such as Using Social Media to Define the New Humanities, a how-to, Teaching with Flickr, and Teaching History with Technology. The search feature refers the user to similar presentations and to other presentations uploaded by the same author.

Skype helps you bridge geographic divides, work collaboratively with groups outside your classroom, and conduct question-and-answer sessions with consultants. It's a useful videoconferencing tool for professional development, and the program can help homebound students keep in touch.

Skype and other videoconferencing tools support inquiry-based learning, and like most technology tools, Skype can both augment the substance of curriculum content and serve as curriculum content area itself to teach a variety of skills. Skype (and other interviewing and collaborative experiences) occur in a proscribed timeframe, and you'll want to focus on planning skills to maximize how your class uses that allotted time. Pre-planning helps keep the conversation focused and on-topic. Discussion, and post-interview analysis of a video-conference foster both critical thinking skills about the subject and about proficient use of the technology. A well-planned Skype session encourages students to probe the problem they're working on to frame and ask thoughtful questions.

Ask students to formulate questions in advance, based upon the project or subject and to develop backup or secondary topics of inquiry. To interview a consultant or expert, students might research their interviewees biography and find any ideas that person might already have expressed about the subject of the discussion. After the videoconference, debriefings pinpoint the most valuable information and approaches and offer a chance to frame what's next.

Neil Stephenson, a middle school teacher in Canada, addresses The Many Roles of Skype in the Classroom, describing an ongoing Skype conversation with a curator at Canada's National Museum over the course of the school year as students worked on specific history projects. How did it encourage learning? Students had the opportunity to see the value of their work in the context of the work of a historian, to get feedback, and to hear firsthand about what curatorial work is and does. Stephenson talks about his first steps with Skype in the classroom and highlights examples in his blog.

The Eisenhower Middle School in Wickoff, New Jersey, recorded Skype interviews with students on field trips to historic sites and interviews.

A first grade class in Virginia talked to a penpal in London with whom they'd corresponded all year. The teacher-librarian who developed the project thought "what shocked them the most was the concept that the person they were talking to had just eaten dinner when they had just eaten lunch!"

Skype can be an excellent medium for collecting oral histories. The Educause Learning Intitiative suggests seven things you should know about Skype, citing and examples from an Arizona tribal college that would work equally well in K-12 classrooms. Students collected oral histories and recordings that were later turned into podcasts and other digital and web-based projects.

The document camera has vast instructional possibilities. I have used my document camera every day in my history classroom. One of the benefits of having a document camera in a history classroom is having the ability to analyze primary sources together as a class. I am able to zoom in on important components of a photograph or text and can invite students to the document camera to annotate pictures or text without bulky markers or transparencies. I am also able to share maps in books easily with students, in color. Students are able to share work they have created immediately with the class without having to scan an image or make a transparency of the document.

This means that jigsaw activities work very efficiently, with each group able to share what they have written on nothing larger than a worksheet. Collectively, classes have created essay outlines and timelines together. The document camera allows students to share storybooks they have created, projected large enough for the class to see. From a classroom management perspective, the document camera allows me to easily show students the worksheet we are working on or the question I want them to focus on. I am also able to place my stopwatch under the camera to show students how much longer they have to complete a task. Finally, my favorite use of the document camera is allowing me to spotlight and share exemplar student work. I am able to give specific praise to a well-written essay or project.

Using the search term "Abraham Lincoln," several useful videos serve as examples of the multiple benefits of posting videos online. One use is to present student projects and use the video production as a culminating activity. Here elementary school students present their book projects on Abraham Lincoln, whereas another Lincoln video offers more of a short documentary on Lincoln and Pennsylvania that can be useful as an introduction to a lesson. A third video, while in need of audio, does provide good visuals of Lincoln's birthplace in Kentucky; the producer of the video is also part of a larger "channel" knows as Geography Educators, so here is a case where a particular video on Lincoln serves as a gateway to other useful videos for the classroom. Teachers can search for videos on Vimeo through people, channels, groups, or videos. By subscribing to Vimeo, users can save their favorites for a particular course and access them easily when needed.

To browse for specific groups and channels, the "explore" button found in the top navigation is a good place to start. Although Vimeo does not currently possess a "History" channel, the channels page lists the several categories of interest including "education." It's worth noting that education is used broadly and mostly includes do-it-yourself and tutorial videos on a wide range of subjects. To limit searches in a particular channel to course-relevant videos, users can select "search these channels." Likewise, searching for "teachers" within the group page can help educators explore groups whose focus is on curriculum videos. One example is Vimeo for Teachers, which has a wide variety of productions across several disciplines. Although only a few social studies or history videos are currently in this group, teachers can glean ideas for how to use videos in the classroom in effective ways.

Overall, Vimeo is a good site for uploading video productions from the classroom, and with enough digging teachers will be able to find useful videos for planning or instruction.