Archiving Early America

I went on the site eduTecher.net and clicked on the links tab hoping to find not only useful history sites, but sites that would be easy to navigate and interesting for students to read. One of this first sites I came across was Archiving Early America. This website was loaded with quality information on early America. Anything from the Boston Tea Party to the first-hand narrative of Daniel Boone's adventures through the Cumberland Gap can be found on this website. The website also has different forms of information in terms of primary and secondary information. Sometimes it can be hard to find good primary information on topics, and this site offers plenty of that. As I already mentioned the site discusses Daniel Boone's own narration of his journey's from his journal that he kept. The site also has primary documents that can be viewed right on the website. These documents include the Declaration of Independence, the Bill of Rights, and the U.S. Constitution. The cool thing about these documents are that they are shown exactly how they appeared in the papers during that time. Along with the primary and secondary information which is mostly in written articles on the site, there is other ways to obtain that information. The site offers maps, portraits, games, music, and videos all with relevant information.
Archiving Early America certainly offers the interesting information I was looking for, but it also made it easy to find the information. The left hand side of the website offers all of the tabs and links to click on to get to the information you are wanting to find. It is very easy to use and very informative. The last thing I like to think about when looking at a websites value is exactly how this site could be beneficial to my students. In other words how could this site be used in the classroom to supplement the material. I think the first thing is the fact that there is a plethora of information on the site that would most likely not be found in a text book. The thing about history is that there is so much information that it is hard to fit it all into a text book. This site would be good for a teacher to use to supplement the text book. It would also be a good place to have your students go in order to see an actual copy of the documents that were discussed in class, such as the Bill of Rights. One thing important to the study of history is understanding the information that you are looking at, and what kind of information it is. This site would offer teachers the chance to teach their students about primary and secondary information. One final thing this site could be used for is to have your students learn, but have one while doing that as well. Games are offered on this site, and are a fun way to keep your students involved and learning but enjoying themselves at the same time. Overall, this website was a very informative and would be a great site to use with your history students.     

TIP Presentations

The TIP presentations have been very informative. I think more classes should go over strategies to use in the classroom. I spent years taking education classes and at the end of them I kept thinking that I still wasn't prepared to be a teacher. I am not the most creative individual. Sometimes I need help in coming up with ideas and fun strategies to use in a classroom. I even have this issue in coaching football, as a lot of coaches might. This is why their is a widespread sharing of drill tapes. We have thousands of videos on our computers in the office with examples of practice drills from other school that we can use with our players. All of our coaches watch these videos to see if we can come up with new and beneficial drills for our players to go through. This is why this class has been so beneficial to me. We have gone over lists of strategies to use in the classroom. I can keep this knowledge and my bag of tricks to refer back to, almost like my drill tapes in coaching, and I can use them in the future if I ever need to. The TIP presentations have really given me an overload of material and strategies to use. Not all of them will necessarily apply to high school history students but a majority of them do, and the other ones have given me ideas of other things I could do in my classrooms.  

Direct Instruction

Direct Instruction can take place in any classroom where there is a large set of content to be covered. This strategy may not always be the most fun to employ for yourself or your students, but sometimes it is a great way to get a lot of content to your students. Direct Instruction doesn't have to always be boring though. The teacher can make the lecture a lot more interesting by adding a PowerPoint as a visual and maybe attaching pictures to this presentation or video clips as examples for your students. The teacher can also add in some supplementary reading that the students may find more interesting. Direct Instruction is a very important strategy to use even if it is not always the most popular strategy. Some students may even prefer this strategy. Some might not like being in a group discussion or a whole class seminar, and simply prefer being provided the material from their teacher, studying it, and then being assessed on the material.

Socratic Seminar

One of the strategies we discussed recently was the Socratic Seminar. This was an interesting model, and could work well in a high school history class. There are plenty of debatable topics in history. This would be a good chance to use this strategy and have the students discuss possible scenarios and outcomes of historical events. A teacher could use it in so many forms, such as taking a historical event and discussing what the outcome would have been if certain variables were changed. This is a good chance for the students to think critically, and learn from each other through the class discussions.

Their are a few negatives to this strategy though. One of the negatives is that students who do not like to speak in class may not participate. Discussions may be a few students who like to speak out going back and forth. The teacher needs to figure out how to make the students comfortable in the setting and figure out a way to get students more involved. The teacher also needs to be aware of the potential for the discussions to get faced paced and jumping all over the place and for certain students to not get a chance to speak.  

TWS

I think the major thing I am getting out of the TWS is the idea of really focusing on the small details of the lessons. Usually I would plan a lesson but not really focus on how the contextual factors will really come into play. I would have the learning goals and objectives but I might not have really focused on how my activities and assessments are going to address those specific goals. The TWS has really gotten me to take an in depth look into the planning of a lesson to make sure that everything I am doing is really being beneficial and is the most efficient way to get the material across to my students. By really going this in depth I think it will make for a better lesson and really reach my students. I think this will also help me to think more in depth about how I plan my lessons from here on out.

Project Based Learning

I enjoyed the virtual class we had last night on project based learning. It gave me a good chance to really examine it in depth. The Buck Institutes website was really in depth and had some great videos on there explaining what PBL is all about. I did not realize how complex it can get when you are trying to conduct one across all the subjects. It takes a lot of cooperation between teachers to be able to tie all the concepts together to fit into the different disciplines. It also helps when teachers have some concept of how the project relates to the other subjects, therefor they often have to learn the material in a different discipline. This is not any easy thing to do and takes a lot of work on the teachers part. I do, however, think it is worth it, because PBL is a great way to get students to think critically, work together, and use the tools necessary to be successful in today's world.  

Jigsaw Cooperative Learning

I think the Jigsaw method of cooperative learning is a great exercise. Not only does it allow students to work together cooperatively, but it allows them to work on several other skills as well. During the jigsaw exercise students can work on social skills and communication skills. They will also be working on note-taking skills if they are writing down all the information that they are obtaining. I think the jigsaw method is also a great way of getting a lot of information in a short period of time. I think the jigsaw exercise could be used a million different ways in a history class depending on the topic that is being studied. If a certain war is being studied each group can study a specific battle in depth then they can switch members and each learn about a specific battle. If the student are learning about early America and Indian tribes they could each teach each other about a different Indian tribe.

I think the graffiti method could be used on those same topics but maybe for more of a review, with each group describing each event and then summarizing what everyone has said at the end, and coming up with the important information that would be needed for the test.