House of Burgesses from Hip Hughes

Here is a new flipped video (5:28) on the House of Burgesses by Hip Hughes and includes a bit on Roanoke.  Here are all of his many US history videos. 

Reminder Texts for Your Students

Three years ago I started telling teachers in my tech integration course about Remind101 so it was kind of cool tonight when I found out a third high school has now shown their entire school the site based on word of mouth that has been passed around by my former teacher students.  Even more interesting is that they have now secured "Series A" funding for $3.5 million to expand their operation.

While there are certainly other competitors Remind101 remains the simplest one to use to one way text your students reminders for their homework.  But don't limit it to that.  Students can use it to Remind their members about meetings, schools can use it to tell parents about upcoming events, etc.  You can also set the day and time.  If you use it not all students will sign up right away, but if you mention it a few times, it will grow.  Last year I had more signed up then I have students because so many parents wanted the reminders as well.

The video above will show you the easy to set up instructions.   

Politico's Throwback Thursday

James Hohmann of Politico has a weekly web-video where he makes connections between current events history.  They are short, but informative and are great for a U.S. History class or an AP Gov class.  Thus far he has done videos on Presidential Oval Office addresses, choosing a Chairman of the Federal Reserve, and today on Farewell Addresses.

Check them out at: http://www.politico.com/p/pages/throwback-thursday

Last Minute Edits to Gettysburg Address

Here is an interesting article on the last minute edits done on the Gettysburg Address. 

Putting the US in Perspective

Thanks to my former colleague Matt Mough for this great resource. It has lots of different countries laid over the US so you can see how they compare to the rest of the world. 

Back to School Night Flipping

Stealing from Frank's idea to flip by Back To School Night, above you will find the video I am sending my parents.  I am also sending them a Google form so they can think of questions both at home and when they meet me.

To make the film I used Screencastomatic which I have featured a bunch of times on this blog. 

Library of Congress Launches Twitter Feed

The Library of Congress is sharing ideas on Twitter.  You can follow the library by typing in the Twitter search box, @TeachingLC. 

According to the Library, their twitter feed will be a "great venue for educators to learn from each other and to explore the primary sources and teaching resources offered by the Library of Congress.” 

My thanks to my colleague, Jeff Feinstein, for sending me the link.

Tweeting Your Class Warmup

As our students leave Facebook, more and more are using Twitter, among other social media. One of our new hires, Doug Zywiol, is using Twitter as a warm-up for his students.   Most of our students have phones that can text, but for those who do not, Doug is pairing those kids up into groups.  Doug asks his students a question to begin each class (he teaches US and government) and then the kids answer using his @DougZywiol in their text (as opposed to using a hashtag which would do the same thing).  What is great is that his students have to think (key word) and then write succinctly to answer his students, but it also serves as a way to quickly see what others are thinking.  I should add that Doug has always been a tech integrating teacher, but until this year was a "phone phobic," but very quickly has grown to love it.   If you want to see what he is doing, look at the link. I might add that some of his students from when he was in North Carolina are also participating!   

Adding a Video into Google Forms

Yesterday Google added the ability to insert a video into Google forms.  All you need to do is to go to the "insert" tab and then go down to "video" and then find it on Youtube.  Alternatively you could watch this one minute video to do it.  It is a great way to give your students a flipped video and then give them multiple choice or short answer questions.

By the way it does not yet work in Google Apps.  I should add that Google Apps are always behind the free Google Drive due to the fact that Google Apps just gets things later and school systems in general have to decide whether or not to turn something on for its students/staff and there are a lot of considerations in that prospect which is why I put my materials in my personal one and correct all my students' work in Google Apps.  

Jamestown and Tobacco

This is a nice short (7 minutes) on Jamestown detailing the voyage, the hope for gold and the tobacco they found.  Here are some other Jamestown items I have found over the years. 

Live Twitter Chats

Cybraryman has an incredible site that has a ton of hashtags and their times if you want to follow different subjects.  These are "live" hashtags where one goes at the time they are live and discusses topics with teachers from around the world.  As with any Twitter hashtag, discussions are limited to 140 characters, but you can add urls (shrunk - look at my recent post on this). 

Lingro to Translate, Define and Give Parts of Speech

So this year two great things have already happened.  1) I decided to improve my teaching by taking on a co-ESOL teacher and taking 10 very new to the US kids in addition to my load of 20.  Secondly my AP and I hired several very tech savvy people for the department including Caitlin Kimak who found Lingro which lets you click on any word on a page and trnaslate it with several examples, lets you hear the word and tells you what part of speech it is.  So yes, while Google Translate lets you look at more at once, Lingro gives you a different angle.  Above you can see what it did for a running site that I like. 

Three Ways to Shorten Your Urls

There are a bunch of ways to shorten a long url which you will want to consider using.  If you use Google Drive, you have some very long urls that you may want to send to your students using something like Remind101 (for homework) or if you want to write it on the board so students can get to a webpage quickly.   Here are some ways to do it:

• Google's shortener is http://goo.gl/ which not only shortens it, but also allows you to track click on it
• Tinyurl is the original shortener.  It will allow you to not only shorten a url, but you can also write customized ones (as long as no one else has done so).  This is a good idea if you want your students to go to a page continuously (think homework).
• Bitly is one where you can shorten, customize and, if you create your own account, you can keep a list of your shortened and customized urls.  So for example here bit.ly/hallaapcompis the one for my AP Comparative students for homework.  

Google Forms & Flubaroo

Why Study History?

Believe it or not I have yet to meet my students, but will finally do so tomorrow and Wednesday (and yes I am excited).   We spend the first day getting to know each other (no rules, threats of state/national exams) as I believe relationships are the most important thing in my class (yes, even more important than technology!).  On the second day I will ask the kids to get in groups and decide why we should study history.  When we are done we will start the John Green clip above at :30 and run it for 2 minutes as it is the best answer I have every heard about why to study history.  Below is a new film by Keith Hughes on what he tells his students.  After all of that then I will finally talk about what we will be learning and the structure of the course.