De-Stalinisation: former Soviet leader Joseph Stalin’s body was removed from Lenin’s mausoleum in Red Square, Moscow and reburied within the Kremlin walls, out of public view.

The full study unit covering the causes and the events of the French Revolution takes up to 15 hours. However, in this condensed study unit, designed to last about 7 hours, students will learn about the main causes of the French Revolution. The Three Estates System, the mistakes of King Louis XVI and Marie-Antoinette, the role of Enlightenment Philosophers and the American Revolution are all covered.
The main outcomes are:

A news report, radio broadcast or video newsflash reporting (in a biased manner) about the Fall of the Bastille.
A flowchart designed to link the various causes together meaningfully; this can also be developed into an essay.
A decision-making exercise in which students are in role as members of the National Assembly and the Convention debating how to solve the problems of the country.
A full-scale roleplay activity (”Louis XVI on Trial”) in which the class will be divided into prosecution / defence teams, with three judges, a courtroom scribe and King Louis XVI (played by the teacher). Through thisthis courtroom trial, students will select appropriate evidence and defend its reliability, whilst their opponents will try to discredit it. In this way the students build up some excellent sourcework analysis skills.
An independent research project on another revolution in History to facilitate comparison and contrasts of different revolutions.

At the end of the unit (or later in the school year, as a revision exercise) students should play the Interactive Simulation and complete the worksheet that accompanies it

#historychat is a live one-hour “chat” on Twitter inviting history teachers from all over the world to share ideas and resources which help to develop source analysis skills in the history classroom. #historychat is currently moderated by Russel Tarr in Europe and Bill Chapman in the USA. Bill is actively involved in #sschat, which has been a great success with Social Studies teachers in the United States.

The second #historychat was on “Cross-Curricular Projects through History” and the archive of the conversation can be found here.

Private Eye is a fortnightly British satirical and current affairs magazine, edited by Ian Hislop.

Since its first publication in 1961, Private Eye has been a prominent critic and lampooner of public figures and entities that it deemed guilty of any of the sins of incompetence, inefficiency, corruption, pomposity or self-importance and it has become a self-styled “thorn in the side” of the British establishment. It has always received criticism from some quarters for its irreverent style and for its willingness to print stories that are controversial and allegedly defamatory. This was reflected in the past by the large number of libel lawsuits against it, a phenomenon for which it became notorious.

As Britain’s best-selling current affairs magazine such is its long-term popularity and impact that many recurring in-jokes from Private Eye have entered popular culture.

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Death of Gene Roddenberry, American screenwriter and producer, creator of ‘Star Trek’

Apple Computer released the first iPod digital music player