A Look Back...

     Right now I have a few classes that are working on projects dealing with Colonial America.  I found this website this morning that I thought was really special because it actually has scans of original documents from that era!  It is called Archiving Early America and not only does it have these original documents, it has maps, portraits of many people who were influential during this time period, videos to watch about events, actual obituaries of famous people, and much more.  This site is great for the students because it really gives them a chance to look at life during that time and get exposure to the events that shaped our history.  

     Now you wonder what to do with all of the information that you have gathered from this site?  Have the students go to Museum Box and create their own "box" of goodies to share.  This site is great because it is made for teachers.  There is a place to set up a teacher account and add student accounts under you.  I like this part of it because it keeps the user anonymous to the outside world, yet gives your students a place to create and share. What is Museum Box?  It is an online box that gives you a place to collect and store images, video clips, and text to help support an idea or argument.  This would be something that you would use as a visual representation to aid you while you spoke about a topic.  Teachers can use this to present a new topic to the class as well.  Each box has 8 cubes inside, and each cube can hold information on each side of the cube.  Many of us worry about copyright issues with pulling pictures and information from the web.  I tend to keep one side of each cube for a "link stash" to show where I got my objects or information for that particular cube.  It is easy to create a box, and once you get comfortable with creating them then you could have your students create one for a graded project.  I feel we have them do too many projects that just has them create, print, and hand in.  It is nice to get them used to standing up and presenting information to their peers.  Using this site gives them the visual cues they need to present the information they have learned and it also helps to keep the audience engaged in the presentation.
     Another quick point to make: if you are going to have students create a museum box, it would be a good idea to teach them about Thomas Clarkson and how the presentation boxes got their start.  The idea for thie Museum Box Website " project was inspired by the work of Thomas Clarkson.  Thomas Clarkson was described by the poet Samuel Coleridge as ‘a moral steam engine'. He was a red haired man who stood over 6 feet tall, who spent his long adult life working to abolish the transatlantic slave trade and slavery itself.  In an effort to gather hard facts about the slave trade, Thomas Clarkson visited many ports and went aboard the trading vessels. One of the first African trading ships Clarkson visited was called the ‘Lively'. It was not a slave ship but its cargo had a powerful impact upon Clarkson. The ship was full of beautiful and exotic goods; - carved ivory and woven cloth along with produce such as beeswax, palm oil and peppers. Clarkson could see the craftsmanship and skill that would have been required to produce many of the items. The idea that their creators could be made slaves was horrifying. Clarkson bought samples from the ship and started a collection that he added to over the years. The collection included crops and spices, raw materials along with the intricate goods produced with them. He kept this collection in a large box and used the contents to demonstrate the skill of Africans and the possibilities that existed for an alternative humane trading system, challenging the pro-slavery arguments." (copied from Museum Box Teacher's Area)
     Have fun and enjoy!  Do not feel overwhelmed with this.  Take the time to explore and use these tools before you introduce them to your students.  Know enough about the sites and how they work so that you can confidently guide your students to these great resources.  And as always, if you have questions about this please do not hesitate to contact me! 

Blame the Weather...

    I am much later at posting today, but I am going to totally blame the weather!  Everything is a bit off today because of the incoming storm.  With the storm in mind and how that can effect us getting our work done, I decided to share a couple of things with you today that will allow you to work on  presentations at home or school and you do not have to worry about emailing it to yourself or saving it to a usb drive just to be able to continue working on it when you leave either place.

     The site I want to share with you is called 280slides.com and it is an online presentation creator, much like PowerPoint.  This is not made by Microsoft so we cannot call it PowerPoint, however you do make the same type of slideshows with this site.  The slideshow that you create is saved online and you can access it from anywhere.  You can work on it and save, then go back later and make changes or add to it.  This is really great for those of us who are not able to stay after school to work on presentations and such, and who do most of their work from home.  I have tried this and I like it a great deal.  The best part, of course, is that it is free!  You can import existing documents, add media, publish to the web, and it will even download a copy of it in PowerPoint format.  You can show the presentation right from your web browser, so if you have a computer that does not have PowerPoint you can still share your presentation.

     Now to go along with the presentation software you will need a place to go to get some royalty free pictures to add to your presentation.  There are quite a few sites out there that you can use.  4freephotos.com is a good place to start.  Did you ever want to put in a great video from youtube.com but you can't because of the things around it that students just should not see?  You can use ClipGrab to easily save your favorite videos from sites like YouTube, Dailymotion or Vimeo. And you can convert these videos into “usable” formats like WMV, MPEG or MP3.  Then just pop that video into your presentation!  Honestly, you can go to Google and search for sites that have royalty free images, clipart, and sounds.  You just have to have the time available to go look around.  I plan on creating a list of sites that are easy to use that have the royalty free items for you to use in your presentations and even your teacher created worksheets for the students.  Just give me a few days.  I will update you when I have a good list ready for you.

     Now I know that some of you are already thinking that this is all just way too much work and your time would be better spent doing other things.  Integrating technology into your lessons does take time on your part but the extra time and effort really does help ensure that all of your students are getting the information they need to succeed.  I would never just dump this into your lap and tell you to figure it out on your own.  I am always available to help you in any of your technology endeavors.   Never hesitate to email me and ask questions, or if you work with me, pop down to the lab and tell me about what you want to do and we will come up with a plan.  Once you learn how to do these extra things you will see the benefits that it has to student learning and you will never go back to the standard way of presenting information to your classroom.
     Trust me.....do I ever leave you hanging?  LOL!