Analyze Political Cartoons with Google Drawing

Google Drive has a variety of tools. Personally, I tend to use and have my students use Docs, Slides, and Forms. One that I have not used is Google Drawing. I just saw the power of Google Drawing unleashed yesterday at San Diego CUE by Derek J Marshall and Raymond Lopez.

It was genius how they have their students use it to analyze cartoons. They have their students upload a political cartoon into the drawing as an image. Next, have the students draw the cartoon into quadrants. Then, break down the cartoon by quadrant using the drawing tools and comment/text boxes.

This would also be a great collaboration activity to have pair or a table group of four work on together.

Here are a couple of pics of the the samples that they shared with us in their session.

Below are the steps to using Google Drawing. You can also click HERE for a link to the steps to share with your students and peers.

 Get drawing!

Listen to Current Events with Listen Current

Sometimes getting students to read about current events takes some encouraging. Many would rather listen to their earphones. Alternatively, some may have reading difficulties or be auditory learners. Here is where Listen Current comes to the rescue.  Listen Current utilizes public radio broadcasts of current events and stories related to History, ELA, and Science to help build students' listening skills. This is right in line with the Common Core. They also provide discussion questions that can be utilized as extension activities. There are a variety of topics available at the middle school and high school level to engage your students with.

Another great feature of Listen Current are there pre-made Socrative quizzes. (Socrative is a free data gathering tool that you can sign up for) You can check for understanding with your students quickly by having students go on to their electronic device whether it is a computer, tablet, or cell phone and take the quiz.

Let's get our students working on their listening and discussion skills and fostering their civic skills.

The process is rather simple to utilize the Listen Current quizzes. Just follow these steps:

Copy the code for the desired quiz and go to your Socrative account.

Go to the Manage Quizzes tab and select Create Quiz

Paste in the SOC- # in the Import a Socrative quiz from another teacher box

You can select the quiz settings to control the pace as the teacher or allow the students, as well as whether to display student names and randomize the question order.

Go to your Dashboard tab and select Start a Quiz

Have your students log in as students and give them you classroom number to have them take the quiz.

Engage in Civic Discourse with Daily Read

Civic discourse is an important activity which history teachers must provide models for our students to do so responsibly. This is even more paramount in today’s environment and given the growing concerns regarding digital literacy, social media, and digital citizenship. Daily Read offers a free and engaging way for teachers to engage students in current events and civic discourse. Daily Read articles are available in a variety of topics ranging from US news, world news, arts and culture, science, and business. Students have access to leveled readings, linked articles for further reading, a poll question to take a position on, and a thought provoking question where students take a position, defend their position and type their response.

All one needs to do is sign up for your free Daily Read teacher account. You can have all of your students in a class to interact or separate students by class period and discuss by class period. You can instruct your students which articles to read or let their curiosity guide their reading. From your dash board, you can see the most popular section of articles your students have commented on, the most popular articles, who read what article and when, top commentators, and more. Engage your students.

HSTRY- Not your ordinary timeline

My students were working on our WWI webquest this month. One of the requirement is to integrate their research into a timeline. We were having trouble with both of the websites I have used the past four years. I sent out an SOS Tweet to one of the companies. Within minutes I had received a Tweet from HSTRY to try them out. We did and I am and grateful for HSTRY’s outreach and easy to use product.

HSTRY is a free and easy to use timeline maker. The teacher signs up for a free account. As the teacher, you have a dashboard to create classes, issue a class code for students to sign up (no student email needed), control the roster with the ability to reset student passwords (I LOVE this feature), and can view and monitor student progress. One of the other great features is that if a group is presenting and the timeline creator is absent, you can still provide access to the group/class for presentation.

HSTRY is not your traditional timeline- it progresses vertically. It allows for a brief or more elaborate entry. Their template includes positions for images with image citation, incorporation of You Tube video for multimedia, topic trivia with Did you know?, and allows you to integrate questions along the way.

Again, HSTRY is easy to use for both the teacher to utilize for their presentation of info and for students to demonstrate their research and mastery of knowledge. Check out these sample timelines.

Hstry at Steve Jobs school from Hstry on Vimeo.

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.

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.

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.

Collaborating with Google Docs

       Google Docs, housed on Google Drive, have a limitless possibility in the ways teachers can utilize them to meet the 4C's of the Common Core (creativity, collaboration, critical thinking, and communication). Additionally, using Google Docs eliminates the need for costly Microsoft software and formatting issues. How many times has a student told you their computer crashed, they lost their flash drive, student x is absent with the PPT/doc, they forgot to save the file, or the computer will not open the file? Google Drive eliminates all of this! It automatically saves the document, students can share the document and work on it at the SAME time ( I have had a whole class of 37 students working on 1 CST PPT for review at the SAME time), it is stored in the cloud, and eliminates the cannot open file issue with different formats. As long as you are connected to the internet, you can access the file. It is also available as an app on android and ios devices.

       To begin, have students create a Google Drive account. When in Drive, you can create a document (similar to a doc), presentation (similar to a PPT), spreadsheet (similar to excel), form, drawing, or folders. Once students get used to the sharing and privacy settings, Google Documents are transformational and students generally will gravitate to them. They also allow you to see the revision history so you can see exactly when and who was active on the document. Students can create a Doc and you can have them share it with you and/or another student enabled to comment. This can be used as an exercise to write , collaborate for revision, and then have the student revise the Doc for final submission. If you are completing a group project in class or for National History Day, multiple students may edit a document. Teachers may also have students create a folder with their writings/inquiry throughout the year to serve as an electronic portfolio.

     Here are the steps to creating a Google Document and sharing it: