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!

Proper Pic Attribution with Photos for Class

Last weekend I attended Edsurge in Los Angeles, where teachers can explore emerging educational technologies. While waiting for the event to start, I had a chance to catch up and chat with Jen Roberts. Roberts is a rockstar middle school English teacher in San Diego. In our discussion, I brought up researching and getting students to properly attribute sources when she shared Photos for Class. This site is FABULOUS.

Photos for Class is a free database of Creative Commons G rated images that you can download WITH proper attribution included at the bottom of the image. Let me say this is golden. I have stressed with my students the needs to give proper attribution in their work including images. Too often teachers have students just grab an image off of Google. This is wrong. We must teach our students to search for Creative Commons images to utilize and give proper attribution. See last month's Fair Use blog post for more information on the topic.

Photos for class is easy to use. Just type in the topic in the search window. My students and I found that you may need to include the general topic and a specific aspect to narrow your search to be more productive. For example, when a student was looking for images related to the fall of China to communism we entered "Communism China." Once you find an image you like, select download. You will now have a Creative Commons photo with proper attribution to use in your task. This serves as a great way to teach digital citizenship and for students to see the proper way to attribute photos that are not there own.

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. 

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.

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.

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.