Technology Integration in our World History Classroom: A Sample Lesson

Hello again parents!

Remember how I said that I was going to keep you informed on what your child was doing in his/her world history class?  And remember how I said that we were going to integrate technology into our curriculum?  Here is a sample of the technology that we used in a recent lesson on the French Revolution.

We started off our unit on the Age of Revolutions 1689-1815 with lessons on the Glorious Revolution in England, and the American Revolution.  For the French Revolution, students viewed a Power Point presentation and took notes on study guides, which they were provided with.  After students had been given the proper "fuel" (knowledge of the French Revolution needed to create a product), I took them to the media center to work on the following assignment.  The assignment can be found on my own personal classroom web page.

French Revolution Essays


After students were given time in class to work on their essays, we returned to the classroom and I attempted to tie the concepts we learned on the revolutions of 1689-1815 to our modern world.  This demonstrates the flexibility that teachers do have, even when teaching in a standards-based classroom (see discussion in previous blog post).  Although the standards do not yet mention the democratic revolutions in the Middle East and North Africa of 2011, I personally feel it is important to dissect this critical regional phenomenon.  I will share with you two of the resources I found particularly helpful in teaching this lesson.

Resource #1 - Music of Arab rapper El General
In getting to know my students, I have learned how important music is to their lives.  Students memorize the lyrics to hundreds of songs that sometimes include dozens of lines of verse.  I realized that music and poetry would be a fruitful way to engage their attention and analyze an event in history.  The rapper El General is an Arab musician who has been tagged as the voice of the Arab Youth hungry for a democratic revolution.  We viewed his videos and YouTube and discussed the impact of his music, and social media sites, on the revolutions in the Arab world.




I also directed students to this Time Magazine article on the lessons the world is learning from the Arab revolutions.

Learn to Love the Revolution


As always parents, your feedback, critiques, suggestions, comments, concerns (and praise) are welcome and encouraged.

What are Georgia Performance Standards?

Has the day come yet when you have asked your child what they learned that day in school, and your student said "Oh, we learned about Standard 13."  Huh?  What are the Georgia Performance Standards, and why has the state of Georgia adopted them for every subject that your child learns at school?

According to the Georgia Performance Standards (GPS) website:

The performance standards provide clear expectations for instruction, assessment, and student work. They define the level of work that demonstrates achievement of the standards, enabling a teacher to know “how good is good enough.” The performance standards isolate and identify the skills needed to use the knowledge and skills to problem-solve, reason, communicate, and make connections with other information. They also tell the teacher how to assess the extent to which the student knows the material or can manipulate and apply the information.

What does this mean?

Basically, I would define the standards as a list of the subject matter and skills that each student should master after completion of an academic course.  These lists, different for each academic subject and grade, were composed by a team of professors, teachers, administrators, parents, and students.  They are constantly tweaked and updated.  The standards, at least for a subject like social studies, are not an exhaustive list of names and dates to memorize.  The standards are more thematically-focused.  For example, the World History standard concerning the American and French Revolutions do not say that "students shall know that Louis XVI was the King of France between 1769 and 1793,", or that "students shall memorize the date of the Stamp Act."  Rather, it says that students shall "analyze the causes and effects of revolution(s) in England, America, France, Haiti, and Latin America."  

Venn Diagram where a student could compare and contrast the causes and effects of the major revolutions between 1689-1789.

Thus, standards are an attempt to codify what is important for each student to know.  These things include identification of certain people, places, and events, reading comprehension, writing proficiency, map skills, chart/graph skills, and higher order thinking skills such analysis, synthesis, and evaluation.  The standards are considered so important that administrators in a standards-based school expect their teachers to reference the standards during the course of a lesson a minimum of three times, in order to effectively establish the "expectation" in the minds of the students of what they should be learning.

That, my friends, is my humble attempt at describing the standards.  For those wanting to learn more (and I encourage you to do so), please review the following links from the official website for the Georgia Performance Standards.  First, I have included the page targeted specifically to parents.  Second, I have linked to the GPS for our 10th grade world history class.

GeorgiaStandards.org - Parents

Performance Standards for 10th Grade World History

*Note:  See link on the sidebar of the home page for Q&A discussion of the Georgia Performance Standards.

Welcome parents! Greetings, and why I believe in using technology in my classroom.

