There was an interesting article in the NY Times on Monday about a history fan who is using Twitter to “live-tweet” the events of WWII as if they were happening in real time. The Twitter feed now has hundreds of thousands of followers.
The “live-tweeting” of historic events gives them a real-time urgency and feel. As Timothy Snyder, a professor at Yale said “People in the past weren’t living in the past, they were living in their own present. These kinds of tweets restore to the past the authentically confusing character of the present.”
I think both of these projects, and many of the links on the NYTimes article to other projects, could be useful in WHII or USHistory classes. They could spark an inspiration for a classroom project on twitter that could capture students interest as they “live-tweeted” a historic event or era, or even used twitter’s 140-character posts as a “micro-review” for midterms.
I was asked for ideas for technology projects for a couple of social studies classes for end-of-the-year or review projects before the SOLs. Here’s a few possibilities that may be helpful for teachers. The first three are ones that I’ve worked with a lot recently and have had very positive reaction from students and teachers. At the end are links to more web tools for student projects.
Glogster lets students create a multi-media “poster” that can include images, text, url links, audio and video. Students can add images they find on the web, add a text summary of a unit, or record their own audio narration to go with their poster here are couple of examples:
Here’s a 15-minute video on creating glogs with students that shows each step from adding images to publishing the glog:
Glogster has free edu accounts that allow teachers to sign up and then invite up to 100 students. Having students create review “glogs” before the exams would allow other students to quickly browse and see videos, images, and key review terms for each topic from the school year. You can use arrows and symbols to show a timeline or cause and effect. In the end, glogster is basically a web2.0 version of your basic “poster” project, but now it can include audio, video, and links to other informative sites.
Here’s my post on Prezi. Prezi is a zooming presentation tool that allows you to create non-linear presentations. Basically, it’s one big page that can include images, text, video, links, and attached files (pdf, ppts, etc). Prezi then can zoom and jump from item to item on the path that you set, or viewers can move around the prezi as they like.
Here’s a great example from a middle school history teacher on the Arab-Israeli conflict. It’s a great use of a timeline with text and images and movement to capture the viewers interest.
Animoto is a very quick way to create online videos. You can upload photos, images, videos, text, and music and Animoto mixes it all into a 30-second video. Students could pick a review topic or important term and pick a handful of pictures and annotation to go with it and have a video created in under 5 minutes.
Here’s an example that I just created (it literally took less than 2 mintues) with images, video, and music that Animoto already has loaded on their site. To use as a review, I think using more text would be useful, but I just grabbed 10 images and video clips of world travel and set it to some classical music:
Animoto also has educator accounts that allow you to create longer videos and remove the animoto logo from your videos.
If you haven’t checked out TED.com and their TED Talks, I strongly encourage you to do so. Pick a topic of interest among their tags, and pick a video that strikes your fancy and sit back and enjoy (and be prepared to learn something mind-blowing). They are usually between 10 and 20 minutes, and have great potential in the classroom.
I particularly enjoyed Dan Pink’s talk on the science of motivation. The talks are known for being dynamic, and it turns out that they send out 10 Commandments for their speakers, which are listed below (along with a link to the site that found these commandments which has some further thoughts on TED talks).
These ideas could easily become 10 Commandments for Classroom lectures:
Thou Shalt Not Simply Trot Out thy Usual Shtick
Thou Shalt Dream a Great Dream, or Show Forth a Wondrous New Thing, Or Share Something Thou Hast Never Shared Before
Thou Shalt Reveal thy Curiosity and Thy Passion
Thou Shalt Tell a Story
Thou Shalt Freely Comment on the Utterances of Other Speakers for the Skae of Blessed Connection and Exquisite Controversy
Thou Shalt Not Flaunt thine Ego. Be Thou Vulnerable. Speak of thy Failure as well as thy Success.
Thou Shalt Not Sell from the Stage: Neither thy Company, thy Goods, thy Writings, nor thy Desparate need for Funding; Lest Thou be Cast Aside into Outer Darkness.
Thou Shalt Remember all the while: Laughter is Good.
Thou Shalt Not Read thy Speech.
Thou Shalt Not Steal the Time of Them that Follow Thee
