Making Current Events Accessible to Kids Many parents and teachers grew up doing dull current-events reports based on static text found in newspapers. Today's students, who are immersed in a world in which news can be updated by anyone 24/7, need a different skill set to read and understand the world. Classroom current-events time provides the perfect opportunity to practice critical-thinking and text-analysis skills using timely and real-world sources. There should be nothing dull about current events today. Everyday Interest In my classroom, Fridays are dedicated to current events, but that doesn’t mean the world waits. Flipboard – Curate news stories to share through an iOS app. Almost daily, I read the news and use the bookmarklet to add stories to a Flipboard Magazine students subscribe to. Newsela – Provide leveled readings of news stories. For students to be regularly engaged in the readings, they need to be able to comprehend what they read. Flocabulary – The lyrics of the Week in Rap are major news stories.
Whats App? Digital Creativity in Museums and Galleries | University of Cambridge Museums Museum Educators from the Fitzwilliam Museum and Whipple Museum were inspired by artist Susie Olczak who presented an interactive training session on using digital creativity with our visitors. Using a range of devices from smart phones to tablets Susie demonstrated some of the popular creative apps. Paper: (our new favourite!) Instagram: after our initial silly photo share moments we started to discuss how this might work and how it has great potential for modifying and sharing images that you take during your Museum or Gallery visit, plus as a way of ‘hash tagging #’ your event, workshop, exhibition. Vine: very short video and stop gap animation options, which are good for making creative responses to share online and to experiment with moving image. We talked about several other similar apps; Sketch, Bamboo paper, Pic Collage, Book creator. But behind all this digital creativity is an individual visitor engaging with their experience of the Museums. Like this: Like Loading...
Classroom Resources for Martin Luther King, Jr. Day Lesson Plans, Activity Ideas & Other Resources for Teaching MLK Day by Phil Nast for NEA Found In: Arts, Language Arts, Social Studies, PreK-2, 3-5, 6-8, 9-12 Help students put in perspective Martin Luther King, Jr.'s life, his impact on the Civil Rights Movement, and his significance to American culture and history. Kunskapsplattan Visualizing Emancipation - An Interactive Map for U.S. History Students Visualizing Emancipation is an interactive map developed by historians at the University of Richmond. The purpose of the map is to show how the institution of slavery slowly came to an end during the Civil War. The events on the map are based upon newspaper reports, official military and government records, personal papers, and books. While viewing the Visualizing Emancipation map you can choose to display emancipation events according to source type or event type. There are ten event types included on the map. Those events types include topics like "African-Americans Helping the Union," "Orders or Regulations," and "Fugitive Slaves." Applications for Education The "for teachers" section of Visualizing Emancipation offers a small collection of lesson plans and questions to guide your use of the map in your classroom. H/T to Maps Mania.
Resources Archives - It’s OpenAccess Week and here at Athens Technical College we are building a community of openness. You can read more about OER and our efforts to build a Community of Open below. CTL Curated Open Resources Presentations Free on the Internet (CTL Presentation; Professional Development Seminar) Open Access White Paper Open Education Resources CTL Open Access Week 2014 Resources This document What is Open? Open focuses on free, unrestricted online access to content created by users (faculty, students, trainers, teachers, researchers, scientists, everybody!)
Culture Resources | Explor-A-WorldExplor-A-World Cultural learning helps to bring languages alive! One of our program’s focus is to help educate young children about how people live around the world. From daily living to special traditions, each lesson includes a unique cultural topic that kids can relate to, along with activities to get them thinking about the world around them. Our handy guide to Cultural Connections illustrates the variety of topics included in the program. Want to research some more about a particular cultural topic included in our lessons? Color-coded by culture, you’ll find a variety of English-language sites to help you extend your cultural learning.
5+ Ways to Use ThingLink for Teaching and Learning - Getting Smart by Susan Oxnevad - DigLN, edchat, EdTech Find Resources and Directions for Use Here What is ThingLink? ThingLink is a free and user friendly digital tool that provides users with the ability to turn any image into an interactive graphic. My Journey with ThingLink As someone who is actively engaged in the never-ending search for free and user friendly digital tools, I was thrilled to discover ThingLink. Ways to Use ThingLink for Teaching and Learning Once you experiment with ThingLink I’m sure you will come up with many ways to use it for teaching and learning. 1. ThingLink provides teachers with opportunities to design multimedia rich student driven learning experiences that offer flexible learning paths to meet the diverse learning needs of all students. 2. Using an interactive graphic to introduce new technology to a group of teachers or students can be a very effective and appealing to those who are hesitant to learn to use new technology. 3. 4. 5. Students today should have plenty of opportunities to engage in research.
Create Trading Cards for Historical and Fictional Characters - The Web Version Yesterday, I wrote a post about Read Write Think's Trading Cards iPad App. That post got reTweeted like crazy and this morning I had a couple of people ask if there is a version of the app that can be used on a computer. The answer to that question is yes. Read Write Think's Trading Card Creator on the web offers the same creation features that are found in the iPad app. This morning I used the web version of the Trading Card Creator to create an Abraham Lincoln trading card. To create the card I found a public domain image of Lincoln, uploaded it to the template provided by RWT, and completed the fields that asked for information about Lincoln's life. Applications for Education Just like with the iPad app students can use the RWT Trading Card Creator on the Web to create a set of trading cards about characters in a novel, to create a set of cards about people of historical significance, or to create cards about places that they're studying in their geography lessons.
The Tarrant Institute for Innovative Education - Student-centered, tech-rich innovative learning. So much of the change we need to see right now can be kicked off by starting conversations with members of your community. It takes a certain amount of courage to address issues that affect your whole community — such as bullying, hate speech and equity — with people who you may never have spoken with before. But it’s effective. Continue reading Last spring Christie Nold, a 6th grade teacher at Frederick H. Overwhelmed by her own emotions, Nold also knew that she had to find a way to help her students deal with their own understandings and emotions about the graffiti. Continue reading At the Queer Straight Alliance (QSA) at Crossett Brook Middle School in Duxbury, Vermont, young adolescents have carved out a space where they can be their authentic selves. As we kick off the third season of our podcast, let’s hear more about Crossett Brook’s QSA by listening to one of the students instrumental in its formation, as well as some of the educators who support them. Continue reading Like this:
A Great Timeline for U.S. History Students The American Revolution Center has a fantastic interactive timeline about the American Revolution. The timeline features an easily navigated combination of text and images. Click on any event in the timeline to view a short paragraph about that event. Click on an image of an artifact in the timeline and a you will see an enlarged image of that artifact. The page hosting the enlarged artifact image also hosts a description of the artifact and in some cases a video podcast about the artifact. Applications for EducationThe American Revolution Center's timeline could be used as a primer for a study of the American Revolution or as a review of the Revolution.
NCHGC: History: Who Owns Grand Canyon Bass mining claim in Copper Canyon. William Wallace Bass held a couple dozen valid mining claims, mill sites, toll roads, toll trails, and water cisterns within park boundaries, extending from rim to rim. Given sufficient capital, which he tried but failed to raise, The Bass Trail Corridor could have been developed extensively. At the request of NPS director Stephen Mather, the Santa Fe railway precluded this possibility by buying all of Bass’s interests in 1926. Credit: Michael F. While the General Land Office went about its methodical surveying and disposal of the public domain, Congresses and presidents often made less methodical land assignments to first develop and then later conserve public lands. Generous land grants were ceded to canal builders and transcontinental railroad companies to help fund construction of transportation systems. Congress finally created the U.S.