Parents of Mr. Anderson's 10th Grade World History class:

Hello, my name is Mr. Anderson and I am your student's World History instructor for the academic school year 2010-2011.

I am absolutely thrilled for the opportunity to connect with you parents through this blog throughout this year's academic journey.  Of the many factors that lead to meaningful learning, undoubtedly one of the most important is a home environment in which parents show an interest in their child's life and transmit the importance of education.  As a team, I am confident that each and every student in my classroom will grow as both a student and human being this year.  I intend to keep you parents "in the loop" on the activities and progress of our classroom.  Also, and quite importantly, I invite parental feedback.  You are encouraged to use the "Comment" feature of this blog to share with me anything on your mind, including advice, suggestions, concerns, and/or questions.  We are going to have a wonderful year!!!

TECHNOLOGY INTEGRATION

As I hope is the case with all of you parents, I believe very strongly in using technology in the classroom to achieve our ultimate goal of meaningful student learning.

Why do I believe in the use of technology in the classroom?

1. Technology enables student access to certain images, audio content, and video content that illustrate the subject matter being discussed in class.  This is particularly important in a World History classroom, where we spend much of the year discussing time periods hundreds or even thousands of years removed from our modern world.  For example, imagine reading a paragraph on the difference between the earth-centered model of the universe and the sun-centered model of the universe.  Now imagine being able to watch a computer simulation of each model immediately after reading the paragraph.  Technology makes visualization possible, which makes the content seem more real and relatable.
2. Technology can make academic endeavors more engaging and interactive, which can lead to students taking more ownership over their work products.  Examples of technology-enabled activities that lead to student engagement include virtual field trips, student creation of web pages or blogs, creating a Facebook page for a historical figure, creating Power Point presentations, and completing Web-quests.  Notice how I used the word "create" several times.  When students create their own knowledge instead of having it handed it to them, it is more meaningful and lasts longer.
3. Technology is an indispensable feature of the day-to-day responsibilities of an ever-increasing number of professions.  Jobs that require computer literacy, when lumped together, comprise the fastest growing sector of the economy.  For this reason, digital literacy needs to start early.
4. The sheer variety of current technologies and the vastness of the Internet require students to sharpen their information and digital literacy skills.  Technology integration in the classroom is the whetstone students use to sharpen these skills.  What is information and digital literacy?  According to the University of Idaho, information literacy is the "ability to identify what information is needed, understand how the information is organized, identify the best sources of information for a given need, locate those sources, evaluate the sources critically, and share that information. It is the knowledge of commonly used research techniques."  Thus, information literacy teaches students where to go and what to do to figure things out.  Digital literacy is similar to information literacy, but the definition focuses on how to use technology to find and organize needed information.  Digital literacy also implies the skill of evaluating a source for usefulness, accuracy, and legitimacy.  Information and digital literacy are vitally important because obviously they apply to real-world situations outside of the classroom.  In a nutshell, information literacy is the ability to figure things out by looking up the answer, and digital literacy is about using tools of technology to look things up.  These forms of literacy are also about self-awareness, and knowing when you can and cannot trust something.
5. Technology can be used to create concepts maps, graphic organizers, outlines, interactive timelines . . . the possibilities are virtually endless.

Some of my ideas have been shaped through my personal research in the field of technology integration in the classroom.  One source that I found particularly formative was the research on technology integration conducted by the George Lucas Educational Foundation.  For those interested in learning more, follow the link below for a definition of technology integration, informative videos, and a community discussion that you too can be a part of!

Edutopia: Technology Integration in Education

Some of you parents reading this blog might be teachers yourselves, and are wondering how you too can integrate more technology in your classrooms.  Sometimes the hardest part of lesson planning is just coming up with the initial idea.  Follow the link below for a beginner's list of 50 ways to use technology in the classroom to promote meaningful student learning.  You can expect that if you ask your student on a daily basis "What did you do today at school?" that by the end of the year in this class we will have engaged in a great number of these activities.

50 Ways to Use Technology

What are some of the cutting-edge educational technologies that we will be using in this classroom?  Included below are links to Inspiration Software and Prezi.


Inspiration Software


Prezi


Thank you so much parents for the critical role that you play in the lives of your students here at school.  You deserve a round of applause!