Thursday, May 31, 2012

The Truth about Flipped Learning

A flipped classroom is not simply about watching a video at home and then doing a worksheet in the classroom, Aaron Sams and Brian Bennett argue in the article "The Truth about Flipped Learning" for eSchool News. Although video is often used, they argue, it is not a prerequisite. Video can be used to pose questions, generate conversation or provide instruction for projects. You may have to create a free account to read the entire article. I did.

Historical Simulations


In some respects teaching never ends.  Think about it.  Most of us are tired and excited about the end of the year.  But if you are like me a few weeks after the room has been packed up, you are eager to start thinking about next year.  When you get to that point you might want to think about doing a simulation for both world wars and the Cold War.  Teacher David Harms has developed these three simulations which you might want to consider for your classroom (and he has a pretty cool webpage as well).  

End of Year Review Package


The county where I teach has a huge database of items we have collected over the years often added to each summer as people are paid to develop new things each summer.  So unfortunately I cannot give anyone the cre dit he/she deserves for this amazing review. But amazing it is.  It has maps, pictures, summaries, everything you really need to know to do well in what we call "World History I," which is from pre-history through the Renaissance.  If you like it, you can either download it or open Google Docs first and then go to "file" and "make a copy" and you will have your own.  By the way our state exam is called the "SOL" which stands for Standards of Learning.  People I meet from other states always ask if kids say it spells something else when they do not do well! 

Identifying Unknown Images


I have spoken before about Tineye which allows you to identify unknown images either by uploading the image or pasting in the url to find it.  Well now you can also do it using a Google search.  Simply go to the "image" line at the top of the search page and then hit the camera icon and enter in the url or upload the picture.  You can even use images that are NOT on the Internet.  Above is a short video showing how both are done.  I found the information on Google at Mindshift

Tuesday, May 29, 2012

Using Google Apps for Grading


As you can see from my and George's posts, we are letting our inner geek out, but don't fret more content posts are forthcoming.  I was just sent the video above by fellow blogger Frank Franz.  If you teach with me in FCPS (Va), you have probably started using the "Data Sorter" to better analyze test results, but for the rest of you, you can do aggregate test/quiz/assessments using Google Apps and even let new scores (for re-tests) replace old ones.  The video begins with a short segment showing the power of Google Apps for grading and then shows you how to explain Andy Schwen's (@MrSchwen) work or actually his student's idea for how to use Google Apps. 

Collaborize Classroom

 “CollaborizeClassroom” is a really neat site that’s a little like Black Board’s blog or assignment feature, but much more intuitive and it’s free.  Their platform allows students to engage in conversations, ask and answer questions, collaborate on projects, and vote on issues and ideas.  Here's how it works.
  1. Create a class, give it a name and add your students.
  2. Create an assignment.  You can embed a video from You Tube, attach a pdf file, or paste in photographs.  
  3. You can also choose assignments from a library of topics by discipline and copy it to your class. 
Here's an assignment from the Topics Library on feudalism and here's another collaborative assignment I found on Rome in the Topic Library.  This assignment asks students to watch a video clip about Roman engineering and comment on the similarities of Roman housing to housing today. The platform allows for student comments.

Next, the assignment asks students to choose another  achievement of the Roman Empire to research from a menu provided. They post their response and read the responses of their peers who researched different topics.  I like Collaborize because it gets kids to do something with their reading or viewing without simply answering a few multiple choice questions.

Women in World History/ Primary sources

Earlier in the year, I wrote about a primary sources program at Stanford University with complete lesson plans.  George Mason University has a similar program called "Women in World History."  If you click on "modules," you come to a menu of different modules. If you click on one, like the Islamic Empire, you'll get primary sources and teaching strategies   You can download the sources and strategies into a word document. Both are very good and usable.

All of the sources and modules here have to do with women.  The module above looks at the impact of women in growth of the Islamic Empire.  Another module deals with the early Hindu practice of Sati and another concentrates on Bhakti poets.

