Final post for final! with link :)

I feel like the video I made was the thing I was most proud of so here is the link to my video on youtube.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LK71Rrtmdzw

Final Semester Blog

• What do you feel is the most useful technology (or teaching approach) you have learned this semester?
• I think that learning more about Google Earth as a resource in my geography classes was the most useful technology I learned this semester. 

• How do you plan to use this or other technologies in your future teaching?
• I plan to use it to bring the world to the classroom. In my social studies classes I can use it to give virtual tours, show pictures, and just give students a better idea of what the world looks like and can offer.
• How can you use technologies (the ones we learned or others) to engage your students in ACTIVE learning?
• We can use it to do projects and small assignments in the classroom using available computers.  We can also do it as a quiz, having them pick a place and then virtually tour it and find things that are similar to other places.

Participation for first week of December

An interesting technology that people commonly use to share videos can also be really helpful in the classroom. I am of course talking about youtube. When I was preparing for a study abroad this summer I used youtube to find out about the culutre of wales and ireland and also some cool facts that I should know. It was a great visual and its readiliy avaliable so you don't have to make your own video. It is great for history majors because youtube often has clips of historical documentaries that take only a couple of minutes to show but enrich the lessons a lot.

Weekly participation

This week I thought I would go off the deep end and suggest the use of Itunes as a technology resource in Social Studies classrooms. The reason this would be a good idea is because it would allow students to find songs that they find applicable to various subjects of study in history such as Napoleon and the song (falling down but rising up again.) Or the Oliver Cromwell song. Music can be very powerful especially for teens who always connect with music. Showing them songs and allowing them to pick songs out that connect to the subject currently being studied is a great tool as long as it is not overused. You can also use these songs in tests.

Final Project Proposal

World Civilization

Standard 4 Objective 1 :Assess the importance of intellectual and cultural change on early modern society. (Art, Literature, Architecture, and humanities..)

I have decided to do a mix between a virtual tour of various sites using Google maps and videos and then add some pictures for statues and art that can be found using Google maps. It is important that students be able to see the differences in arts and architecture so that they can more easily compare and contrast the differences.

participation (week ending 11/15)

Today I want to share a website that I came across as a freshman in college. The website is Purdue OWL (online writing lab.) http://owl.english.purdue.edu/owl/resource/677/01/  Specifically on this website there is a section for 7-12 graders. It gives a ton of resources on teaching students how to write well. It gives examples of the writing process and many other helpful hints. As a history teacher, I know the importance of teaching kids to write well and this is a great resource to help teachers manage just that.

I-Safe program for internet Safety

This week I decided to do the alternative activity for internet safety. Yes, that means that I actually listened to about 5 hrs of information and most of it was worth it. I feel like that I have mostly known about this stuff as my middle school and high school have been diligent in teaching about internet safety but it was a great review.  I definitely would recommend this site to parents and students to help them understand what really is out there.  One interesting note, I was talking to someone about the information given during the lessons and the person brought up an interesting point. They asked how hiding your real name, picture and other things would really help when the predators are so tech savvy these days that they can just find you anyway. I thought about it for a minute and then said that when I went to London this summer I was told that the best way to avoid being pickpocketed was to blend in. Yes there is a chance that you may still have issues online or may get pickpocketed but the chances are much lower. Predators always want to go for the easy prey, it is human nature. So, by blending in you are less likely to come to their attention. Yes this means that others must take the fall but at least you are trying to help as many as possible blend in.

Participation for 2-8 Nov

I was meeting with a group the other day about a geography project when we decided that it would be a great idea to use google doc to make our powerpoint so that we wouldn't have to meet so often. Now i know we have gone over google docs some in lecture but I feel that no one ever really pays attention to using actual powerpoint on google doc. By using this tool people can add to just one powerpoint without having to combine many of them. it can be done over long distances (I worked on one while on the isle of man this summer while others in my group were in England and the United States) I feel like we should suggest using this with other classes as a multi-class group project. Each Class can be assigned a part in the powerpoint and then the classes can help put it together.

My informational movie

This is the video that I did for the project. It almost completely follows my storyboard that I submitted last week. It was rather interesting making this video. I feel that making a video can be rather time consuming and I wouldn't do this very often.

participation for week 10/24-11/1

I read a very interesting article this week on CNN. The article was about a mexican/american who had served in WWII as a medic and who ended up being put in a slave camp in Germany. This guy just recently donated his diary to the Holocaust museum and it got me thinking that there are some great resources that you can find on museum websites to help bring media and primary information into the classroom. In fact on the American holocaust museum website there is a section that is just for educators to help them teach their kids in the classroom. The link for this is http://www.ushmm.org/education/foreducators/  There are many other museum websites that have similar links. This is great for not only history teachers but also science teachers such as a link at the air and space museum in the smithsonian.

