Gettysburg Map

Here is a map which you can go up close or back out again put together by Smithsonian about the Battle of Gettysburg. 

Three Great Informal Assessment Tools: Socrative, WallWisher, TodaysMeet

Here are excellent step-by-step directions from Richard Byrne (Free Technology for Teachers) on how to use three great informal assessment tools--Socrative--Today's Meet and Wallwisher.

• Socrative looks especially cool. It's a little like Poll Everywhere in that students respond to questions on their phones or another computer.  But unlike Poll everywhere,  you can ask students short answer questions and they can respond anonymously.  You can also create multiple choice quizzes. Socrative  gives you a room number when you register.  You use that number over and over and give it to students when they log into m.scorative on their device.
• TodayMeet is another way to poll students in real time. Like Socrative, you create a room for students to log into. Once they are in, they can respond to a in-class video with comments or questions. It's a real time discussion that might even work when you give student s video to watch at home.  Students could discuss the video on TodayMeet.
• WallWisher, now called Padlet,  is like an online cork board on which students can post images, links, videos, etc about a specific topic.  You can make the wall public or private, use it as a KWL chart, or as way to showcase student work. Here's a slideshow on other ways to use it.

Gettysburg's 150th Anniversary

The WashPost has been running an amazing series on the Civil War which I have covered before. It has an interactive maps, personal stories, military history, information on females in the war, Twitter handles to follow and so much more.  If you teach US history (and hey if you are reading this you probably do), it is a must to look at for your class.  

A New take on Collaborative Planning

My thanks to Jeff Feinstein for sending me the link.

Project Based Learning

Interesting clip from the PBS News Hour about Project Based Learning. Thanks to Sofia Georgelos for tweeting the link. Here is more about Project Based Learning.

A History of Voting Rights

The Supreme Court invalidated a part of the Voting Rights Act today. This New York Times article and the video clip above reviews the history of voting rights. The video clip is terrific and provides a great review.

Rethinking Research - Part 4 - Jackie Robinson: Swinging for Equality

Click Here to Enter

This is a student created project which discusses the legacy of Jackie Robinson and the various newspapers who covered his rise.  It also discusses the legacy of Robinson.  This website is intended for use by middle school students.  Use it as a webquest or just explore to find out more.

http://tinyurl.com/jackierobinsonlegacy

Disney Goes to War

Walt Disney did a number of pro-US going to war in WWII.  Above is one of them that goes against the Germans.  Below is one against US involvement in Vietnam.  These are certainly a different way to show your students their favorite Disney characters.  I found this on OpenCulture.

Rethinking Research - Part 3 - Raymond Bonner and the El Salvadoran Massacre

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This student created website looks into the the coverage of El Salvadoran massacre in 1982 by NY Times reporter Raymond Bonner.  His coverage of this this story was refuted by El Salvadoran and U.S. Governments and eventually his lost his job, but truth was on his side.  Find out more about his story.

http://tinyurl.com/thetruthbonner

Gaming & Education: Jane McGonigal

The big talk at the ISTE 13 conference (The International Society for Technology in Education) in San Antonio, Texas, which you can get a taste of on Twitter, is the keynote talk by game designer, Jame McGonigal.  Apparently her talk was so compelling that one attendant set up a Today's Meet to discuss the keynote. For all of us not at the conference, we can get an idea of McGonigal's talk with her TedTalk below. And you can watch one of her more recent talks here.

Rethinking Research - Part 2 - Fake It Till You Make It - 1920's Sensationalist Journalism

Enter Website Here

This student created site looks at sensationalist journalism in the 1920's and makes comparisons to modern day controversies concerning photo altering and whether is a violation of journalistic integrity.

http://tinyurl.com/1920snewpapers

Rethinking Research - Part 1 - A Sedentary Submission to Change: The Influence of the Greensboro Sit-In Movement

A Sedentary Submission to Change: The Influence of the Greensboro Sit-In Movement

This is a student created project on the Greensboro Sit-In Movement.  It is an interactive website that walks viewers through the sit-in movement and how it's coverage by the southern press helped it expand.  

34 Amazing Photos of American Cities From 100 Years Ago

Photos of major events in cities 100 years ago. The photos were taken by George R. Lawrence from his 17-kite airship.The photo below is of San Francisco from 800 feet above 4th & Mission Sts., 1908. You can click through all 34 images and each is annotated in this Chicago Magazine story. Thanks to Cheryl Davis for tweeting the link.

Rethinking Research - Intro

For the past two years my English partner and I have partnered with the Newseum in Washington, DC in an attempt to give our students a new research paper experience.  Over the course of the year students research topics of their choice related to media coverage of 20th century history and write a research paper, but the work does not there.  From there each student gives a sales pitch on how their topic could be made into engaging online content.  The Newseum chooses the best 4 pitches and papers.  Finally the students create online content for the Newseum website.  Here is a short video by the Newseum featuring our project.  

As nearly every Museum in the county has a website, but very few of them have the time and resources to create engaging content, utilizing our students to create content is one way to rethink research.  This a project that engaged our students and the website creation was a great way to use the post-AP exam days to keep the students engaged.

Here is a link to the 2011-2012 Projects.

Over the next 4 days I will feature the 2012-2013 Projects.  Each will be entitled - "Rethinking Research" 

Please feel free to use them in your classroom for webquest or student research.  You can give feedback to me on ways these sites can be improved to meet your students' needs or if you would a copy of the project outline.  Email smcampbell1@fcps.edu with questions or requests.  

PBS Reagan Assassination Attempt

Here is an eight minute look back at the assassination attempt as described by the author the amazing book Rawhide Down (which I highly recommend) and the doctor who treated Reagan at George Washington University.  I found it on PBS's Google+ feed.  Here is a Discovery Channel video on it.