Technology in History Education

 

My reflections this week are all about leveraging technology to positively impact students and their learning.

My Language Support Historians built community by creating and viewing persuasive newscasts about the geographical regions that make up the United States. Students had the choice of using either the TouchCast app or the new (to me) green screen technology in Apple iMovie.  Writing, speaking, and critical thinking skills were practiced and community building occurred when viewing. Each student wrote two compliments for each video (including their own video) and shared out. 

My US History 8 Historians are in the midst of researching their National History Day projects. Classes are combined every hour at this point in the project so I get to interact with close to 300 students! It's so exciting to hear how they are interpreting this year's theme (Breaking Barriers in History) and the subjects they're researching. Last year I kept noticing that I'd want to share a resource throughout the day with various groups but might forget or a group in First Hour, for example, was wondering about the same topic as a group in Fourth Hour and Sixth Hour. I interacted with each of these groups, but they weren't able to interact with one another (and they might not even know each other).

To solve this problem I created Schoology Discussion Boards! Now students can regularly check the 20+ boards I created for them and I can easily offer suggestions and ideas much more equitably and effectively. Students are required to check the boards regularly and need to post at least once. This will build community throughout the grade level by uniting students and helping them answer questions.

Ms. Amy Bradfield from the Michigan History Day organization came to work with all 8th Graders last week. We are fortunate to have her assist us--her insights are valuable and greatly benefit students. This week we attempted a follow-up, with great success.

Ms. Bradfield and I arranged six 15-minute virtual meetings and students in every class were able to ask follow-up questions from our time together last week. Virtual meetings are now another item in our 21st Century Learning toolkit.

The NHD Symbaloo Webmix is up and running for a third year. I've checked all links and updated others--the Webmix is now three-quarters full. I am so proud of this technology and how many useful resources are at my students' fingertips.  It's a credit to this company that resources like Symbaloo are free for educators.

Between now and Thanksgiving break US History 8 students are continuing research, analyzing their topic in relation to theme, and writing first drafts of their thesis statements, Language Support students are studying American Thanksgiving, analyzing the holiday through a Visible Thinking strategy, and writing about their findings.