Showcase info with Piktochart

In this digital age, quick access to information and visual literacy is shaping how data is communicated. Did you know that the White House has a page dedicated to infographics and they include emoticons? Infographics are not to be discounted. They are becoming more a part of communication and require synthesizing and summary of information. Another consideration of infographics is that they can provide access to students with limited reading and language abilities.

Piktochart is an easy to use infographic maker. Teachers and students can sign up for a free account and begin creation. It is important to first conduct research and identify the key points and data to convey. Having students collaborate using a Google Doc for their research first is beneficial. Once this is known, it is easier to select a template that will work best. See Mei Chow has created a helpful layout sheet for planning and selecting the best template. You and your students can adjust color and fonts, import images from their site, or even import your own pictures or student created images from Google Drawing. Once you have created your infographic, you can share it via email, use the link to collect student work using a Google Form, or embed it on a web site. 

Ashbrook CORE Docs and More

The Ashbrook Center is an independent center at the University of Ashland. They have a variety of constitutional and other educational resources for teachers and students. Their Teaching American History website has a variety of resources that teachers can use to create inquiry lessons and digital DBQs. Students will also find their resources helpful in inquiry assignments and AP exams. Three projects of note are Ashbrook’s 50 Core Documents, online exhibits, and lesson plans.

There are a variety of ways to utilize Ashbrook’s resources, both in a traditional and technological manner. When using the 50 CoreDocuments, teachers can print them off to conduct close reading or document based activities. In classes where the students have access to technology, they can copy the text into a Google Doc to annotate and collaborate in virtual discussions with their peers, the teacher may chunk the document and import it into Voice Thread to create a collaborative/interactive DBQ, the documents may be referenced as part of an inquiry lesson utilizing a web quest, and more. 

The online exhibits are in and of themselves a webquest into specific topics. Teachers may want to create a Google Doc with questions for the students to respond to as they engage with the exhibits. The online exhibits could also be utilized as a jumping point for students to create their own inquiry question to drive further investigation. Another possibility would be to have students synthesize their inquiry with the exhibits by identifying key points and citing evidence with the creation of a multimedia presentation such as Prezi, a movie presentation utilizing Animoto or GoAnimate, or create an infographic using Piktochart. In a traditional classroom, the teacher can project the online exhibit with a project and guide the students through exploration. The lesson plans provide a variety of options and resources for teacher to use as they are, modify, or be the point of inspiration.

Flipping for News with Flipboard

Getting students to make connections with content and current events can be a struggle. Sometimes one wishes to categorize news articles by themes. You may want your students to curate news articles or Tweets with news articles or political cartoons by topic or unit of study. Flipboard allows you to do all of this and more.

I first came to experiment with Flipboard for classroom use after struggling with my students to watch or read the news and connect it to units of study. After thinking of how I was going to support my students, I remembered the magazine feature of Flipboard. I have had positive feedback from this and even have some of my Academy students, think homeroom, reading up on current events on their smart phones.

Flipboard is a fantastic app for viewing and creating news magazines. You will need to sign up and create your account on a smartphone of tablet after you download the app. Once you do this you can create your own magazines and add articles from Flipboard or search for items on Twitter.

Additionally, you can embed an individual magazine onto your class website using their HTML Magazine Widget. To do this, you will first need to go to the Flipboard Editor web page. Select the Magazine Widget. You will need to paste in the public URL for the magazine that you wish to embed. 

Next select the button to the right of the text box and the HTML embed code will appear in a box below. 

Copy this code and enter into your embed code box if you are using Weebly or follow the embed/HTML protocol of the website maker you are using. Now, your magazine will be integrated into your website page.

Another feature that Flipboard offers if you are 1:1 with ipads is that you can share the magazine and students can comment on the articles while they are in the app…like a discussion board.

Additionally, you could have your students create their own Flipboard magazines. When they curate and add an article, you could require them to comment their reaction or connection to a topic of study as well. You would need to have them share their Flipboard magazine with you- this can be done easily with a Google Form.

There are so many wonderful possibilities of ways to integrate Flipboard into your history classroom…get thinking.

Web based video options for iOs and computer/Chomebooks with Animoto and GoAnimate

Students are more visual these days and all about the videos. Why not challenge them to use this interest for educational purposes. Two easy and multi-platform options are Animoto and GoAnimate. As mentioned in the previous blog post, videos are a great way to set the hook and for students to demonstrate their understanding of a concept. While the free trials/versions are limited in length, concepts can be broken down into their parts for a class to examine a topic more in depth at the teacher’s discretion.

Animoto allows you to take images to create a video. This is great to do with primary source images or student drawings. They have a selection of music options to serve as the background music. To tell the story you can add text over the images. Another option is to have students add text to the images beforehand or create a PPT and save it as a JPEG to use in Animoto. You can create your production on a computer, tablet, or even using your smart phone. Animoto is free for a 30 second shareable video. To make longer downloadable productions, a Teacher Plus account costs $30 a year.

Here is a brief video I made for a Google Docs training shred session.

Google Tools Slam 2013

Another option for video making is GoAnimate. As the name suggests, it is an animated short. It took me a bit to get going on this, however my students were quick learners and ran with it. There are a variety of settings, characters, animations, and voices that one can choose from. You can also use your own voice. Again, storyboarding prior to recording facilitates the selection and production process. Animoto offers a free 14 day trial and is a paid product after that. They also have teacher and district licenses with more options available. Again, I have found the investment worth it.

Here is one my students made for their Civil Rights case presentation.

iMovie & Trailers to Hook & Demonstrate Mastery

Hook your students with your next topic using iMovies and trailers. They are easy to create and you can set a mood of intrigue to bring your students along into historical inquiry. Not only can one introduce a topic of study, but why not yourself?

 If you have an iOS device you can easily create an iMovie or trailer. Trailers are great for a minute intro and come with preset themes and templates. Even better, Learning in Hand has storyboard planning sheets that make the production easier…especially when having students create a short video demonstrating their mastery of a topic.

If you or your students have access to iOS devices, select a topic, storyboard the transcript, THEN find images to correlate/support the text, have the script typed out and images in a folder labeled, and then assemble your production. You and your students can share your videos by emailing them if the file is not to large. An easier option is to upload your movie or trailer from your device to YouTube (if you have a Gmail account, you have a YouTube channel) and share via link or embed it on your teacher site. Students can also share their YouTube video link with you by collecting them in a Google Form for easier class management.

Plicking for Understanding

Not everyone had money for class responders. Plickers has come up with a alternative for teachers using their smartphone or iPads. Download the app, print out student cards, create questions on the app question screen and you are ready to go. This is another alternative way to formative assess your students.

Collecting Data with Google Forms

Google Forms is a great tool for teachers to use. Most people rave about the utility of Docs and Presentations…. These are great too. There are so many possible uses for Forms in the classroom. One can survey a class, utilize it for “March Madness” takes on history, and create a DBQ with answer sheet for students. One of my favorite ways to use it is to collect student work. This is an especially great tool when students be presenting their work. If collecting digital products ahead of time, it makes for seamless class management. You will have all the assignments, no need for students to log in to sites to pull up their project, student groups unable to go because person x is absent, or group y can’t go because person z left their flash drive at home…You will have all products ahead of time.

Forms are quite simple to use. Select Form from the Google Drive Create button. Select the theme you would like to use, you can always go back and change this later on. I would suggest labeling the form with template at the end. I have found that creating a folder with your templates allows you to easily make copies for additional class periods and the years to follow. Select the type of question you want to ask and type away. If you want a question to be required, check the required box and students MUST answer this before submitting the form. You can even embed an image or video into your form. If you decide that you want to move questions around or copy a question to make minor modifications you can easily do this as well.

Once you are finished creating the Form, select how you want to issue it. As mentioned earlier, it is easy to select Make a Copy under file to copy a form and add the class period at the end if you wish. Make sure you select Accepting Responses to make the form live. Select the blue Send button to share the form. You can email the form, get a link to hyperlink to on your own class website, or get an embed code to embed on your class website. Once you have responses, you can go to your responses spreadsheet of select view responses. Responses will be time stamped. You can also select view Summary of Responses to view responses in a graph format for easy visualization.

Here are some sample Google Forms as a semester survey, to collect student work, and as a DBQ.

Text Students Reminders with Remind!

