World History Teachers Blog

Storify and Telling a Story Using Social Media

2013-06-19T21:58:00.001-04:00

George's post has me searching for Storify items as I have never used it before, but am incredibly intrigued.

The idea is that students can research on the web for information that is found on social media and then create a story. Video, G+, Twitter, Facebook and several other media can be used. You can also add in titles and comments and easily manipulate the order. Here is a written document for how to use it and above is a short how to video.

Below is an example of Storify telling about the Arab Spring. Think about the possibilities!

More on Twitter: Educators Discuss its Value

2013-06-18T20:47:00.001-04:00

Jerry Bluemengarten and Sean Junkins, a technologist in the Myrtle Beach, SC schools discuss the value of Twitter in the slideshow below. (I collected the tweets into a program called Storify and saved it as a slide show.)

10 Tips for Using Twitter in Education

2013-06-17T17:33:00.000-04:00

Steven Anderson, instructional technologist for Winston-Salem/Forsyth County Schools in Winston-Salem, NC,offers 10 good tips for using Twitter in education in this article for T.H.E. Journal.. Some of his suggestions include:

Find good hastags to follow--they can expand the impact of a tweet more than the number of followers an account has
Check out the hashtag #edchat and check out Jerry Blumengarten's collection of educational hashtags at http://cybraryman.com/edhashtags.html
Who you follow is more important than the number of followers you have
Don't use twitter.com except to register your account. Use third party software like TweetDeck. Anderson likes the older version and the way it allows you to categorize your tweets.
Expand who you follow with lists--you can create lists for different groups--world history teachers, religion teachers, psychology teachers, etc.
Save tweets. You can use Diigo for that. (diigo.com/tools/save_tweets)

Using Voice Comments with Google Docs

2013-06-17T06:55:00.001-04:00

If you collect assignments through Google docs, you can grade and comment on on those assignments with voice comments. Tucker English walks you through the process here at TeacherCast. The process is simple. I tried it it and it works well. When you open a Google document, click connect to more apps, just like the photo in the article. Then, every time you open a document, you just click open with "voice commands."

The China-Africa Convergence: Can America Catch Up?

2013-06-16T17:17:00.002-04:00

"Africa will grow faster than any other continent, including Asia," argues Howard W. French in this excellent NY Times story.

The growth is based on a demographic transformation--strong population growth skewed toward the energetic youth and rapid urbanization. According to French, "the continent is urbanizing at rates unsurpassed in human history."

French believes that this unprecedented growth requires America to rethink its African foreign policy. "The United States has a big potential role to play in helping African nations think through issues of urban creation, renewal and planning, as well as the development of better systems of sanitation, power, transportation and housing."

The author, Howard W. French, is an associate professor at the Graduate School of Journalism at Columbia University and wrote the article on the eve of president's Obama's visit to three Africa democratic nations.

This might be an terrific story for students to read as they study the post-cold war period in world history. Thanks to Nicholas Kristof for tweeting the story.

Rubrics for Every Assignment

2013-06-15T22:38:00.001-04:00

One of the questions I get (and I get a lot of them) is how do you grade online assignments. My short answer is that I like rubrics, but there are as many rubrics as there are assignments. So one of the webpages I like is Ribistar which has improved a lot since I wrote about it three years ago. Now you simply use the drop down menu to answer some questions about your assignment and just like that you have a rubric. Give it a try.

DBQ Prezi on the fall of Rome

2013-06-15T22:18:00.000-04:00

Fall of Rome DBQ on Prezi

Believe it or not, I will be meeting my world history students for the last time this coming Tuesday to give them their final grades for the year. Looking back, though, one of the best things I did is to have them write this essay (above) on decline of Rome which Charlie Perryman put up for his students. I also made a video telling them how to manipulate the Prezi and be able to see it and your Google Document on which one could write the answers to the DBQ questions. I liked the DBQ because if you follow the questions on it, the essay almost writes itself and so teaches the students who struggle with writing a valuable skill as well as great facts on Rome.

MOOC Free Summer Courses

2013-06-12T14:39:00.001-04:00

With summer approaching very quickly (yes I still have students until June 18th!), there may be time for you to recharge and try something else. One thing you might want to do is to take free courses online called a Massive Open Online Courses (MOOC). Here is the complete list and here are the ones for the humanities.

Artwork for One and All

2013-06-11T16:00:00.000-04:00

The National Gallery of Art and other museums like the Rijksmuseum in Amsterdam have begun uploading and offering their artwork to the public to view and and download as they like. In a statement in The NY Times, National Gallery spokesperson, Deborah Ziska, says: "I don’t think anyone thinks we've cheapened the image of the Mona Lisa. people have gotten past that, and they still want to go to the Louvre to see the real thing. It’s a new, 21st-century way of respecting images."

