The purpose of this website is to expose students to a website that "looks" like a good website to the untrained eye, but in truth is filled with false information. Using this website, educators can expose theirs students to the risk of reckless internet searches and help give them an experience that will inform their digital citizenship and fact checking skills. Educators should read the "About this Site" link at the bottom of the home page prior to engaging students with any web content.
This website offers the opportunity for English, Social Studies, and any other communication class to begin to analyze what dangers are present when conducting internet research. The target audience is for 5th grade, however, it can be useful even with high school students who need reminders about the dangers of using internet sources.
This website offers a history curriculum for students from grades 5 through 12 to explore and examine history through the eyes of a historian. It teaches essential skills necessary for analyzing source information and evaluating accuracy of historical documents. The website first offers posters for each of the essential skills: Sourcing, Close Reading, Corroboration, and Contextualization. Second, it offers a critical thinking curriculum that teaches the skills mentioned above to all levels of students. Third, it offers a rich and diverse library of lesson plans for students to engage in historical investigations using modified primary documents on a variety of topics in World History and American History. At Washington High School, we have built our entire American and World History curriculums around these investigations with an eye to developing student writing and critical thinking skills. The only critique teachers should be aware of is that there are no answer keys provided. This is intentional however, as the entire curriculum emphasizes that it is not about right or wrong answers, but instead about developing claims and then justifying those claims with evidence provided by the documents and discovered through the use of the essential skills taught.
Overall, I have found the website to be extremely useful in my World History curriculum in helping build student critical thinking, writing, and reading skills. It serves as a solid framework to help address the 21st century skills necessary to evaluate the vast quantities of information that our students will have to through the media.
Daqri is a startup company with the interest in developing Augmented Reality for utilization with business. They currently have two apps available for Android. The first is Elements 4D. The second is Anatomy 4D. Both of these apps involve printing of a page from a library that is installed in the phone and is sharable to other devices. Once printed, you can have the phone look at the provided image and it will show a 3 dimensional image on the phone. This is just the tip of the ice burg in regards to what Augmented Reality can do, and Daqri is one of the cutting edge companies involved in this.
The first app, Elements 4D focuses on basic elements being combined into molecules. The printed sheet is folded into cubes which are easily manipulated and shown to the camera to help students understand how molecules can form and presents a 3D image of the element and, when combined, what it creates. The Anatomy 4D does a similar process with the human anatomy where you use a video over a page to create a 3D image of the human body. Both have applications in science classrooms.
The website itself is informative and offers hardware which can project a digital overlay of the world around us. This digital overlay then can be manipulated through motions, say, by the hand rather than through the use of a keyboard or mouse. Again, there is very little available in regards to the software, and the company is in the beginning phases of development looking for opportunities to provide their services to interested businesses who see the potential. However, this is a technology that educators need to be aware of and invest time and resources in understanding due to the potential that is possible.
EDpuzzle is a video weblink that can be used to assist teachers in flipping their classrooms. The website has three critical elements to it that will make it very useful for educators.
First, the website has access to a number of different videos from the internet for students to access. This includes pre-made content from other teachers, Youtube, National Geographic, TED Talks, Crashcourse, and Numberphile among others.
Second, the video allows for teachers to do simple edits that include shortening the videos, adding audio introductions and comments, written comments, and either short answer or multiple choice questions. The website will grade the multiple choice questions for the teacher itself.
The third and most useful component is the ability to upload directly to google classroom for students to use. Through this feature, teachers are able to create quizzes over videos to ensure that students are watching the information and holding them accountable, followed by connecting it through a familiar media that allows ease of access.
I feel that this is a very useful tool for educators to use and has the ability to assist teachers in flipping their classrooms for independent learning.
ICivics is a website for anyone interested in teaching civics or government to grades 5 through 12. The website provides a variety of lesson plans, curriculum units, webquests, educational games that help build understanding of complex government topics, writing support for argumentative writing, and document based questions. The instructional games run a gambit of topics including the government budget process, the application of constitutional law within a courtroom, and international affairs.
Overall, I've found it to be a great resource for supporting social studies teachers through the use of technology. I've used the lesson plans numerous times in class, and the online games assist in economics, history, and government classes. The writing portion also offers suggestions that can be applicable to Debate, Speech, Social Studies, or ELA courses.
The Megan Meier Foundation is a foundation dedicated to end bullying, cyberbullying, and suicide. It is an organization rooted in the tragic loss of Megan Meier to a combination of depression, cyberbullying, and suicide. The story of Megan Meier is an extremely powerful narrative that realizes the worst fears that parents have regarding the dangers unrestricted digital media can represent to children and families today. The website serves two purposes: to inform the public of the risks of bullying and cyberbullying and second to empower parents, students, educators and legislators to eliminate bullying and cyberbullying in schools.
I found this to be an excellent source of information on the topic of cyberbullying. It provided a large amount of statistics, action steps, and points of view for me as an educator to consider. There are also programs that can be presented for assemblies and to assist in developing the leadership of students within the school to assist in fighting the worst parts of bullying and cyberbullying. However, by far the most powerful message was the stories that are shared on this website. Megan's story was powerful, emotional, and terrifying. It put a human face on the issue in a way that can significantly impact many individual lives. I would highly recommend visiting this website simply for the stories that are shared regarding bullying and cyberbullying and why these are such important issues for schools to devote resources to.