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.