Storyboard

https://docs.google.com/present/edit?id=0AWbD0Mw4odF3ZGQzZ2dqcmJfMzA0cmM1dmdkNA&hl=en&authkey=CP_qxt8D

This is the link to my storyboard

I am doing a movie to introduce the American, French and Haitian revolutions in world history. It provides an interesting parallel that students wouldn't normally get anywhere else. After the students learn about these revolutions they will make their own movie on just one revolution and its impact on the modern world.

Documentaries site

This week on one of the blogs I am following a teacher mentioned an interesting site Learning.snagfilms this lets you take full videos (under the freeware copyright) or just parts of videos and embed them in your powerpoint or google doc. This is really useful especially for History majors because it adds an element of multimedia to lectures. The documentaries seem really good.

Copyright part 2

 This Video Is a lip Dub done by the students of Bloomingdale Highschool probably for pride week. The problem with this video is that since it doesn't really serve an educational purpose the use of the song in the video is breaking copyright. In order for this to be legit the group would need to buy the rights for this video since it serves as a commercial purpose. If this was a video on school diversity or somthing with an educational purpose then they would be alright using the song. Also They don't give credit really for the song.

Copyright. part 1 of this weeks assignment.

This Video is a short video on Wales which might be used for a presentation in a geography class if a kid was assigned to talk on Wales. This video includes pictures, maps, and music and no citations. To make this comply with fair use the creator would need to add at the end where he got the pictures and who performs the song included in the video. The picture citations would need to be numbered in order so that we could find them if we wanted.

Class Website

For the past three weeks we have been working on a class website. In my website I have included and extra credit page, a bookshelf, homework assignments, announcements and under forms and docs two syllabi for the two classes I am teaching theoretically. I had some trouble figuring out how to have two seperate pages with the syllabus attached for the two classes because the syllabi just wouldn't show up but they can be found on the website.

Here is the link: 

History E book

This week as I was reading through my newsfeed I came across a history E book that has some great resources, links and ideas, it is also easily accessible. The downsides to this book is that some of the links aren't great (such as the quizzes) and there isn't a very concrete bibliography so it may not be useful for AP classes. Here is the Link: http://www.ushistory.org/us/   I think that E books are a great idea, espcially if you have students who have to take vacation. They will most likely be able to access their homework anywhere!

An interesting idea.

This idea didn't actually come from a blog this week but instead from inside a real classroom. I was visiting a geography class. The particular teacher I was visiting broke the class up into feudal systems so that they could better understand how feudalism worked in the middle ages. There was a Lord randomly appointed to be the leader and he or she had two knights who reported to him. They each had 2 serfs who would do all the work. So, when they had daily quizzes the knights could choose to just have the serfs take the quizzes and then use their scores or they could take the quizzes themselves. The same went for the Lord. My idea is to use this on NIng or another social network. Perhaps various groups could be created which the Lord ran. The welfare of the group site would depend upon the work of the serfs so they would need to be bribed and taken care of which the knights and Lords could do on the group site.

This project would only last for a week or so.

Work on website, week 1

This week I started working on my website which can be found at https://sites.google.com/site/brihdamericanhistory/

 I was able to do the about me page. I was also able to personalize it some more and get some links to work.

This week I posted a site on diigo as a resource and I also did my gospel insight.

My link for week 1

I found this interesting article on incorporating Singapore Math into Utah schools. It might have some potential.

http://www.ksl.com/?nid=148&sid=12542329

assignment 3

my assignment 2

My assignment

A lot of things to follow.

This week for an assignment we were supposed to find some educational resources to follow. I found some great blogs on history teaching and also geography teaching. I also found a great website to follow on classroom management. I am also following all of my group's blogs on my google reader.

The following are the blogs I am following;
World History Teachers blog
Russian History blog
Teachers.net (wong)
US history teachers blog
Techist; a blog about technology
Cultural geography blog.

In remembrance

Today I paused to think about that fateful day 9 years ago. I remember missing school that day because I was sick. I woke up at around 8:45 and came upstairs. Soon afterwards I heard my mom from the other room yelling that she couldn't believe what was happening on the screen. I rushed in and looked I saw smoke billowing from a tower. My mom told me it was in New York. We watched the story develop and we saw when the towers crashed down. I think I felt numbness. My heart was lifted by the amount of love that was poured out to the people of the east coast.

Perhaps I was too young to really understand that day. I was just eleven years old; but I will always remember the love that I felt and saw from that tragic experience. May we remember the bond we all felt in the days and weeks and even months after the attack. May we also remember our God and be more willing to turn to him not only in times of trial but also good times.

A relaxing day

I didn't have any classes today so I was able to sleep in, go to the dentist (I don't have any cavities) and turn in my student teaching application for next semester. Now I just have to do homework and relax. What a perfect Friday.