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