Tag: Digital Literacy

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Class 9: Digital History

The Kaiserpanorama is a form of stereoscopic entertainment medium - 19th century
The Kaiserpanorama is a form of stereoscopic entertainment medium – 19th century

Digital historians:

  • Find, decode and critically source information.
  • Responsibly curate and archive collections with available digital tools.
  • Collaborate and share their findings with the world.

This class leads off with a live demo of professional networking on Twitter.  Social studies teachers make frequent use of of the hashtag #sschat. Adding it to their tweet makes it searchable by others. On Mondays 4-5 PM (Pacific) many social studies teachers log into Twitter at the same time and post using #sschat. Chats are archived here.

 We’ll use the event to explore how to use Twitter to build a personal learning network (PLN). Students that have not already done so , will be asked to create Twitter accounts. More on Twitter hashtags here. Article on Twitter for teachers here.

Next I will give a demo of GapMinder – a web tool that provided easy access to and visualization of historic economic, social and demographic data. GapMinder for Teachers here.

Finally, students will work with NGram Viewer and NYTimes Chronicle – web tools that quantify and visualize word usage. More on using nGram viewer and NYTimes Chronicle 

As part of an in-class demo of the power of  word frequency research, students will share their results via a Twitter hashtag: #WordFreq   We did this activity in our fall ’14 class and used Storify to curate a social media stream and create a Storify archive of our research Need some Storify ideas? 4 Ways to Use Storify in the Classroom

Books Ngram Viewer and NY Times Chronicle have many interesting applications in the classroom. For example, they can both be used to introduce the research method – form a hypothesis, gather and analyze data, revise hypothesis (as needed), draw conclusions, assess research methods. Working in teams students can easily pose research questions, run the data, revise and assess their research strategy. Students can quickly make and test predictions. They can then present and defend their conclusions to other classroom groups. All skills called for by the new Common Core standards. Ideas for classroom use Books Ngram Viewer and NY Times Chronicle.

Assignments for class 11

  1. By 11/1 write a blog post responding to our exploration of digital history in today’s class.
    What’s your reaction to using tools like Twitter, Storify, GapMinder, Books Ngram Viewer or NY Times Chronicle? How can historians leverage new digital tools for research, instruction, or professional growth?  Or you might design a short lesson using one of these tools.
  2. Come to our class on 11/2 with an idea for a flipped lesson. That night we will meet in the Digital Lab to design a flipped lesson using either a QuickTime screencast Samples or TEDed lesson built from a YouTube video Sample. You will have class time on 11/2 to create your flipped lesson, but you should arrive with an idea.

Image credit: The Kaiserpanorama (or Kaiser-Panorama) is a form of stereoscopic entertainment medium used chiefly in the 19th and early 20th centuries, a precursor to film, invented by August Fuhrmann (1844 – 1925). It was patented by the inventor ca. 1890. There would be a number of viewing stations through which people would peer through a pair of lenses showing a number of rotating stereoscopic glass slides. By 1910 he is said to have controlled exhibitions in over 250 branches across Europe, and in the central archive have up to 100,000 slides stored.

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Class 1: Teachers

Timken Roller Bearing Co., calendar, September 1950, teacher at desk

Class 1 Overview

As an ice breaker, I’ll give students an activity to design a great history teacher-  a variation of “Tool 13: Brainstorm, Group, Label” from my Literacy Strategies Tool Kit (free PDF)

  • Ask them to brainstorm all the words or phrases they can associate with “a great history teacher.”
  • Give them Post-Its and asked them to write one associated word or phrase on each sheet.
  • Put them in groups and ask them to share their Post-its and thinking. Then design an illustration that captured their collective thinking. And be prepared to share that with the class.
  • Working in fours synthesize their individual brainstorming into a collective vision on large paper, then take turns sharing and responding to questions. Click to enlarge posters.

diagramEmoji

recipespell teacher

I’m giving my students a copy of my 1971 student teaching evaluation (2 page pdf) Quite a relic – Why did I save it?  We’ll examine it as an historic document with a critical eye for answering a number of questions: Who created it and why? Historic context? Point-of-view? What could we learn from it? What other sources might we need to collaborate?

