Unit Plan Canvas

This PLAYground canvas is intended to be an introduction for a middle school unit on Colonial America. The unit would stretch from the creation of the first colonies and stop right before the road to revolution. A lot of the unit would focus on the different interactions between peoples and how geography and religion shaped the colonies. My previous lesson had been on the Salem Witch Trials, which would work well for the religion aspect of the unit.

I approached the PLAYground with a little bit of skepticism; I wasn't entirely sold on the idea and could not see the benefit of a canvas. But after beginning the process and adding widgets and such, I actually started to really like it. For the most part it was easy to learn and user friendly. At time it was a bit glitchy, but I was able to work around it. The only aspect of this that I think could use some improvement would be visual components. I did not like how there was only a few colors to choose from and no font options. I found it harder to put emphasis on some boxes when everything generally looked the same. Also, I wish there was a way to increase the size of the canvas. I noticed that the more widgets I added, the more grid space I got, but that made it harder to navigate and I decided where and how I wanted to put everything. If it had something like a spreadsheet where you can just scroll in either directions forever, I think that that would make it easier to work your way to a finished product.

http://www.play.annenberginnovationlab.org/play2.0/challenge.php?idChallenge=2307&mode=view#network6

SMART Boards in the Social Studies Classroom

After browsing many other blogs about technology in the classroom, I noticed that a lot of people were writing about smart boards in the perspective content areas. Many people have wrote about how beneficial smart boards are in math, English, and music. I was surprised how many people were talking about smart boards. This probably surprised me because in my whole twelve years of public education, I never came in contact with a smart board.

Well, I did. Once. In middle school we had to spend the day in a different classroom because the automatic feeder on our trout aquarium fell in the tank and fried all the fish over the weekend (which you can imagine did not smell well). This classroom had a smart board, but it was obvious that it wasn’t used often. It was on the back-board of the classroom and there were books stacked in front of it. My teacher made reference to it, but never turned it on or used it. So after reading so many blog posts about it, I was intrigued.

I watched a few YouTube videos, I can only say now that I hope to have a smart board in my future classroom. This is a true piece of technology in the way in which is takes multiple piece of machinery and puts it into one. It is similar to a projector because it, well, projects an image from a computer. But it is also similar to an overhead, where a teacher could write on the transparency. Unlike just writing on the whiteboard over the projection, writing on the smart board is interactive and the user can save the creation. I really like the idea of student-created forms that can be revisited by the students later. For example, if there is a brainstorming event or something similar during a lesson, students can come up and write their ideas of the smart board. The creation can be saved and sent out to students, or just tucked away by the teacher for future use.  For social studies, a smart board would be great because it would be easy to pull up maps and primary sources for all students to see. Also, for classrooms that may only have one or two computers, this is a great way to maximize the use of technology in lessons. However, if a classroom has only a few computers, it may be unlikely that they can afford a smart board.

Technology & Pedagogy

The lesson I chose to do for this assignment was on the Salem Witch Trails. I had originally chose this lesson plans because it was different than a lot of plans I had looked at, and it piqued my interests. This lesson plan, which estimated that it would take 4-46 minute lessons, employed a variety of teaching strategies and technologies. The main technology that was being used was the internet. A large portion of the lesson was a teacher guided look into an interactive website that would provide information on the Salem Witch Trials. After each section, there would be a discussion and review of the material that was just covered. There was also a group activity involving map analysis, and some teacher lecturing. For the end of the lesson, students were to simulate a 21st-century "witch trial." I think that the lesson did a good job aligning the goals and standards with the plan itself, but I think it would have been done better. After digging deep with the standards in front of me, I was able to find how some of the lesson fulfilled them, but they were not expressively clear. I did feel that some of the content was forced and maybe even unnecessary. For example, one of the  standards was analyzing maps. The students were to analyze where the accused and accusers lived in Salam and discuss why they came from all different parts of town. I honestly did not understand why this was an activity; there are much better places to incorporate map analysis to meet some core standards (ex: lessons on the Thirteen Colonies, or any war). In terms of how necessary the technologies that were used to achieve curriculum goals, I think that they are very necessary. The internet and research are a great way to help understand some of the goals outlined in the NJCCCS.

