How we used EdTech in our APUS review

The AP exam in U.S. History this year is during the morning session of Fri., 6 May, so it wasn't too early to plan our review activities.  Here's what my team did, and how we used technology to raise the level of engagement for our students.

Our review is loosely based on the children's game "Chutes and Ladders."  (Teachers interested in remembering rules for the original Hasbro game can click here.)  To prepare our variation, we printed 43 pages of released questions from the New York State Regents Exam for United States History and Government and numbered every page in Sharpie from 1 to 43.  The pages were scattered throughout our library.

(Why use review questions from a high school exam for our AP students?  We chose them because they addressed core topics and were written in a way that would allow the students to assess quickly whether they knew or forgot the material.)

Students worked in pairs, and were assigned a starting station when they checked in.  The first pair was assigned to start at station 1, the second pair a station 4, etc., so that students would not bunch up.  The teams located their starting station, then answered each of the questions (usually 7-8) on their page.

Here's where the EdTech kicked in.  Accompanying each question sheet was a separate sheet with a QR code with the correct answers.  (Students were told to make sure their smartphones had a QR code reader in advance.)

This QR code, for example, gives the answers to Questions 22-29 for the June 2015 exam.  (Try it for yourself to see.)

The students checked their answers once they had finished answering the questions.  They could advance to the next numbered station only if they got every question correct.  If they got even one question wrong they would have to return to their base station and start all over.

This activity was tremendously successful.  Students were fully engaged throughout.  It allowed for movement, using their smartphones as a learning phone and not a distraction, and collaboration as they worked out the answers.  Best yet, students offered unsolicited praise both after it was over and the next day in class.

The New York Times discovers educational technology

EdTech has made it to the New York Times.  The story (Kahoot App Brings Urgency of a Quiz Show to the Classroom) by @natashanyt focuses on Kahoot, described as being "like a television game show sliced with a video game."

For teachers, the fact that a story about a single educational technology app like Kahoot makes the New York Times is a big deal.  But let's hope that it's just a precursor of increased interest in the greater role educational technology can play in instruction.  Technology is a simply a tool, but it is a tool with a high potential to inform and engage the diverse community of students we teach.  Educational technology websites and apps can help students learn digital citizenship; get and stay organized; organize their research; collaborate with teachers and classmates on assignments; create new content; practice and review.  It can also help teachers assess and remediate.

That's why many of us have been encouraging and promoting (like with this blog) greater classroom use of technology in our classrooms.  More prominent discussion of the uses and benefits could lead to increased support in our schools and from our central office administrators.

iCivics.org

I subscribe to education alerts from The New York Times, which can be a great way to stay on top of what's going on with education policy.  They also periodically cover different resources, such as these interactive games, which were partially created by former Supreme Court Justice Sandra Day O'Connor.

While not every student will enjoy the games, they look like a great tool for giving students some application of key government concepts.  I experimented with playing one called, "Do I Have a Right", which focused on setting up a mock law firm to handle issues of Constitutional law.  Another game involves staging a race for the presidency.  The games look like perfect tools for students who need more hands-on application of the civics and government concepts.  I could see using the "Do I Have a Right" game to help students review the amendments before the SOLs begin in the next month.

More Nixon resources: Nixon's Trip to China

President Obama recently returned from an historic trip to Cuba.  (This video [2:45] from the Voice of America shows and discusses his arrival.)  You could use that current event to introduce your discussion of an analogous diplomatic initiative: the American initiative to normalize relations with the People's Republic of China (PRC) that began under President Richard Nixon.

That initiative began with Mr. Nixon's 1972 trip to the PRC, which ended a quarter-century of isolation between those two nations.  A terrific resource to use with your student's is this curated collection from the Nixon Presidential Library and Museum.  That site has excerpts of five taped audio conversations between the President and others.  Each one is accompanied by a transcript.  It would be fun to divide the class into five groups, assign each a different conversation, have them report out, then lead a whole class discussion of President Nixon's goals and methods in dealing with communist China during the height of the Cold War.

President Nixon's diplomacy also set up the next stage in that diplomatic relationship.  More specifically, it set in motion a series of steps resulting in full diplomatic relations between the United States and the PRC during President Carter in 1979.  (This video [4:20] shows President Carter's 1978 address to the nation announcing that agreement.)

Make a Presidential Campaign ad

Here's an extension to an already terrific lesson plan from PBS NewsHour Extra.  That lesson plan ("Lights, Camera, Politics: Create Your Own Presidential Campaign Ad") invites students to create a TV ad for a candidate running for president in 2016.  It relies on students using the archives at the incomparable Living Room Candidate website.

How about: Have students follow the exact same steps (investigate and discuss ads from the television era, starting in 1952), but then create an ad for a candidate running for president in the pre--television era?

Adaptation: Have students choose from among these elections:

• Election of 1800 (the electoral tie)
• Election of 1824 (the corrupt bargain)
• Election of 1860 (4 major candidates; Lincoln wins with under 40% of the popular vote)
• Election of 1876 (the Electoral Commission)
• Election of 1896 (William Jennings Bryan and the Cross of Gold)
• Election of 1912 (4-major candidates; Wilson wins over Taft, TR and the Bull Moose Party, and Debs)
• Election of 1948 ("Dewey defeats Truman" [or does he?] after the Dixiecrat walkout) (Okay, Truman wins)

Once they choose an election, the students make two ads (one each by opposing candidates) addressing a common issue that was important during that campaign.  The students can upload their videos to YouTube, where they can be shared with their classmates.

Extension: Have students show their ads on their devices as students circulate through the class in a gallery walk activity.  Students can tweet their reaction to the ads to a common hashtag, or comment on them directly on the YouTube site.

More Nixon resources: Resignation

The Richard Nixon Foundation has curated a terrific set of eight videos dealing with President Nixon's 1974 resignation.  In this video (4:02), President Nixon discusses his decision to resign.

And in this video (4:19) President Nixon recalls his final day in office.

Video resources to study President Nixon's foreign policy

Here are some terrific short video resources to share with your students when you are studying foreign policy and diplomacy under Richard Nixon (from his vice presidency to his presidency).

Here's video (4:08) of the 1959 Kitchen Debate:

Here's a video (14:22) of President Nixon announcing the 1970 incursion into Cambodia.

In this clip (3:33), President Nixon announces his 1971 trip to China.

This clip (2:33) assesses the impact of that visit.

This clip (2:38) discusses withdrawal of U.S. troops from Vietnam.

A Look Back to Primaries in 1968

With all the primary chaos going on this year,  it has been a government/U.S. history teacher’s dream for provoking thoughtful class discussion.  It’s the perfect opportunity to include some discussion of other key election years, particularly the Democratic Primaries of 1968.   

This article from the Stanford Political Journal is slanted, but provides some nice parallels to the Democratic primaries this year.  There is also this article from PBS, which gets into the convention itself.  Finally, this article from the University of Virginia’s Center for Politics on the changes Democrats made to their process after the 1968 election. It includes a great explanation of how the Democratic delegate selection works.  

Some classroom ideas might include the following:

1. Divide the class into thirds, with each group reading a different article.  Students can then hold discussion about each article’s information/perspective.  
2. Read the articles at home or in class and hold a discussion about the parallels between the 1968 election year and this election year.  Students might be asked to hypothesize what might happen at the Republican Convention during a very divided year.  
3. A third activity might involve students reading the articles, holding a discussion, then redesigning the convention/primary/delegate system for one of the political parties.  

I teach alternative education, and my students aren’t always known for their enthusiasm for history and social studies, but this has proven to be a topic of conversation they are initiating themselves.  I also teach five subjects simultaneously (World History I and II, U.S. and Virginia History, U.S. and Virginia Government, and Economics and Personal Finance) and this provides a topic that can be connected to all of those subject areas in some way.  

Resources on US-Cuban relations

President Obama is visiting Cuba today.  His trip is to draw attention to his policy of seeking normalized diplomatic relations between Cuba and the United States.

His trip is timely for our students, because US-Cuban relations are an important feature of the post-World War II era we're studying now.  Here are some resources to share with your students about this topic.

Here's a video (4:26) biography of Fidel Castro.

This video (6:05, from the Council of Foreign Relations) is about the Bay of Pigs.

And this video (3:37) introduces students to the Cuban Missile Crisis.

Finally, click here for a link an introductory essay and primary sources on the Cuban Missile Crisis prepared by the National Archives.

"20 to watch" EdTech leaders

The National School Boards Association just published its list of the 20 educational technology leaders for the 2015-2016 school year.  (I'm not on the list.  #Disappointed.)

The teachers and administrators selected to the list were recognized "for their ability to inspire colleagues to explore and embrace innovative technology solutions and instructional strategies that contribute to high-quality learning experiences for all students."

Congratulations to the all the honorees.  The work they did to be recognized is impressive.  What was really most exciting about the list was reading about the innovative ways that visionaries like these are using technology with their students.  One teacher, Joanna Beck from Georgia, for example, uses technology to "help level the playing field for all learners" by introducing them to digital tools.  One tool that she uses is Remind "to keep parents informed" and to "strengthen the home-school connection." Another teacher, Josh Stock from Kansas, coaches the school's LEGO robotics team and assigns coding projects to his students.  Those coding assignments led to him conducting a video chat with his students with Bill Gates.