We will explore what it tells us about NYS teacher preparation programs in 1971.

We will take a tech survey using LearningCatalytics

Assigned Readings for Class 2:

  1. Snapshot of a Modern Learner Mike Fisher in SmartBlog on Education
  2. How to Motivate Students: Researched-Based Strategies Peter Pappas in Copy / Paste
  3. A Taxonomy of Reflection: Critical Thinking For Students, Teachers, Principals Peter Pappas in Copy / Paste

Assignment for Class 2:

Think about “Santos” from Snapshot of a Modern Learner 

  1. What do you know about him? 
  2. How does he  best learn?
  3. How should he be taught?

Think about yourself as a learner. Use the same 3 prompts we used with Santos. Create a brief “selfie” of yourself as a learner that you can share with a classmate in our next session.

  1. It does not need to use an edtech perspective (as Santos’s snapshot did), unless that’s how you learn.
  2. It’s not actually a selfie. But, like Santos – it’s a Snapshot of a Learner – You
  3. It can take any form you choose – written narrative, cartoon, diagram, Powerpoint, Webcam video, Pinterest. (it doesn’t have to be digital). Think about “Reading 2” above. That’s why I’m letting you choose the product format.  
  4. It  should be something you can share with a classmate at our next class. Key point to consider – Will make sense to someone else without you having to explain it?

In class 2 you will share your “selfie” snapshot and we’ll take it from there. 

Based on edTPA

HSS2: How does the candidate use knowledge of his/her students to target support for students to develop understandings of facts, concepts, and interpretations or analyses to build arguments about historical events, a topic/theme, or social studies phenomenon?

HSS3: How does the candidate use knowledge of his/her students to justify instructional plans?

Image credit: George Eastman House
Timken Roller Bearing Co., calendar, September 1950, teacher at desk
Accession Number: 1976:0240:0019
Maker: Victor Keppler (1904-1987)
Date: Dec-1948

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Class 6: Learning and New Digital Literacy

Family_watching_television_1958Class will open with a discussion of Snapshot of a modern learner and it’s implication for the classroom. I will offer a brief lecture detailing aspects of  the “new digital literacy.”

  • Find, decode and critically evaluate information.
  • Curate, store and responsibly share it.
  • Effectively filter information flow and stay focussed.

For more of my thoughts on the impact of digital on teaching and learning, see my post What Happens in Schools When Life Has become an Open-book Test? 

Students will have an opportunity to view GapMinder – a website that exemplifies redefined learning in the digital era. Students will get to use two additional transformative web-based research tools – NGram Viewer and NY Times Chronicle – to develop and test hypotheses. As part of an inclass demo of the power of  word frequency research, students will share their results via a Twitter hashtag: #WordFreq  

Here’s a Storify archive of our research

Books Ngram Viewer and NY Times Chronicle have many interesting applications in the classroom. For example, they can both be used to introduce the research method – form a hypothesis, gather and analyze data, revise hypothesis (as needed), draw conclusions, assess research methods. Working in teams students can easily pose research questions, run the data, revise and assess their research strategy. Students can quickly make and test predictions. They can then present and defend their conclusions to other classroom groups. All skills called for by the new Common Core standards. Ideas for classroom use Books Ngram Viewer and NY Times Chronicle. For more advanced searches using NGram Viewer click here.

Students will be introduced to Evernote a useful tool for curating and storing information and then sharing it with collaborative teams.
Evernote tutorials – Getting started.
How to use Evernote on web. (Use drop down menu to select other operating systems)

Assignment:
Preparations will begin for student design of document-based questions. At this phase students will be introduced to high quality online archives for World History and US  History. Students will create an Evernote Notebook to begin to collect source material for prospective DBQ projects. They will share their notebook with the instructor by eve of Sunday Oct 5. Note: At this point student topics are speculative. Final decisions on topics will not be due until 10/22.

Image Credit: Family watching television. Evert F. Baumgardner, ca. 1958 National Archives and Records Administration