So, if your students are studying art in any period of history, they might take a look at the National Gallery of Art's online exhibit, or the Google Art Project. But not all museums allow you to copy and download digitized images. According to the Times, for example, The National Gallery of London has digitized over 2500 artworks but does not allow for free downloads. Open Culture also has a story about this new trend.

25 People W Should Have Won the Nobel Peace Prize but Didn't

2013-06-09T10:16:00.004-04:00

Interesting clip outlining 25 people who did not win the Nobel Prize but probably should have won. Some of these include people like Václav Havel, Mahatma Gandhi, Eleanor Roosevelt, Oskar Schindler, and Cesar Chavez. Thanks to Anna Searcy for tweeting the link. As she suggests, it might be good way to end the year.

Abstract-Expressionist Art: An Interactive Tool

2013-06-08T21:13:00.002-04:00

Here's a great interactive online tool for making your own abstract or expressionist art. It's from the NY Times Innovation issue and might be fun for students when studying art in the 20th century. My thanks to Jeff Feinstein for sending me the link.

Origins of Turkey's Demonostrations

2013-06-07T21:29:00.000-04:00

Excellent short clip, from AlJazeera, about the origins of the demonstrations in Turkey (just less than 3 minutes)

Four Cool IPad Apps

2013-06-07T20:36:00.002-04:00

Sean Junkins, in this Google hangout web cast from Edudemic, reviews four I-Pad apps that are great for content creation. Junkins is a learning specialist in the Myrtle Beach, SC school district. He reviews Splice (movie making app), Poplet, (timeline among other things), Haiku Deck (a little like PowerPoint), and Morfu (create famous figures and have them talk).

Have Your Students Meet Foreign Students Online

2013-06-07T17:23:00.001-04:00

Today one of my 9th grade classes had an usual experience. We had a video conference with a class of like aged students in Italy set up by Face to Faith. Yes the name gave me pause at first thinking about our First Amendment limitations, but my hesitation was unfounded. The organization was founded by former British PM Tony Blair to connect students from multiple countries. You can do it as a one time shot or meet multiple times and even have your students chat in their closed network. So how did it work?

I contacted FTF just three weeks ago and they were incredibly quick about getting me started. I checked my equipement with a tech person in India and then set up my files on their website - all within four days of my initial e-mail. Then I exchanged e-mails with my teaching peer in Italy and we Skyped each other a few days ago. We also exchanged videos about your schools made by our students (none of which is required) so I knew the Italians were taking an English class and I must say they spoke quite fluently. You do not need much technical experience other than how to download and run a video conferencing program called the BlueJeansNetwork, and how to plug in a mic, LCD and speakers.

This morning I got to school about fifty minutes before the conference and connected in 30 minutes before. We had our tech friend in India, our moderator in London, our school friends in Italy and we are just outside of D.C. The questions ranged from "What is your typical day like" to what do you do after school, foods you like, items you study at school." We did briefly discuss religion, but only to ask a few volunteers what religion (not surprisingly all Catholic in Italy and many religions in my school). they practiced. My kids loved the experience and other than being shy to speak on the mic it went very well.

Easily Make MC Tests in Google Forms

2013-06-04T22:41:00.001-04:00

We have a test maker for which we have to cut and paste each part of multiple choice questions into the "a" section and the "b" one, etc. Well here is a much faster way for you to make convert your multiple choice questions to Google Form tests so students can take them online. It is as easy as pasting the entire answer into the "a" slot in Google Form (as you can see above). So very quickly you can make an exit ticket or even and entire test. I found the tip from the Google+ group Google in Education.

Protests in Turkey

2013-06-04T08:25:00.003-04:00

Here's a 90 second clip showing the brutality of the demonstrations in Turkey last week. And here is an excellent article from Mother Jones outlining the causes of the demonstrations. Finally, here are several other stories about the crisis from the New York Times and other sources.

Turkey's Authoritarian Turn (Seyla Benhabib, NY Times)
As Turks Challenge Their Leader’s Power, He Tries to Expand It (New York Times)
Gallery: Protest in Turkey (Reuters)
Police Against Protests in Istanbul (New Yorker)
Turkish Opinion Poll Finds Majorities Slam Erdogan policies on Alcohol, Syria (Juan Cole,Informed Consent)

18 TEDTalks for World History Classrooms

2013-06-03T19:17:00.001-04:00

Tom Wujec discusses the 13th-century astrolabe in this 9 minute Ted Talk. It is one of 18 Ted Talk videos that Kentucky teacher, Angela Hamblen Cunningham put together on her blog which you can find here. Some of these include: David Christian: The History of Our World in 18 Minutes,David Macaulay: Rome Antics, Tracy Chevalier: Finding the Story Inside the Paintin, and Neil MacGregor: 2600 Years of History in One Object. When you get to Angela's site, you may have to click on "blog" to get to the 18 World history videos.

