Desire help with Middle School Technology in Social Studies

Replies to This Discussion

Permalink Reply by Kev on December 3, 2008 at 6:45am

Well, i'm not in NC but I teach 7th Social in California (which is medieval world history) and i'd be happy to collaborate. If you'd like to see my stuff you can visit www.mrroughton.com. Pretty much everything I do is there.

• ▶ Reply

Permalink Reply by Kimberly Farmer on December 13, 2008 at 7:59pm

I love some of the ideas that you have. I showed this page to my Social Studies teacher and he used the idea of the historical Myspace page. He said at first the kids were reluctant because they wanted to make a real MySpace page but after getting started they jumped in with both feet. I was impressed with the ideas the kids came up with to create their page. They used screenshots, hyperlinks and sound so they far exceeded his expectations. Thanks for the idea.

• ▶ Reply

Permalink Reply by Nancy Bosch on February 14, 2009 at 8:27am

Kev, You should be the poster child for "I Get What it Looks Like to Integrate Technology In The Classroom" and "How To Use Technology to Differentiate". I am so impressed with your menu of activities and how the different activities are tuned in to different learning styles and different abilities. It seems to me that anybody with half a brain could make up a list of possible assignments for any age or any content area. Even if you didn't have the tech skills to host a website you could post them to a blog or even type the ideas out on notecards. You wouldn't have to have a huge list--you could start small with 4-5 ideas and add to them over the years.

Even though I use technology EVERYDAY with my students (mostly huge months long projects) I'm going to develop a menu just like yours--do you mind if I steal some of your ideas that are appropriate for my students? Thanks in advance. N

• ▶ Reply

Permalink Reply by Kev on February 14, 2009 at 8:36am

Thanks, although I think you'd be shocked how little technology, unfortunately, is actually used in my classroom. It is still very heavily me, me, me due to our limited resources. That's why I put the website together. I knew students would have to do most of the techy stuff at home.

You are more than welcome to beg/borrow/steal anything there. I'd love to see this idea grow as I've found it incredibly successful. I agree that it can be adapted to any content area as well (I even found a math teacher doing something similar!) and would love to see that. I'm working on writing a book (maybe more of a manifesto...) on how it was all designed and put together so hopefully that will help some people too.

• ▶ Reply

Permalink Reply by Peggy Sheehy on March 3, 2009 at 6:06am

Please join the "Global Lean"

blog at http://globallean.edublogs.org
AND NING http://globallean.ning.com

Give the world a voice in a joyful celebration of diversity!

Thanks! Peggy Sheehy

• ▶ Reply

Permalink Reply by Doug Byrnes on February 4, 2010 at 11:25am

I will pass this information along to the 7th grade teachers at Kannappolis Middle School in Kannapolis NC.

• ▶ Reply

Permalink Reply by Amy Beth Lambert on February 10, 2010 at 5:07pm

I've used brainpop in some classrooms as a substitute teacher and it's pretty engaging and informative.

http://www.brainpop.com/

• ▶ Reply

Permalink Reply by Brian Mannix on August 30, 2010 at 1:53pm

I thought you might be interested in the following online project.

The project is called "How Could War Look Different?" It is a two part online project that can be applied to any war (People have signed up for the American Revolution, the Civil War and WWII). The first half re-enacts the wars online and the second half of the project re-imagines the acts of war through the lens of peace.

I've attached the program. Please let me know if you are interested and feel free to send it along to any of your colleagues that you feel might want to take part.

Be well.

Sincerely,

Brian Mannix
Great Neck South Middle School (NY)
mannixlab@gmail.com

Attachments:

• How Could War Look Different.pdf, 79 KB

• ▶ Reply