Spreadsheet

Skype for Social Studies

 The more I research on tips, methods, and resources for integrating technology into the classroom, I feel like I’m running into the issue of using technology for technology’s sake. A lot of the ideas I read about seem so forced and so time consuming that I wonder if it’s even worth it. One of these ideas is using Skype in the classroom, but once I actually began to look into it I saw many benefits.

The best place to go to connect with other classrooms is the Skype Education website. This is a page where classrooms can post topics that they are interested in Skyping about. When you first go to the website, you choose the subject, and then you can search through postings on different topics. Each topic has information describing who is posting the ad, and what they are looking to do. Some postings are younger classrooms talking about their hometown, and want to connect with other young classrooms to hear what they like about their town. I saw a lot from different countries wanting to connect with an English-speaking classroom. There were even some debates going on in the high school grades.

The best aspect of using Skype in the classroom is being able to connect with other people from different locations or cultures. I think that the hardest part of teaching social studies is having students, especially younger ones, grasp the ideas that they don’t normally come in contact with. This is especially true with teaching about different cultures; if students don’t interact with different cultures, they may think that they are “weird.” I think it would be very cool if they could interact with those cultures over Skype to help them be more culturally aware.

Another pro to using Skype is that it is super cost effective, and using the service is free. So if a classroom is already equipped with a webcam, speakers, and microphone, then that’s basically all that is needed. Many schools have a tight budget, so this is a cheap way to help students connect to the outside word. I would assume that for many schools, field trips are not a high priority when it comes down to money, so this can help students learn from outside the classroom.

Before I started looking at the website and reading about different requests that classrooms had, I was really on the fence about how useful Skype would really be. But now I can’t wait to use this tool in my classroom one day. 

History of Technology in Social Studies

The Scantron: making history have a 'right' answer since 1972

History Engine

The History Engine is an online educational tool designed by the University of Richmond intended to help students “do history.”  It gives students the opportunity to learn about a topic by doing the work of a historian. They do the research, the writing, and the publishing (to the website’s database). I believe that used correctly this could be an interesting a beneficial tool to use in my classroom.  As described by the HE website, their main goal is to make history creative and collaborative in the classroom. They also don’t want the database to recount well known events that are likely in the textbook or curriculum, but rather small pieces of history that make up the bigger picture. The database is available to other registered users, as well as the public.

Each entry published by the student is called an “episode,” and is uploaded as a final draft. Each episode is a story. It can be from a battle, a person, a congressional act, to a correspondence of letters, or a series of newspaper articles. A finished episode will have a title, a time frame, a location, and tags. The text itself should be comprised of one more primary sources, and they should be contextualized within the framework of secondary sources. At the bottom of the entry there are citations for everything referenced in the episode.  

I played around on the website for a bit, and found that it was easy to use. Aside from the database search and about tab, there are pages for the teacher and for the student. For the teachers, it has a guide on how to get started and how to work HE into their syllabus. There are a ton of tips and way to formulate an assignment and get the full advantage out of it. Under the students tab, there are options for research, writing, and “your goal.” I was unable to log in or create a log in, but the research and writing pages have a lot of tips of how to research.  Registering for HE seemed pretty easy and straightforward.

Searching for a topic was also user friendly. I find that a lot of databases can be confusing or overwhelming if students aren’t familiar with them, but this was just a simple key word search. There was an option for a basic search, as well as an advance search. You can also explore tags and subjects. The results are also laid out so that you can get most of the information you need at a glance. Here’s an example of a search result:

It has the date this event happened (March 25^th, 1911), the location (New York, New York), and the subject tags. It also shows the first couple lines of the entry.

By using this technological tool, students will (hopefully) gain a higher appreciation for primary sources and integrate them into their future researches.