Sunday, May 27, 2012

Greek Sculpture


Excellent  excerpt from the BBC documentary "How Art Made The World" concerning Greek sculpture.  Presented by Dr Nigel Spivey (University of Cambridge). Only 10 minutes. Thanks to Ron Peck for his tweet about the documentary.

The Art Project/ Really Cool

This is absolutely one of the coolest sites I've seen! If you have a Google account, then you can use the Art Project.. Create your own gallery of art. For Greece, look at the post below. But you can create a gallery for anything you're studying, as long as you can find the artwork from one of the hundreds of museums on the site. You can even look at hundreds of other user galleries. Of course, some art is easier to find than others. I found this on Richard Byrnes site, Free Technology for Teachers. Here's a collection of Hindu art I created.

Acropolis Museum in Greece

Maine teacher, Richard Byrne, has put together a site called “Free technology for Teachers.” In March, he posted “7 Good resources for Art Teachers and Students.” One of the sources he posted is called the Art Project and I love it. It’s powered by Google and “features interior tours of seventeen world famous art museums.” Once in the site, I clicked on collections and found the Acropolis Museum, a great site for the Greece unit in World History.

You can also save each piece of artwork that you want into a collection you create.  For example, if you find Buddhist artwork from three or four different  museums, you can move the pieces into a collection of your own and share on twitter, email,  Google+, etc.  Here's one I created very quickly for Buddhist artwork.

It has great images that you can click on and zoom in and out for detail. The site might make for a great web quest. Some of the other museums in the collection include the Frick, the Denver Art Museum, and the Art Institute of Chicago.

It's really cool the way the images are presented and the way you can zoom in and out on them.

Saturday, May 26, 2012

If you Flip, Read this

Caitlin Tucker, a Google certified English teacher, in this excellent post suggests that flipping can be about more than videos. She also wishes that the conversation " focused more on what actually happens in a flipped classroom."

 She thinks there is lot of stuff out there we can use instead of or in addition to a flipped video. She'd like for us flippers to get the kids to DO something with the video they see instead of simply answering some questions to verify they saw it. " Lessons come from doing," she says "So why not pair the content with an activity that gets them “doing” then imagine where you could start the actual class activity?"

Tucker raises some very good points that we might discuss in our PLCs if we don't have to spend the time talking about testing and data, as Les Foltos, argues in the video in the post below.

Teacher Collaboration


“The biggest obstacle in the US is the single-minded obsession with testing and accountability with little or no effort to help teachers improve.”

Les Foltos, Director of Educational Innovation at Peer-Ed, a Seattle, Washington based educational training company, makes a compelling case for real teacher collaboration, not the kind that focuses on testing or assessment, or data, but one that focuses on what's happening in the classroom between the teacher and the student (the kind of collaboration that usually happens after our PLC or CLT meetings that focus on everything but real collaboration and reflection among teachers).

Foltos says that he grew up on a farm and that if all he did was weigh his cows every day, rather than feed them to fatten them, he'd probably have lost his farm. He argues that administrators should connect teachers with purpose focusing on common problems in classroom. In one study with about 70 teachers, he found that only two teachers had a class project replicated and that was by the teachers who graded it.

Thursday, May 24, 2012

Research and Citation Pane Within Google Docs


As you can see from the short video above you now have the option of doing research right inside of your Google Drive document and then adding a link or even a citation automatically to the page you are writing. 

Wednesday, May 23, 2012

More Flipping, More Bergman

More flipping. Here is Jon Bergman's website. It's got some interesting posts about the pros and cons of flipping and hundreds of science, English, and math videos.  I especially enjoyed Bergman's  post "to Flip or not to Flip" and his response to several comments.

