Website

This is my educational website for my technology class. It presents information on Federal Elections and the process by which candidates must go through to be elected to federal office. Most of the pictures have links to the official sites so feel free to explore the official sites for information. I enjoyed the process and I hope you find the information presented interesting.

Website

Video Project

This is my assignment for 12th Grade government class. Students are to create a political campaign ad to showcase what they think are important characteristics and traits for elected officials. I enjoyed creating the videos and I feel that the students would like this opportunity to create a project instead of taking notes from a lecture. I look forward to starting this assignment in the classroom.

Link to video

K-12 Wiki

Link to Wiki

This is my contribution to the K-12 wiki site. It is an assignment compilation between social studies and English to team teach Uncle Tom's Cabin. The students will compare their knowledge of slave life in early-America versus what is presented in the novel. I like using the wiki as a resource to get new ideas for lessons into a rotation and "bag of tricks" I have available. New ways to present material is always important to keep students on their toes and not to get into a "rut" of learning. I found a lot of the lesson plans helpful and I look forward to using them as I continue with my educational career. Thanks to Matt Dunlap for creating this wiki for teachers to share ideas. 

Podcast - Weekly Address

This is my podcast for Education 514, it is a presidential "radio" address that presidents typically do on a monthly or even weekly basis. It gives students the opportunity to address something going on in the nation that they feel is important to them. I feel that this is an important way to get to know your students as well as getting students to see what others feel is their most important issue facing America. I think the students would also be interested in using the technology to apply it to more classes as well as the thousands of uses for posting audio on the internet. Students are constantly talking about the new audio online and the new songs available and I feel that giving this opportunity to students and applying it to content in the classroom is an important way to connect them to modern uses of information we have currently. I hope that you enjoy this presidential speech.

Presidential Speech

Screencast

This is a screen cast of how to create a prewriting web for a Document Based Question (DBQ). DBQ is a commonly used tool throughout advanced history and social studies classes. Consiquently being able to accurately explain your use of pre-writing while creating an accurate web that will lead to a well organized paper is important. This screencast shows both how to come up with an original thesis as well as how to organize the information while incorporating the documents into the argument. I hope that the students find the screencast useful both from a layout perspective but it also gives the students a chance to while their creating the web, explain vocally why they are linking certain information in certain ways. This recording capability will then allow them to revisit the screencast and be able to better articulate in their paper the logic of their thinking. I am looking forward to introducing this into the classroom.

Link to screencast

Networking Participation

This is an important way to document both comments as well as concerns for different projects in the class but also a good way to provide suggestions for students as well. I feel that as an educator I would use these comments more than I would e-mails because they are all public in nature and students must be aware that what they are saying is completely public and consiquently the students will be more focused on the appropreatness of their comments. Students already consistantly use networking to chat with eachother whether it is through instant messages, text messages, e-mail or facebook and I feel that if it can be applied to the school environment then it would better connect students with the content and eachother creating both a strong academic environment as well as a strong family environment.  

Google Earth Virtual Tour

Here is the virtual tour I created with Google Earth. I decided to trace some of the footsteps of our American patriots as well as the british loyalists. I enjoyed the process of finding spots and attaching the information along with the slides. I feel that the Google Earth program is especially helpful with tracking the footsteps of soldiers in war because of the way that google moves along the earth instead of fading or switching to different cites. Instead I can actually follow the direct route from Lexington to Concord and see where soldiers had to travel in order to get from town to town. I enjoyed this project and I expect to use it in the future with students in order to show them the distance and terrain covered by early soldiers.

Virtual Tour

Webquest

This assignment is my webquest. I enjoyed creating this webquest, as it is my first, please do not be too harsh. I like the fact that the students have a very structured lesson plan, while being given the freedom to search for different news articles and polls from different sources. Anytime you can get students involved in the political process they get a chance to see the fact that each race is filled with both drama and incredibly interesting stories. Government is a tough subject to get students motivated and this project can really direct students to find the interesting parts of elections. I hope to use it for every election in the future.
Webquest

Personal Learning Network

This is my personal learning network. I gather a lot of information for current events and news stories to use in government class in order to keep students up to date with the relevant information. I hope that this provides other social studies teachers with ideas on both where to find information as well as a way to present the information that is student centered.

Photo Project

These are photos of the James A. Garfield National Historic Site. This location is a wonderful local location for a field trip. I have worked at the site as a tour guide and its a wonderful place for students to come in contact with history.  I would like to use this project in class but I would probably look for I would prefer to use a different program to create a photo story where students can use their own pictures and then add both music and dialoge to the story. I look forward to creating stories from history.
James A. Garfield Photos

Google Doc - Uncle Tom's Cabin

This lesson plan is a colaboration between social studies and english/language arts. The students have been reading Harriet Beecher Stowe's Uncle Tom's Cabin and studying the lifestyle of African-Americans in the southern United States. Students will work in groups to discuss the similarities and differences between the book and primary resources from social studies class. After the group work students will individually construct an essay comparing the two resources. I think it is great when teachers can work toghether so that students can bring information from multiple classes into one single project.
Co-Teach LP

Web 2.0 Pop-up-book

My Book

This book is my second web 2.0 assignment and it is a project created to get to know students and what their personal dreams are. I titled it "the American Dream" and it is an assignment for them to create their own pop-up-book with pictures of what their own American Dream represents for them. This shows me what they strive for and what they are looking for from their own future. I enjoyed the process of making the pop-up-book but I was suprised at the almost total lack of images available from the website. I know it may be troublesome to ask students to go and search for images for this project in a security crazed world of school computers but I feel the project is another good way to get to know students in a fun way.

Online Quiz

This is my Online quiz, I find proprofs.com far easier to use than other online quiz websites. This was the last of three websites I used to find a quiz that I was able to dock in the blog. I hope you enjoy. Take your time and do your best.

American Government » online test

Political Comic Strip

This is a comic strip for the web 2.0 assignment. I used Pixton to create this comic to demonstrate the uses of comics for students in government. I really like the amount of input that is allowed by the website. Although there are a limited number of characters available the amount of manipulation you can add is infinite. I enjoy this project because it can allow students who have more artistic creativity an outlet to show off their skills in the classroom while applying it to the content standards. I look forward to your comments.

Student Survey

This is the first of my Google Docs assignments. This student survey is an assignment that I start the year with to get to know the students as we start the year. I have in the past used a paper questionnaire that the students fill out that I file and keep for the year. I feel that having this database in an electronic form is far easier to keep track of as well as use. Having the information in one spreadsheet is important because it eliminates sorting through 30 student's papers looking for an individual student. As user friendly as this form is, there is one drawback being that it does not allow for the creation of a spreadsheet/table to document the student's daily schedule. This has been the only downside I have seen throughout the process though so I will continue to explore the numerous functions for Google Docs.

Survey