If your students are like mine, they often forget to write down the homework and are glued to their devices. Why not use their cell phone in a positive manner...text them homework reminders! Remind (formerly Remind 101) is a great communication tool that protects the teacher and student privacy while being connected. Once you, the teacher sign up, Remind issues you a "phone number". You can create a class group/code or you can do it by periods... It is also great for clubs and activities as well (I use it for Academic

Decathlon too). Remind allows you to personalize your sign up code.  They have a very student friendly PDF to display on your projector or to email to parents and students. Students and parents can then sign up to receive text message or email reminders. You can now also upload files (great to include the homework PDF or other important documents). Another great feature of Remind is that you can schedule texts in advance. It is a great way to communicate with students and for student clubs to remain in contact with their members. They even have an app for teachers and students. Learn more here:

Motivate & Engage with Big Huge Labs

With the Common Core, we need to get our students thinking critically and writing for various lengths of time. Big Huge Labs has a variety of tools to help teachers achieve this. Of particular interest for the history classroom are Motivator posters, magazine covers, badge makers, trading cards, and billboard makers. The Motivator poster is great for warm ups/do-nows/bellringers and visual literacy. You can insert an image, political cartoon, chart, or graph and type in a question or thought for the students to respond to. The magazine tool is great for students briefly demonstrating their understanding of a concept with article tag lines. This can be further extended by having students type up the actual article. If your looking for a way to refresh historical biographies, why not try having your students create a historical badge or trading card? Another tool is the billboard for students to come up with a summative thought or sentence on a theme, content, or primary source.

Google Maps Engine- A Goldmine of Possibilities!

When most people hear Google, they think of a search engine. However, Google has some AMAZING sites and tools for the history classroom (Google Cultural Institute is an example). I recently learned about Google Maps Engine Lite from Moss Pike. My jaw dropped when I learned how I can not only pin news articles, websites, videos, and images, but I can also use Google Forms to pin information on to a map.

There are so many ways to use Google Maps Engine in the classroom. Teachers and students can pin regional resources, link presentations to the location where events took place, annotate a map of a battle, or pin current event articles. You can create a map and pin current event articles to see a visual of what regions have been examined and show proximity. However, an even BETTER feature is that you can collect data in a Google Form and upload the spreadsheet of information and Google Maps Engine will pin the information in the city/county specified.

My idea was to try using Google Forms to collect student Cold War projects and upload the data collected and pin their digital product in the location of their topic...It worked! I learned a few things along the way. When creating a Google Form to collect student data use first names only to protect student identity (I had originally asked students for first and last names), DO NOT include punctuation marks (,.?:), they will make the cell of information invalid, indicate that students need to identify a city and country or country, and make sure student projects are set to public view before sharing. I have included step by step instructions on creating a Google Map...ENJOY!

100 Years Later...The Legacies of WWI

History is more than the details of the event. We want our students to also understand significance and legacy of history while engaging in historical inquiry. The Wall Street Journal (WSJ) has created an engaging and very user friendly interactive called 100 Years Legacies: The Lasting Impact of WWI. One can navigate the legacies by their Politics, Culture, Countries, Armaments, Economy, Medicine, and Tactics categories. 

Each legacy has an image and an informative entry posting- some also have videos. You may notice that the legacy box has a box on the lower right with some red in it. This is the visual for how viewers have voted for that item and it’s legacy. If you or your students find something missing, you can let the WSJ know. Another feature they have is a quiz, where you can test your WWI knowledge,

Once you find a legacy of interest, you may share it from the WSJ on Twitter, Facebook, or Google+. The share options also include a link, which is useful if you or your students want to connect it to a blog post or other type of mastery project. This site also serves as a great reference point for teaching and demonstrating legacy with students. With this year’s National History Day theme being Leadership and Legacy in History, this may be particularly helpful.

This Day in History

If you have an iPad, this is a great FREE app to download. This Day in History is an interactive calendar. For each day, there are a variety of people, places, and events profiled and noted by categorical icons. Select the desired entry and view the details in text, photos, illustrations, music, or speeches. Whether you are looking to stump your students with a historical daily fact, completing This Day In History warm-ups, or looking to spark your students interest or brainstorming of historical events, This Day In History has a variety of uses, including a place to brainstorm for possible ideas for National History Day.

Kahoots! for Formative Student Data

Today was the Think.Create.Share Conference at California State University Fullerton. I was excited to attend the sessions with some of the AMAZING Huntington Beach teachers and the opening AND closing keynotes were delivered by Amy Burvall. One tool that caught my eye in particular was Kahoots! Ted Lai, Educational Development Executive at Apple, used it as a formative assessment tool at the end of his Effective Technology Integration session. As I sat in my seat, I was thinking I have to blog about this and am DEFINITELY going to use this next year (school is over already).

Mr. Lai flashed up the url and game-pin on the screen, Next, we followed instructions and created a player name. He flashed a question before the screen, then the correct answer was displayed, the leader board appeared, and then the process repeated until our “quiz” was finished. As we played, teachers were getting excited and you could hear MULTIPLE conversations about what a great tool this was and how the teachers’ students would enjoy this!

Kahoots! is an online blended learning and classroom tool that students can use with their smart phones or tablet devices. Teachers can create quizzes, surveys, or discussions with their platform. Additionally, you may embed an image or video in your question! You can choose to set a time limit on the questions, but may also advance the slides quicker in class if needed. Students will gain more points the quicker they answer the questions. Once you create a quiz, you may publish it privately for your own use or publicly to share with others. The ability to publish publicly is a nice feature if you and your grade level, subject, or department are implementing common formative assessments or data teams.

This a great tool to use at the end of a class period as a formative assessment. You are in control and can reteach or clarify misunderstandings on the spot. Again, as many schools are developing and implementing CCSS lessons, Kahoots! facilitates the use of formative data to identify areas of student need to focus on for mastery. Another feature of Kahoots! is the ability to download results- another great feature for collaboration and data team analysis. But my school is not 1:1…. Not to worry. You can still use Kahoots! by pairing/grouping students up with those with smart phones and using a group name or table number.

Explore the World with Google Cultural Institute

If your school is like mine, you do not have funds for field trips to museums or historic sites. Thanks to the Google Cultural Institute, you can bring museums and historical sites into your classroom virtually. The ability to bring in art pieces and visit historical sites can lead to some GREAT discussions. This is an especially great opportunity for those shy and artistic students to be engaged, demonstrate their understanding of the content and feel empowered. You may want to plan additional time for using these pieces, at least I have always found this to be true… the students are SOOO engaged! Upon arriving at the site, there are three projects; Art Project, Historic Moments, and World Wonders. There are many possible uses of the Google Cultural Institute by teachers and students.

Once you are in the Art Project, you may explore by collections, artists, and artworks. Once you find an art piece of interest you can zoom in to amazing clarity and view the colors, textures, and brush strokes- this is great for discussing art movements. In addition to the zoom factor, you may select on details located to the left of the image to learn more about the art piece.

In the Historic Moments collection one will encounter monuments, collections, and videos. Select a moment and explore the slideshow. This is a great resource for inquiry and examination of primary sources. The format is very student friendly and similar to a museum exhibit. Select Discover on the bottom left to find other similar exhibits. Students and teachers can also save exhibits to return to later on.

Then there is World Wonders where you will find locations, places, art, and street views in some instances. This is a great tool to explore historical places and examine the architecture and landscape. Simply select locations to bring up a map and select a blue dot of the location you wish to explore. Once you find a location, simply select it to access available street views, items, and videos.

If this was not enough, you or your students can also curate your own gallery (think student creating a multimedia presentation for CCSS). The possibilities of what one can do are only limited by one’s imagination. Teachers can take students on virtual field trips or curate resources for class discussions on cultural or historic sites. Collections or your own curated gallery can also be shared with students in webquests, as part of a PBL unit, or via Google+, Twitter, or email with the share icon. This also has potential for students researching topics for class assignments, projects, or history day. Additionally, the curation tool lends Google Cultural Institute to be utilized by students to curate their own multimedia presentations for classroom presentations, digital portfolios, or blog entries.Students may carry out their curiosity outside the classroom in exploring the world, even creating their own bucket list of places to explore.

Extra, Extra Read All About It...NEWS!

Literacy in history/social studies is expressed through critical thinking, communication of ideas,civic engagement, and global understanding.  To this end, the state of California is moving forward with its Civic Education Initiative. One of the 6 Proven Practices of Civic Education is discussion of current events and controversial issues. Reading the news helps our students to meet these goals and those of the Reading Informational Text strand of the Common Core. We are living in an age where media is at our fingertips...whether at the touch of a keystroke on a computer, tablet or cell phone these days. Four engaging opportunities for our students to access current events are Newsela, Newseum, Newsmap, and Vox. All of these news outlets provide news in an engaging manner to make the content focused and accessible to today's students on their website and through Twitter.