Johnathan Bergman on Flipped classroom

Anthony Salcito, Vice President Microsoft Worldwide Public Sector Education, interviews Jonathan Bergmann, pioneer in the Flipped Class Model of Education. I especially like  his idea that the flipped video is just one more resource for the student. He or she can use it or the textbook or whatever to learn the material. The teacher is no longer the disseminatorr of material,  More on the flipped classroom here.

Dos and Don'ts for Flipped Videos

Great story here at Eschool News about the best ways to make flipped videos for class. Some of the advice includes: keep the videos short, less than 10 minutes, add humor, inflect your voice, work with another teacher on the video,  and don't waste the student's time.

Monkeys in India

Interesting story about the monkey population in Dehli. It has zoomed. Officials have trapped more than 13,000 since 2007 all because the monkeys are living representative of the Hindu god Hanuman and Hindu tradition calls for feeding them every week. thanks to Frances Coffey for sending me this link.

Knowledge Graph

Today is the beginning of Google's Knowledge Graph.  Not everyone will see it initially and it is beginning first for those who use English in their searches.  But it is an attempt to better help you find what you are looking for.  For example and here, above is a search for Leonardo da Vinci.  In column #1 one finds the results of the normal search, while in column #2 are items related to da Vinci that also be of interest to you.  Thus Google is trying to improve its search process.  Think, especially of when kids look up dictionary words out of context.  Now they will be able to get a frame of reference on the right column, which if they use it, should help them see which definition, event, etc. should be the correct one for which they are searching. Finally be aware that this search engine is being rolled out slowly and will not work for everyone and even in every search for people in which it is working. 

Tuesday, May 22, 2012

Famous People Painting with Zoom-It

This is a cool painting called "Famous People Painting - Discussing the Divine Comedy with Dante." If you go here, you can use your mouse and scroll over the people for their names. Kids love figuring who the people are. The other cool thing is the zoom effect. You can go to zoom it and plug in the URL for any picture you like, from Picasso or Flickr, and it will create a zoomable photograph like the one here. You can embed it in a blog or website. You can also read more about it here.   And here, you can see the painting above on a bigger screen with the zoomable effect. You can also click the far right icon on the bottom left to toggle to a full page view of the picture.  My thanks to teacher Richard Byrne for alerting me to this site.

Monday, May 21, 2012

School's Not Out All Summer!


Some of my students just took their state exam today and others took their AP one last week, but our last day for students is not until June 15th (at which point I will be grading AP exams).  This summer I am working with our online campus so, as I have for the past four years, I will be continuing to post updates all summer whether summer starts now for you or in mid June.  So, please take a little time each week to see what is new online both with technology and content. 

History Maps of the World App

I just found this iPhone app on maps of the world at different time periods in my daily e-mail Eschoonews. The author also has maps of Africa, the Middle East, Europe and the US. Unfortunately there is no Android app at this time.

If you follow this blog you will see that I have featured a number of apps - all of which are free.  To see them all type "app" in the search bar. 

Saturday, May 19, 2012

Marrying Outside your Caste in India

Thirty-four years after he first defied India's caste system to "marry up," a Jain man talks about the perseverance and difficulties of marrying outside his caste in India. The article also includes a cool graphic of the caste system.

Friday, May 18, 2012

Traveling in Ancient Rome


The Stanford University history and IT departments have banded together to create Orbis which lets you see how quick (or slow) travel occurred during the Romand Empire. You can select the year, month (since winter would be different than summer) and then see what obstacles (mountains, for example) were in the way and the cost for getting from one place to another.  This would let the students see how long, for example it took the Germanic tribes to invade. You need only watch part of the video above to understand how to use the tool.  I found the tool on OpenCulture.

Wednesday, May 16, 2012

Short Video Clips of Museum Art and Objects


Smart History is a multi-media web book which was designed to be an enhancement to an art history book. It merged with Khan Academy in 2011.  It has a video section divided by time period with short 3 to 9 minute explanations of important objects like the seated scribe (2600 BCE) or Hammurabi Law code stele in the clip above. Both objects are in the Louvre.   These clips are great visuals and explanations that you can put on Blackboard as an assignment or show in class. You can find very good art history clips for the Renaissance and Industrial Revolution as well.  Check it out.