Kudos to the NSBA and this year's honorees.  Their work validates the work that we are all doing in this area to encourage more technology integration into our instruction, and inspires us to do more.

Selma-to-Montgomery March: Your Teacher's Toolkit

Here are some great resources to use with your students to begin to drill down to study the 1965 Selma-to-Montgomery March for voting rights.

A good short general introduction is from the National Park Service (because the route is now a National Historic Trail).  Click here and here.  You can also find a longer, more developed essay here from Stanford University's King Encyclopedia.

There are a wide range of excellent video resources.  Here is a sampling.  This short video (6:37) is an excerpt from the PBS "Eyes on the Prize" video series:

This video (1:53) is from UCLA's Hearst Metronome News Collection:

Finally, this video (10:44) from the LBJ Library shows President Lyndon Johnson discussing his meeting with Alabama Governor George Wallace one week after Bloody Sunday

Historypod daily videos

The Historypod daily video is a great resource for teachers.  Each day, Historypod releases one short video focusing on a single topic occurring on that date.  The scope is broad and covers all world history.  Just this month, for example, they released a video (2:44) on the 1968 My Lai Massacre,

assassination (in 44 BCE) of Julius Caesar (2:40),

and the first case of the 1918 Spanish flu (2:58).

The teacher behind Historypod also has a website with lots of terrific resources.  Click here to see it and you can follow him on Twitter @MrAllsopHistory.

Amazing app to make VR images

I learned about an amazing app tonight while participating on the #nearpodedu edchat.  It makes "dynamic spherical photos," which means that you can scroll across an image to see it in all angles left and right, and up and down.  If you've ever seen this 3D virtual tour of the Sistine Chapel you'll know exactly what I'm talking about.  Now you can make images like this on your iPhones.

They called these images bubbles.  The app is called bubbli and I created my first practice in a few minutes.  It's that easy and is that cool.

Here's how it works.  Download the app, open it, then click the record icon.  Pivot your body so that you record everything around you.  (Yes, up and down and left and right.)

When you stop recording you upload the images to the cloud, where they are stitched together into one seamless image.  Once you see the image you'll see why Bubbli's slogan is, "The next best thing to being there."

The output images are amazingly clear.  You can share what you create via email or social media.  You have the option to record sound while you are recording.  And it's FREE (but only for iPhones...for now).

It's easy to see how we could use Bubbli with our students.  Make it the presentation tool for projects they would do outside school, as, for example, if they built a World War I trench at home.  Or they could make a Bubbli of a battle scene, like the Siege at Yorktown or the D-Day landings.  Really they could use it for anything they built that was three-dimensional.   

Bubbli has a well-developed set of video tutorials.  Click here to see them.  

And click here for a 2013 USA Today rave review about Bubbli.  Add my own raves to the list.

Terrific video series on the African-American experience

BBC has a terrific series of 51 short videos (each under 9 minutes) on the African American experience from World War II, through the Civil Rights Movement, to more modern times.  The series, titled "Witness," offers a mixture of narrative and first-person recollection to illustrate each topic.  This video is about the World War II-era Tuskegee syphilis study.

This video is about the 1960 Greensboro lunch counter sit-ins.

This video is about the 1963 Sixteenth Street Baptist Church bombing in Birmingham, Alabama.

And this video is about the 1992 Los Angeles riots (following the acquittal of police officers charged with beating Rodney King).

Everyone of the videos in this series is well-produced and engaging.  Click here for the link to the entire series.

John Lewis is coming to my school tomorrow

Congressman John Lewis is coming to my school tomorrow.  The timing couldn't have been better, because tomorrow we start our lessons on the early Civil Rights Movement.  So I'm going to focus my lesson tomorrow morning on how Congressman Lewis's activism and leadership is a window into that era.  Among the important facts and resources I'm going to share with my students are the following:

• He organized student sit-ins to protest racial segregation.  In this video (1:38) he describes how he and his college classmates staged those sit-ins, and how people responded (by putting cigarettes into their hair, pouring hot beverages on them, spitting on them, and forcibly pulling them off the lunch counters).

• He was a Freedom Rider (drawing attention to segregated southern bus facilities) and faced a beating.

• He was chair of the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee.

• He was keynote speaker at the 1963 March on Washington.

• He helped organize and lead the Selma-to-Montgomery March for voting rights, where he was attacked by state troopers after crossing the Edmund Pettus Bridge on Bloody Sunday.

(This list of John Lewis's involvement in the Civil Rights Movement comes from CNN.)

Most of us pass through history; John Lewis helped make it.  My thanks to Rob Kerr (@rjkerr), a respected colleague, for arranging Congressman Lewis's timely and important visit to our school.