       Newsela 

       Newsela opens up many opportunities for the news and our students with their FREE high interest news articles. Have you had to deal with students in your class at different reading levels? They take news articles from major publications and adapt them to five different reading lexiles. News articles are categorized into seven categories: war and peace, science, kids, money, law, health, and arts. Additionally, some of the articles come with quizzes to check the student's reading comprehension. These articles lend themselves to close reading activities to facilitate reading comprehension.

       Newseum

       Newseum is more than an amazing museum to visit in DC. They also have a host of educational resources in their Digital Classroom, program archives, and their Front Pages is invaluable for current events. Having taught International Relations and World History, the Newseum's Front Pages is a site to keep bookmarked and get your students familiar with. Using their Sort Papers by Region link, you can customize what part of the world to have your students explore. What I loved is for them to see the front pages of different countries. If there was a major international news story played out here in the US, was it positioned so in other countries? This led to some great conversations. In every region they have, we were always able to find at least one newspaper in English. Have your students click on the newspaper and then the blue website hyperlink on the top right of the newspaper front page to see more in that publication--- this can be so eye opening for students. This is also a great resource for students whom English is not their first language and foreign exchange students. Another feature is to search the US headlines to show students how news can be regionalized and illustrate bias.

       Newsmap 

       Newsmap is a great aggregate tool to visualize trending stories. Newsmap categorizes the news into seven color coded categories: world, national, business, technology, sports, entertainment, and health. You can select which categories you wish to display on the bottom right to customize your screen. The larger the box, the more the topic is trending. Again, this is a great visual tool for students. Hover over of click on the box to read the article. You can also select region and language options on the top toolbar. This is a great website to use with students when you are wanting them to research or select news stories related to a particular category.

       Vox 

       

       Vox is a general news site with a mission to EXPLAIN the news. This is the project of journalist and blogger Ezra Kline launched this month. So far it looks great. The home page lists current news articles, Understand the News with related articles and fact cards to help one better understand the topic, videos, and conversations. The articles sometimes contain highlights of key items and include hyperlinks to provide contextual information for portions of the articles. What myself and some of the students have found useful are the fact cards. Theses are great for helping students understand the context and key points, especially in world events. The cards are also easy to share as a deck on Twitter or print out for a classroom jigsaw activity. Vox is looking like a resource to keep our eyes on and I'm looking forward to using this with my students. Again, another great source for close reading activities with students.

Concept Mapping with InstaGrok

These days, our students are coming to us as overwhelmingly visual learners. With all the time they spend on their devices it is no wonder. Additionally, there is much research behind the benefit of mind mapping to assist student learning. InstaGrok is a great tool for both teachers and students. As a teacher, it is great to introduce students to a topic and show relationships. As you map out your unit topic, you can select from InstaGrok's key facts with source attribution or hyperlink to websites with additional information. The latter is great for teachers to share their InstaGrok and provide links for further inquiry with their students. One may also add videos, pictures, and additional concepts from InstaGrok or add in your own note. The addition of your own notes is great for teachers to add additional video and images (InstaGrok has a limited selection at this point in time) as well as additional facts and primary sources!

My students were amazed and engaged when I first introduced them to InstaGrok. Beyond this, we found it to be a great tool for them to use to engage in historical inquiry. Students can enter a topic and use the web to further their inquiry and research into a topic. Some of the English teachers have also began to use it in their common Common Core lessons at my site. There are also other cross-curricular uses. When it came time for my students to begin their Cold War project, which includes a multimedia presentation, a few asked to use InstaGrok as their presentation tool.


There are many ways to individualize your InstaGrok with the background and concept colors, Again, the notes option allows one to type in their information and/or hyperlink to an outside item of interest. Once complete, you may share your InstaGrok with students or have them share their InstaGrok with you via FaceBook, Twitter, Google+, Pinterest, embedding it onto a website/electronic portfilio, or share it via a link in an email. They also provide the ability to view the InstaGrok in a journal mode and ability to quiz the students based on the key facts included to check for understanding.