Facebook, the third most populated country in the world, is a huge part of many students’ lives. Students do a lot of writing on Facebook. To leverage students’ familiarity with Facebook for a history lesson, Derrick Waddell created a Facebook template for historical figures. This template, available through the Google Docs public template gallery, asks students to complete a Facebook profile for famous people throughout history. The template has a place for pictures, an “about me” section, a friends column, and a map to plot the travels of historical figures. Please note, this template will not result in an actual Facebook account being created.

H/T to Bill Gaskins.

Update: Check out Derrick’s blog Teach the Cloud. 

Applications for Education
Creating a Facebook profile for a historical figure could be a good way for students to record some basic information about that person. You could have each student in your class create a profile then have the students work together to figure out the connections between each historical figure. For example, I might have my US History students create profiles of the delegates to the Second Continental Congress then, as a group, determine the connections between the delegates.

Here are some related items that may be of interest to you:
FedFlix – Movies from US Government Archives
Atlas of WWII
The Map as History