The ancient Egyptians believed that eels were produced by the sun warming the Nile; Aristotle decided that eels emerged spontaneously from mud and rainwater. Pliny the Elder thought that new eels developed when old eels rubbed away parts of their bodies on rocks. As late as the eighteen-sixties, a Scottish author espoused an old belief that they began their lives as beetles.
All News
August 4, 2023
August 2, 2023
Can't stand the heat but still craving dessert? Give your oven a sweet summer vacation and whip up one of these no-bake pies and cheesecakes. They're perfect for parties, potlucks, and just because, and they set up in the blessed cool of your fridge or freezer so you can make tempting summer treats without breaking a sweat. Read on to get 15 of our favorite no-bake summer desserts, including peanut butter pie, cheesecake in a jar, lemon icebox pie, and more. It's going to be a cool summer!
Iraq invaded Kuwait on this day in 1990, and Saddam Hussein's subsequent refusal to withdraw his troops sparked the Persian Gulf War, in which an international force led by the
August 1, 2020
In the Summer of 2022 UC Berkeley's Bay Area Writing Project and History-Social Science Project collaborated to support local youth with interviewing elders to develop oral histories! The subject of those histories were elders who lived in Oakland and Berkeley, California. To support learning, project organizers recruited Pendarvis Harshaw to speak to a panel of students. Pendarvis Harshaw is a journalist whose oral history program “Rightnowish” is featured on KQED Radio in the Bay Area.
January 5, 2017
November 28, 2016
California middle and high school teachers are invited to apply to travel to Morrocco, June 26 - July 26, 2017.
November 2, 2016
On Thursday, November 10, from 5:00 - 8:00 PM ORIAS will host an Open House to introduce its new Speakers Bureau!
Where: UC Berkeley campus, in 1229 Dwinelle Hall.
October 19, 2016
Application Deadline: December 1, 2016
Teachers are invited to travel to Morocco this summer from June 26th to July 26th. The program is organized by UC Berkeley's Center for Middle East Studies and funded by Fulbright-Hayes Group Projects Abroad. Click the link above for detailed information about this amazing program.
October 5, 2016
The Travels of Ibn Battuta: a Virtual Tour has been one of ORIAS' most successful, most widely used projects. The Travels of Ibn Battuta: A Virtual Tour began as a Web resource written in 1999 by Nick Bartel for his students at Horace Mann Middle School, San Francisco, California.
August 23, 2016
Application opens October 1, 2016; deadline January 31, 2017
From their website, "Fund for Teachers awards summer fellowship grants to pre-K-12 grade teachers to pursue self-designed professional learning. Teachers decide what they want to learn and where they want to learn it. Their odysseys take them all over the world—as scientists, researchers, artists and agents of change—and they return to their classrooms with new ideas that transform student learning and achievement."
August 1, 2016
Here's a thought-exercise for World History teachers. It came out of conversations at the ORIAS summer institute on Women in World History, based on an assignment described by one of our presenters:
May 4, 2016
My love affair with podcasts began while I was teaching. I don't recall how I stumbled across the show, but after several months of avid listening I began assigning segments from BackStory to augment US History class readings. A little to my surprise, the students liked it.
February 2, 2016
At time of writing, there are 10 National Resource Centers focused on the study of Africa, some of which provide outreach in consortia with other regional centers on their campuses. They offer a diverse set of resources for educators.
Take a look at this small sample of their offerings.
Starting from Scratch
January 4, 2016
A few weeks ago, an old Radiolab episode reminded me of the Golden Record, which I hadn't thought about since childhood.