Links for You

I get emails all the time regarding new projects and great sites to enhance my classroom. I thought I’d share a few with you:

Cotton Campus – is designed for elementary and middle school students, their educators and parents. The site has resources to help introduce the history of cotton. The site features slideshows, games, classroom activities and a video on cotton’s sustainability, as well as downloadable and printable lesson plans for teachers. Some of the activities involve writing and research, way to develop math skills through constructing and solving equations from cotton word problems, and science experiences involving comparisons between cotton, other natural and man-made fibers. There’s also a quiz or two.

21st Century Abe – has as its main purpose to celebrate Lincoln’s 200th birthday and to take a look at his life, work and words through modern eyes. This site was created by the Rosenbach Museum & Library and highlights the museum’s collection of rare Lincoln manuscripts with a digital documement viewer, artists’ interpretations, commentary from a renowned Lincoln scholar & contests for the best user submissions.

Have you checked out the PBS show called History Detectives? I was recently informed that PBS Engage is featuring History Detectives, Tukufu Zuberi, as part of the ongoing PBS Engage series called “Five Good Questions”. The series features a PBS celebrity or insider and asks vistors to to send in questions to be answered the following week. The blog series has been very successful. Tufuku Zuberi will be the feature this week coinciding with a special episode of History Detectives next Monday….February 23, 2009…dedicated to African-Americans’ impact on history and society. You can post comments and questions here.

Democracy Web – This is a new website from Freedom House and the Albert Shanker Institute. The site not only describes the U.S. experience with democracy, but also compares it to that of every country in the world, including those where citizens lack a vote and a voice. There are two sections to the site….an interactive, global Map of Freedom and an online study guide designed to assist secondary schools and college-level educators as they prepare lesson plans.

Fresh Brain – is a great place for teens to explore technology. The site states….We give teens who are great at programming, graphics, or video a place to show off their work and develop new skills in the process…..Students can learn to make a YouTube video, program a video game, or develop a Facebook application.

And finally…..last but certainly not least

Academic Earth – this site brings together video lectures and full courses from leading educational institutions and adds in a user-friendly learning environment. There are more than 1,500 lectures (including history) and there are plans to add more in the future as well as some collaborative features and content in the next few months.

Happy clicking!

This Is the Song, Elmo's Song

Research proves visual learning has many benefits. It can improve attention, it appeals to students with different learning styles, and visuals help to get the point across quickly and effectively. Rapid advancements in technology are providing educators with more and more methods to incorporate digital images into their instruction.

Recently every team in my school used several of their planning periods to meet with a math professor from a local college to go over various math teaching strategies. All teachers were required to be at the meeting even those of us who haven’t taught math in a very long time. Needless to say a few of us weren’t very “into” the topic of conversation until the presenter flipped the switch on her ELMO. I’ve never seen so many lumps turn into wide-eyed motivated sponges soaking in every word that was said including my lumpy self.

By using the ELMO you can project the text on a normal piece of paper onto a screen or monitor. You can also add text as you need to. What will they think of next? It’s an overhead without the cart and bulky apparatus.

Follow this link to the Eschool News site here which has information regarding an ELMO. This resource is now permanently on my wish list of things I would love to have in my classroom.

There are also links here for resources like Cmap Software that rivals Inspiration, especially in cost, as well as information regarding the use of videos and United Streaming which is a video service I use all the time.

United Streaming allows me to upload a video from the Internet and show it on my classroom television, on my computer monitors, or even slide it into a power point presentation. The best thing I like about United Streaming is the large number of topics found and the fact that I can isolate a section of a video and show my students specific things that fit what we are currently discussing.

So, go forth and sing the Elmo song and become more adept at using techno-visuals in your classroom.

This is the song,
La la la la,
Elmo’s song…….

Arrrrh! Need a Hook?

Cinderella, over at World of Royalty reports here that Blackbeard’s flagship, Queen Anne’s Revenge, has been found off the coast of North Carolina. There is a link to a clip from the BBC.

Arrrrh! Just in time for the release of the movie Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Man’s Chest which opens today. See the movie trailer here.

As I checked out some of the available resources, I began to think that this information on Blackbeard and the efforts to research the ship might be a great vehicle to introduce the preservation side of history as well as the difference between primary and secondary documents. Pirate tales might be the thing to hook em’ the first week of school.

Hmmmm…..I may just need to work on a power point for that.

You can find lots of Blackbeard resources here , here, here, and finally here. So, go find out everything you can about Blackbeard, or you might just have to suffer the consequence.

What would that be? Why walking the plank, my friend!

Utilize Those Resources

Any social studies teacher understands the importance of teaching about resources. I discuss resources----human, capital, and physical/natural----everyday in my room. The quest for resources and how we use them are at the heart of any historical event we study.

One of the reasons why Japan attacked the United States in 1941 boiled down to their need for oil. They felt our presence in the Pacific hindered them from getting what they needed. When the Spanish began their conquest of Mexico and South America they understood the need for a large labor force to man their gold and silver mines so they used the labor resource that was available, the indigenous population. Criminals and terrorists the world over have become very savvy in their need to legitimize their financial transactions and use our own laws to maintain bona fide companies that are mere fronts for nefarious activities. I guess you could say our quest for resources is what generates historical events.

One of the things I am often amazed at as an educator is the amount of resources that go untapped and unused in our own buildings. Children with enormous potential choose to do enough simply to get by and fail to use the talents that we all strive for but was theirs at birth. Teachers resist new programs and strategies simply because they are removed from their comfort zone. The software, the books, the seminar manuals all sit unused in the classroom until they are eventually placed on some dusty shelf in a closet or book room. The saying is true---out of sight, out of mind. Administrators often overlook tremendous human potential they have in their buildings as they recommend the same few people for committees and conferences or to develop solutions to real problems. There is a myriad list of reasons why this is done but it is never good for the performance of the school.

An Atlanta area high school went from last to third place in the state’s standardized writing test district scores all because a principal asked someone in the building for help, and that person analyzed the resources available to her. She discovered a writing program that had simply sat unused. By simply going out of the box and utilizing a forgotten resource her school ended up with motivated students and teachers, a beaming administrator, and scores to be proud of.

My happy dance of summer is almost up as I have to return to school for pre-planning on July 24th. As I begin to attempt to ramp up my mindset to “teacher” mode again, I am making a call for all educators to check out your resources. Take stock of your classroom and that dark hole of a book room down the hall. What is lying around that could be utilized to challenge you and your students for the coming year?

Are you already in possession of the one thing that could turn your program around and you don’t even realize it?

You can access Eschool News here for the article about Therrell High in Atlanta.