Joseph Nye on Global Power Shifts

2013-06-02T20:02:00.001-04:00

Historian and diplomat, Joseph Nye, discusses power in the 21st century in this fascinating Ted Talk. Nye argues that power is changing and sees two types of change. The first is that power is shifting from west to east. Actually, Nye says power is returning to the east. The second change, Nye argues, is that power is moving from states to non-state actors. He notes, for example, that non government actors, like terrorists, killed more Americans in 2001 than the Japanese did when they attacked America in 1941.

Nye discusses the implications of these changes and suggests they are not necessarily negative. My thanks to Angela Hamblen Cunningham for tweeting the link to this. You can also find on her blog 23 other Ted Talk videos for government and civics classes.

Elizabeth I's Spy Master

2013-06-01T10:08:00.000-04:00

This was your fate if you plotted against England's great monarch, Elizabeth 1, and were captured. Elizabeth's network of spies discovered a number plots to overthrow the queen and replace her with the Catholic, Mary, Queen of Scots. As this BBC History story reports, "it is a testament to the success of this secret service that Elizabeth died peacefully of old age and not at the hands of an assassin."

Elizabeth's secret service was headed by Francis Walsingham, and as the story and slideshow suggest, some of the exploits of Walsingham rival some of the best CIA plots today. For example, Walsingham intercepted coded letters, from Mary, like the one below, and hidden in beer barrels.

The BBC tells this exciting story in pictures, which you can view here. My thanks to my colleague, Jeff Feinstein for sending me the link.

Using YouTube in Your Classroom

2013-05-31T20:50:00.001-04:00

I found this great slide show on Crash Course for Educators which I found from one of the communities I follow on Google+. Soon I will do a post on all the amazing new teacher and technology posts you can follow as they are growing quickly. The video above is ten ways you can use YouTube to improve your classroom from ways to have stations, to flipping your class, to posting message to students and parents and more.

Monthly Most Hit Posts for World History Teachers' Blog

2013-05-31T19:26:00.002-04:00

Thanks to all of the new visitors to the three blogs (US, world and government) as we now have a new monthly record of 65,000 page views. The most hit for the world history teachers' blog are:

AP Summer Institutes

2013-05-30T20:07:00.001-04:00

The best summer institute I have ever attended starts on June 10th in Salt Lake City where I will be grading AP US Government exams, but I have gone to a number of great summer institutes (World, US, Comparative and US Government) over the years and always came away much richer for the experience. They are great chances to get lots of assignments (I got tons this year for AP Comparative last summer) from both the presenter and others are the in-service, video clips, how to to understand free response and multiple choice questions. Generally the presenters also make you go through and answer the multiple choice questions at night which is important as you have to get to know all of the released questions (essay and mc). It is also a good place to make new friends and connections that can help your teaching in the coming years.In case you can still swing getting the money from your school district, go here and plug in the appropriate institute you'd like to attend.

Around the World in 80 Treasures: An End of the Year Project

2013-05-30T07:52:00.000-04:00

Here's an idea for an end-of-the year world history project. In Virginia, we still have a couple of weeks of school although we have completed the AP tests and the end of the year state tests. The project is based on Dan Cruickshank's BBC documentary, Around the World in 80 Treasures. Students have to find 13 objects that represent the time periods of history that we have studied, the six themes of history, and the different regions. So each object must represent a time period, a theme, and a region. Here's a link to the the World 9 assignment and here's a link to the World 10 assignment. I usually show the kids one or two clips from the video to show them how the objects can tell a story. And there is also the great book, A History of the World in 100 Objects.

Tip Sheet for Google Hangouts

2013-05-28T20:01:00.003-04:00

Here's a follow up on Ken's post on Google hangouts. Here is a great tip sheet showing you how to start using the program. The tip sheet was developed by Chicago school tech innovator, Jennie Magiera

MacWorld Writes About Our iPad Pilot

2013-05-28T12:22:00.000-04:00

Macworld just did a piece on the new iPad e-books which my students piloted for Houghton Mifflin Harcourt. If you are interested in the "books," it is a lengthy piece that goes into great deal on benefits of the iPad e-book MacWorld is decidedly pro Apple so if you want a little more balance see my earlier post.