Big Blue Button and Teaching/Meeting Online


My county uses Blackboard Collaborate (formerly Elluminate) for our online classes (and will soon be letting teachers use it for their own purposes).  But you can use Big Blue Button for free to teach your students (as I tell my students it could mean the end of snow days) online.  Not only that, but think about how you could have meetings with teachers from across your county, state or the US.  For example my county has an annual meeting between AP teachers and this would be a good way to do it.  As you can see from the video above you can record your screencast, see the other participants (if you choose), have a whiteboard, can share your desktop or just show a PowerPoint.  There are also a bunch of tools, such as being able to mute students, an IM board for the entire group or for one on one and more.  Oh and best of all it is entirely FREE! 

Tuesday, May 15, 2012

A Search Engine Within A Document

I split my screen a great deal so I can look at websites and complete my project ideas for my students (or have a gradebook on one side and student work on the other).  Well now Google is making it easier to avoid having to do this.  When you open a document in Google Docs and the go to "tools" and "research," a new screen will open up on the right (see above).  If you run your cursor over the bottom of each link, you will see three choices (preview, insert link and cite).  Now the preview will set up a new column (again look above at the one in the middle) and that column will give you a smaller version of the page including videos.  The "insert link" will, if you drag the cursor over the chosen words), add in the link from the webpage.  Finally the "cite" will put a citation at the bottom of each page.

If you care, the picture above is from my final project for my 9th grade world history students and can be found here.

Father Guido Sarducci on the Five Minute Diploma


Father Sarducci offers ways to solve the educational problems today. It's hilarious. Found it on Open Culture

Monday, May 14, 2012

Bilingual America

Bilingualism
My world history students, next week, will be receiving an assignment which makes them connect their lives to the world (which is easy since so many of them are first or second generation Americans).  The graphic above is a nice way to introduce the topic.  It was sent to me by BestOnlineColleges.

SOL State Exam App

In my state of Virginia our annual exams are called the Standards of Learning (SOL - and no, apparently we did not vet that acronym).  I haven't tried it yet (and there unfortunately is no Andoid version), but here is the app for our SOL exam review, called "Pass the Past." 

QR Reader App

We have seen a bunch of QR symbols everywhere.  Well here is the Android App to be able to read it (thanks to Android4Schools) and here is the iPhone app

Crash Course Keeps Expanding



Writer John Green's series, Crash Course, keeps growing.  Since I last wrote about this series, Green has added Mansa Musa and Africa as well as the Crusades. The best one is the Dark Ages as it explains how, for much of the world, it wasn't so dark.  We tend to teach from one empire to the next in world history, but it looks at what was going on both in and outside of Europe. 

Sunday, May 13, 2012

High Tech vs. No-Tech

The Washington Post has a fascinating story about the sometimes deliberate technology divide in education. The Post highlights two area private schools. One embraces technology, the other eschews it.

Friday, May 11, 2012

Kids Speak out on Student Engagement

What engages students? This is the question a California teacher asked 220 8th graders. They came up with 10 categories from working with technology to project-based lessons to connecting lessons to the real world. You can read the story at Edutopia.

More on Chromebooks


Here's a video clip about the advantages of Chrome books for education. I use laptops a lot in the classroom and waste a lot of time while they boot up or run out of battery power. Chrome Books with almost instant on and eight hours of battery life seem like an awesome invention!  Now if we can just get administrators to put them in our classrooms.

History of Rome Podcasts

Summer's coming. Long drives to the beach! Why not listen to any of 127 (I think that's the number) podcast episodes of Roman history developed by Mike Duncan. He debuted his first episode back in 2007 and completed his 127th episode last year. In 2010, his podcast won the podcast award in education. Here's a review of his podcasts. You can also read about the  podcast in Open Culture where I first read about Mike Duncan.

