Author: stephens16

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DBQ Reflection

When I started my DBQ project I wanted to show how propaganda was used throughout history and see how propaganda evolved throughout the years.  However, I decided to focus my attention at WWII and the Cold War Era.  I was able to find some great documents showing the propaganda used during that time.  I wanted to somehow link the idea of propaganda to today’s society and challenge the students to think about how propaganda may be used today.  However, I didn’t come up with a great way to do that without making the project much larger in scope. See my DBQ –“The Power of Propaganda”

I think I should have focused my attention to either WWII or the Cold War exclusively.  I think I would have been able to dive in deeper with one of them, rather than trying to span over a long time and different conflicts.  However, this DBQ could be used to try to connect the two events and show how propaganda played a part in both of these.

This DBQ is part of our class-produced, multi-touch iBook. Available free at iTunes

Propaganda_

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Propaganda Used Throughout History

For my generative question, I want students thinking about how the state uses resources in order to aggrandize themselves.  This can be applied to ancient empires, the United States (Particularly in WWII, Cold War, etc), Nazi Germany, the Soviet Union, etc.  I like this question because it’s applicable in World and US History and can be applied today.

This will involve fining documents and allowing students to think about why the state (whoever they may be learning about) would produce such a document.  Why would this benefit them?  Of course with the historical context hopefully provided by the class, the students will be able to hypothesize why the state would produce these documents.

Hopefully this allows the students to have a better understanding of how the people of a certain age or nation were thinking throughout history and also the decision process that state/government was making at the time.  Furthermore, students will also be able to understand how and why propaganda may be used today throughout the world.

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Lesson Study Reflection

 

The Lesson Study assignment was useful in the development of  a potential lesson plan.  My lesson study was about the reasons the American colonies were able to defeat the British Army in the American Revolution.  I was going to do this by having a series of “tug-of-war” games with different caveats thrown in to represent different factors in the American Revolution.  Through this the students will be able to gain knowledge of how the American Revolution in a more concrete way.

I had some concerns about the idea and wanted to come up with ways to modify it to make it better.  There were some concerns about the separating of the kids between “bigger kids” and “smaller kids”.  And it’s true, no matter how you try to split up the teams, you have to have a team that will win easily for the simulation to work.  I have thought about other ways to simulate this possibly by having the kids create some kind of replication but I haven’t thought of a good replacement yet.  Another concern was about the participation of the White team (France).  While it would be very easy to have me and my CT participate in the instruction and take over the role as the French, I do think it’s important to note the French’s role in the simulation and the fact that they were closely following the war.  I’m just not sure how to fully incorporate that yet.

 

Overall, I thought it was a good experience.  I got some good advice for my own lesson and got good ideas from my partners.    It seems we all have the goal to make learning more interactive, engaging, more fun, and more meaningful.