Social Studies

A place to share Web 2.0 ideas for use in the Social Studies arena...

 

 

 

Mapness

by Elfreda Benally

 

Mapness is an online travel journal where you can share your travel experience. You can create a map to show where you’ve been and add photos and videos to share with your friends and family.

 

 

 

 

 

teaching with technology in the 21st century

 http://www.ahistoryteacher.com/wordpress/

 

by Susan Meece

 

A history teacher's guide for history teachers.  He creates several links to Web 2.0 sites, has a blog, and gives ideas on how to incorporate technology into the classroom.  He offers several extensive unit plans and has it all in a well designed and creative site.

 

 

 

 

3D Ancient Wonders

by Shannon Walker

 

This site is a virtual museum allows you to explore ancient wonders by walking through them or exploring them in real time online 3D.  Very cool!!!

 

 

by Shannon Walker

 

This site is a hands-on approach to everything ancient Egyptian.  You can play games, look at photos, watch movies.  Check it out!

 

 

 

by Shannon Walker

 

The above link is a web page created by the Jefferson County Schools in Tennessee to help students learn Social Studies through technology.  It is an amazing site that gives both students and teachers resources to help motivate students to learn important aspects of history. 

 

 

by Susan Meece

 

PBS is billing this site as a "social media" site that connects you to PBS member stations, web 2.0 resources, and the opportunity to help build their new site according to what we want.  One the first page, they showcase Ken Burns "The War,"  "Citizenship Journalism," and an online survey about "How well do you know your fellow Americans?"  I'm sure this will be a great site for all content areas, but as I looked around it really helped Social Studies classrooms.  For now, I would highly recommend this site as a resource for teachers to guide and create what they would like to see as PBS refines it.  Plus, it's just a whole lot of fun, and promises to keep me engaged for hours at a time.

 

 

by Susan Meece

 

http://www.econedlink.org/

 

EconEdLink is the best one-stop shopping for lesson plans and materials for any Economics K-12 class.  It has exceptionally good lesson plans, the only problem is you can only access part of the plans for free.  There are two pay options but it is pretty easy to get an idea of what resources are available through their free links.

The CyberTeach link is a comprehensive guide to teaching economics using the Internet, including model lessons and templates for creating effective lesson plans on your own.

There is a Current Events link that takes you to the newest economic indicators which can often be difficult to find.

Their WebLinks link is the least comprehensive, but it will you take you to most of the major federal economic sites.

 

 

 

 

 

by Susan Meece

 

 http://thinkfinity.com/

 

Thinkfinity was designed by Verizon for educators.  The home page makes it easy to find information on many content areas, but it is one of the few that has quick and easy access to Economics lesson plans and student materials.  There is a site that notes important historical dates with helpful instructional material. Thinkfinity.orgs 11 content partners are among the nations leading education and literacy organizations. Even better, it is all free. 

There are links to help second language learner, interactive sites, media, primary sources, worksheets, and reference material which are easily accessible, helpful, and informative.

 

 

 

by Patti McFeely

 

Designed for middle to upper elementary students, this interactive map game offers an opportunity for students to learn geographical terms, use maps/atlases, and learn about the world while playing. 

Two options are available: (1) students may play an existing game. To play, students use reference materials to match the clues for each location in the game to a corresponding city.  The answers are submitted to the site; if correct, a certificate is displayed to print and post on your bulletin board.

(2) Students may research their own community such as latitude, longitude, typical weather, land formations, time zone, population, points of interest, and for whom/what famous, and submit the info to be included in a future game. All games stay on the site for at least one year.

 

 

googleMaps

by Adam Hunt

 

Google maps allows you to create custom maps for any location on Earth.  So if you want your students to see certain locations, measure distance between two cities, etc..., you can set the map up ahead of time here and make it easy for students to find.  The map I've made below shows the locations of four battles from the Civil War, a standard in 7th grade history (as well as other grades).  Students can measure the distance between battles to see how the locations relate, find more information about each battle inlcuding other links, and can find photos to go with the battle.

View Larger Map

  

ourstory

by Adam Hunt

 

The website ourstory has an interesting idea...allow members to create a living timeline by creating stories and placing them into a timeline.  They start you off with a basic timeline, but it will stretch out as you add stories with particular dates.  To make the timeline even more vivid you can add your own pictures (being sure to properly cite if you use other's pictures of course).  I created a short sample, using Independence Day to stretch out the timeline, then throwing in a few life events using their clip art and one story with my own photos. 

 

So how would you use this in the classroom?  The obvious, of course, is to use this for students to create timelines of certain events.  Rather than drawing out the timeline and trying to get the spacing right between dates, the program does that for you.  In addition, by placing in stories one can add more content than might otherwise be possible on a timeline.  Students could be given a set a dates and asked to find pictures to go along with and then create the timeline, be asked to create a timeline of important events from a certain time period, or given pictures and asked to match it up with an event/date.  These would all probably be at least upper elementary activities and reach on up to whatever level.  For the younger students, creating timelines of their own lives, of parents or grandparents lives, or of their town/state would all be ways to meet standards at the lower grade levels.  One other possibility is to create a class one for current events throughout the year, so over time students add a particular event (with a photo, video of the event, and/or a link to a news story). 

 

In terms of use, it was a little confusing at first and when I uploaded a number of pictures it froze up, but seems to run smoothly now and all my pictures were saved.  On the plus side there is an option to make any timeline private, so safety concerns could be addressed that way.  In addition, the story can be shared several ways:  by emailing certain people, making it public, or posting it directly to a blog.  On the minus side it does ask if the person using is at least 13, possibly because it will ask to go out and look for photos if you don't put one in and, as with any search, you never know what you'll get.  However, you can disable that.  Also, there is some advertising on the page...nothing wild like you might see on internet email sites, but it obviously has partnered with several other pages (like Yahoo, blogger, etc...), and you see their icons fairly often.  Blockbuster also had ads on several pages.  Overall, a good site for relating events when they happen(ed).

 

Using Blogs to Teach Presidential Campaigns

 

 by Susan Meece

 

I have just recently been introduced to blogs, and was excited (and shocked) to see how many presidential candidates are using blogs to get out their message.  It's fascinating to see candidates expressing themselves in a more personal and casual way.  It is certainly a way to get out the 18-24 vote, and allows the candidates to respond to attacks and critisms.  After looking at the top 5 candidate, I picked one blog site for each so that you can see how they express themselves.

John McCain: http://www.johnmccain.com/Blog/

Mitt Romney: http://blog.electromneyin2008.com/

Mike Huckabee: http://www.mikehuckabee.com/index.cfm?FuseAction=Blogs.Home

Hillary Clinton: http://www.hillaryclinton.com/blog/ 

Barak Obama: http://my.barackobama.com/page/content/hqblog/

It is important to incorporate the important role that technology, and especially web 2.0 are to this year's presidential campaigns.  While I can't have students access these links at school (no blogs) I can create an assignment that asks them to compare and contrast the five sites.  They should comment on the accessibilty, effectiveness, and visual design.  Then I would ask them to create one response blog to the site they found most interesting.