Historical Misconceptions

Here's an interesting 3 minute clip I found on Open Culture about a number of historical misconceptions like Viking horned helmets, Lady Godiva's nude ride, Napoleon's height, Roman vomit, and Columbus.

Thursday, May 10, 2012

Chromebooks and Our Changing Schools

Okay, so you may have noticed that I rarely advocate for something that costs money on this site (other than perhaps these world war simulations and a few free books I get from time to time), but Google is onto something with Chromebooks.  They aren't perfect yet (I used to get a few pages closing if I had too many open and it won't run Java files), but their price keeps dropping and the 11.6" version is now just $299.  Now think about that for a minute.  It is small and light enough (3 lbs) to fit in a backpack.  It has a camera and best of all you get routine updates.  Yes, rather than waiting for a new computer to get improvements, these are pumped through the Internet.  If you search the Internet on Chromebooks, the knock is that they are useless without Wifi, but if you are like me, then you too are useless without an Internet connection on any device.   If you do buy one, here is a blog page for them and here is are 100 tips to use one.  Now I should add that I have used one for months, but I prefer my Macbook Air only because I can do every application on it (and no I store anything on the laptop).  But the difference in price is $700 and for a student (or a parent) this is prohibitive.  I know when my kids are ready to take one to school (probably in two years), I'll probably get them Chromebooks and won't worry too much about their being stolen or broken and will know that all their work will be safe on the cloud.  My hope is that within two years some laptops will be so cheap that, like Smartphones, students will not mind bringing them to school. Food for thought - take it or not!  

Archaeologists uncover Mayan Writing

Nothing about the world ending in 2012, but still an interesting find, says the NY Times. They say the writing was done by royal Mayan scribes and deal with Mayan astronomy. Some of the numbers represent multiples of 177 and 178 and scientists see some similarities with the Dresden Codex.

Mesoamerica Game

So if you read the post below, you know Ryan O'Donnell is good with technology and if you go to his class page there are lots of treasures I will be mining over the next few days. Here, for example, is a game to improve your knowledge of Mesoamerica.  

Vodcasts of the Entire AP World Book


This might be a good resource for your students who doing last minute reviewing for the AP World AP test or even for flipping the classroom next year.  Thanks to Rich Hoppock who teaches with me here at Hayfield and Mr. O'Donndell who made all of the films.  It brings up another thought on flipping the classroom as he filmed his class while he was making the presentation which added nice interaction between him and his students.  Of course he broke the "15 minute rule," but these could easily be broken into parts. 

Tuesday, May 8, 2012

e-book Statistics

E-book Nation

This was sent to me by OnlineUniversities.com.  I remember when I bought my Kindle a few years ago everyone looked at it like it was a moon rock and now a large percentage of our population (as you can see above) has e-readers.  The question is what are you doing to prepare for the day when your students (like mine) have e-books and all digital assignments. 

Pinterest and Collaborative Teams

I know that Ken made a post about Penterest a couple of months ago but I've just started using it and love it  as a resource for our teams.  For example, I am developing boards for each unit that we study in World 1.  The one above is for the Middle Ages. I want to pin all the video clips associated with each unit. Once populated, any member of  my World 1 team can easily see all the video clips associated with the unit.  You can also pin charts, graphs, and pictures making the board or boards a great resource for each unit.

It's really easy to pin videos and images. Once you register, and you do that through either Twitter or Facebook, you can drag a "pin it" icon to your tool bar.  Every time you see a video clip or image that you like, you simply click the "pin it" icon on your toolbar and the video or image will appear on your board. The  Middle ages board above  includes a 25 minute clip on the Black Death from the History Channel, a seven minute clip from Sister Wendy about Bernini and Michelangelo, a chart comparing the the Black Death to deaths in WWI and WWII, and a ten minute clip about Charlemagne and the Holy Roman Empire. I can also annotate every video or image telling the viewer something about the video or image.

