Tech Talk for Social Studies Teachers: Exploring the Viking Invasion of Anglo-Saxon England (AD 1008)

It was 1,000 years ago that King Ethelred ordered the building of a large fleet of ships to blockade England from Viking invaders in a last-ditch effort to stop a series of invasions that had plagued England for decades. Although teachers may already have a personal and professional fascination with this and other events surrounding the Viking invasions of Anglo-Saxon England, students might require something beyond their teachers' enthusiasm and the coverage offered by their course texts to spark their interest and engagement with the topic. There are abundant online resources available for teachers to use to augment their existing classroom resources and students' enthusiasm for examining a topic that may not hold much intrinsic interest for them. In this article, the author explores how teachers and students might use several Web sites to explore the 1,000th anniversary of the Viking invasions of England from varying perspectives. The Web sites the author briefly reviews here provide teachers and students with a place to begin their online explorations of the Viking invasions. (Lists 6 online resources.)