Class 1: Make a History Teacher Meme

Here’s the flow of our first class  – a chance to get to know more about the course and try our hand at some low and high tech teaching tools.

1. First task …  solve a Murder Mystery! (It’s how I opened my high school classes for years). Find lesson here.
2. Next, we’ll discuss their vision of the “history teacher.” They will be invited to turn those ideas into memes using AdobeSpark Post.
3. Peter will offer a  quick demo of AdobeSpark Post –  a great tool for creating striking title slides with public domain content.  See video below.
4. Students will get a quick overview of WordPress. See video below and view our WordPress 5.0 Playlist
5. While students are working, Peter will get each student logged into our WordPress account.
6. Finally we’ll reflect on the first class and how the classroom workflow was designed and managed.

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Assignment 1 | Posts 19A-1

Task 1: Create a meme and create your first blog post – an elaboration / explanation of your meme. Be sure to do your post by August 29th.

Students should be sure their post includes a featured image (the meme) made using  AdobeSpark. Use your meme from class or make a new one. Here’s some post prompts – feel free to use one or more for inspiration.

• What makes for a good history teacher?
• Why teach history?
• What you see as your “models” for history teacher.
• The challenges or opportunities of teaching history.
• How were you taught history? Is that how you intend to teach?

Task 2: Students will be assigned one of the historical archive sites here. They will prepare a 5 minute introduction to the site to be presented to class on Sept 2. Presentation should include:

1. How to use search functions in site
2. How to download content
3. How to find metadata for citation and hyperlink.

Task 3: Before our 9/2 class, comment on at least 2 student posts. It’s a conversation, not simply a … “nice job.”

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