As anyone that has taught a history class knows, one of the questions that a lot students (mostly male) ask is “when are we going to talk about wars?” Wars and weapons seem to get adolescent students excited about history. Environmental Graffiti has an interesting photo essay that may be of interest to that group of students that is intrigued by wars and weapons. The Earliest Gunpowder Weapons in History contains thirteen images (most in the public domain or Creative Commons licensed) with captions about the earliest gunpowder weapons.

Image credit Gary Lee Todd.

Applications for Education
The Earliest Gunpowder Weapons in History contains images that could spark the imagination of some of your history students and become the center of a conversation. As most of the images are in the public domain or Creative Commons licensed you could use them in a VoiceThread project with your students.

If you’ve never tried VoiceThread, you can find some tutorials here.