Today, I am traveling to Phoenix, Arizona to work with some teachers there tomorrow and on Friday. The more I travel and the more I work with people outside of my home area the more I find myself asking, “what time is it there?” My friend Angela often asks me the same thing when we plan conference calls. Where did timezones come from? What is “standard time?” The answers to those questions and more can be found in the short TED-Ed lesson How Did Trains Standardize Timezones in the United States? Watch the video below.

Applications for Education
To extend the lesson take a look at some of these resources about daylight saving time and ask your students if they think that daylight saving time is still important today.