My mother-in-law gave me a book called How to Teach School Real Good: A Sort of Handbook for Teachers, by Dick Gaillard. It was a joke. I kept it anyway.
The title turned out to be the only teaching philosophy I have ever managed to hold onto. A class that is doing something remembers more than a class that is being told something. Everything on this site comes out of that one idea.
What is here
I teach history, and for years I have been building interactive activities and handing them to whoever wanted them — first in Adobe Animate, now straight in the browser. Matching games, quiz boards, vocabulary puzzles, review games shaped like a drive down a football field. None of them are locked to my subject. You load your own terms and your own questions, and the game builds itself around them.
Where it is going
Far Side of History is becoming Dueling History. The new site is where the games live now, sorted into Duels, Games, Music and History. This site stays up and I will keep posting here, but duelinghistory.com is the front door.
The fine print
Everything is free. It always has been. You can also find my classroom resources on Teachers Pay Teachers under FlashNHistory — also free, all of it.
If you use something and it breaks, or it works, I want to hear about it either way.