Over time, I hope to have a board for Greece,  Rome, Islam, etc.

Remind101 iPhone App

One of the sites that I have loved this year is Remind101.com which lets teachers text (without ever knowing the kids' phone numbers) reminders for assignments, tests, etc.  I always set it at the time I make the assignment as you can set the time and date.  But now if you forget to do this and you have an iPhone, you can send the reminder on the go.  Best of all this service is free! If you want to follow their updates, go to their blog.  Their co-founder tells me that the Android app is coming this summer. 

Saturday, May 5, 2012

WWII Britain and Cultural Propaganda


During WWII, Britain produced over 120 short films to combat the Nazis. These examples of cultural propaganda are now available on the internet for free. You can read more about the films here at Open Culture.

David Thonburg on the Evolving Classroom

Here is another interesting clip about the use of technology and inquiry based learning from futurist and author David Thornburg. Edutopia has a story about Dr. Thronburg here. Add this video to the one Ken posted about gaming your class and the one I posted about the Virginia tech professor and you start to see a pattern. Technology can change the way we teach!

Friday, May 4, 2012

Gaming Your Class and Facilitating Student Learning


My son, who is in second grade, loves his math game that he plays at school to perfect his adding, subtraction, multiplication and division.  I like looking at him playing games at school or home because he is fully engaged and doesn't mind failing - over and over - until he beats everyone - even some of the people in my department. Well that has been one of the things I have been doing this year is having a ton of teacher facilitated class.  But I still wonder if I could add some games in the future.  The video above has some great idea and while it is from a science teacher, but it works for almost all of us.

Some of the items he covers is the fact that he re-organized his class over the summer (which is why now is a good time to post this) and created a class which had podcasts (I would use videocasts), activities to apply in the real world inquiry labs, mastery quizzes (which could be taken over and over) and a leader board which is the most popular item to log onto.  He even offers suggestions for improvement such as more reading, scaffolding and thinks he should make his game more social since that is the most enjoyable element for students at school.

But the main point is that students were able to go at their own pace and that the learning was key and the grade less so.  Think about it as you think about your improvements for next year!

Virginia Tech Professor uses Technology to keep big Class Engaged

This Virginia Tech professor uses technology in interesting ways to keep a big (3000) class engaged, including gaming principles, Skype interviews with big names, Facebook and twitter.  Check it out.

World Religion Demographic Breakdown

This is a really cool demographic breakdown of the world's religions from The National Post.  It shows the numbers of adherents to every religion.  You can download the graphic into a large pdf.

Thursday, May 3, 2012

Google Search Tips


Google has a great page that will help you with any multiple searches on Google from basic to advanced ones.  Some of the tips include spelling, web history, less is more, searching by file type, advanced image searching, converting measurements, calculations, currency conversions, flights schedules, weather and even a number of searches for your phone.  Finally here is a page that lets educators help their students search and includes live webinars and updates on a regular basis. 

450 Fonts Now in Google Docs

My wife has not yet seen the wisdom of being completely on the cloud, one of the reasons being that she has more fonts in Microsoft Word.  Well, it is almost ridiculous, but according to Docs Blog, as of May 2nd, you now have 450 fonts to choose from in Google Docs.  All you need, as you can see above, is to click the fonts tab in a Word document and at the bottom hit the tab that says "Add fonts" and then start scrolling for as long as you can take it! 

Wednesday, May 2, 2012

Top Hits For April

Despite the fact that most teachers had spring break in April, we still had 47,000 pageviews for the US, World and Government blogs during the month of April.  The top hit posts were:


Free Online Courses From Top Universities


You can take full courses from several top universities (Harvard, MIT, Penn, Michigan).  Here is the course for History of the World Since 1300.  Above is a brief overview of the course.  Here is one on Greek and Roman Mythology.