Presentation Strategies
Digital StorytellingThis is a tool that allows students to create a virtual poster—how cool is that!?—that can combine linked or embedded text, video, images, and even music! This tool enables students to share and engage with information. Stories are brought to life, which can make history content more interesting for students and easier to grapple with. This tool also enables students to collaborate and share with peers. Storytelling could be used as a method for a class discussion online. This way ALL students can participate and share their ideas, even those who do not participate in class discussions. But with this tool, all students will have the opportunity to share their opinion and to participate in an online discussion.
Storyboard
Storyboards are a very cool strategy that allows students to keep track of main ideas and supporting details in a narrative by having them actually illustrate the important scenes. I have encountered many students who truly enjoy drawing, and they actually learn a lot more this way. The fact that students can illustrate historical scenes makes this strategy a good tool for using in my classroom. I am always looking for new ways to engage students with the content. Students will find it easier to illustrate the main ideas of a story, and they might even remember them much easier by using this strategy. Another good feature of this strategy is that students are still required to write a short caption explaining what is happening in the illustration. When students have a visuals they express their ideas better and easier.
Collaboration Strategy
Digital CollaborationWhat other collaboration tool better than a digital one. Intel provides excellent resources for teacher and students. On it, you will find many tools that can be used to improve collaboration in the classroom. There are mobile learning tools, ideas for how to encourage creativity in the mobile classroom, 21st century teaching resources for teachers, and much more. One particular feature that I think can be excellent for encouraging collaboration among students is the Designing Effective Projects, which helps to gather ideas by integrating technology into a classroom project that the student might be working on in groups.
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Communication Strategies
Teaching with Blogs
Blogs give students the opportunity to read and write online, which are basic skills that students must have to succeed in school. Blogs enable students to share their writing with others very easily. This tool is perfect because allows students to communicate with each other through posts and keep the conversation going. Students learn by sharing new ideas about a particular topic that was covered in class. This way, the class discussion never stops. Through this communication tool, students expand their ideas about concepts, and even clarify misconceptions about the topic by reading their peers posts and comments.
Four Corners
This is another communication tool that I have used in the classroom. The students really loved it. They were engaged and were eager to participate. One of the good things about four corners debates is that students learn in a fun way. They have so much fun during the debate that they don’t even realize that they are actually learning. What surprised me about using this strategy is that students who do not participate in class were collaborating with the rest of the group by giving ideas and suggesting evidence that would support their argument. Four corners really elicits the participation of all students.
Collection Strategy
Finding Primary Sources
As a history teacher candidate, I appreciate the fact that there are websites like this one to provide students with some extra help for learning how to find and evaluate primary sources on the web. Primary sources are the evidence of history, and therefore it is crucial that students in history class know how to work with these sources. On this websites, students are directed to excellent websites that provide a plethora of primary sources, such as Library of Congress and the National Archives. This way, students won’t have to spend time looking on other sites that they probably shouldn’t be on anyway. In addition, the site provides help finding, evaluating, and using primary sources, which can be really helpful for students working on a research paper at home.
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Organization Strategy
Two-Column Note-Taking
Researching to write an essay is a huge part of a history class. Sometimes, keeping all the information gathered organized can be a bit difficult. That is why this strategy can be really helpful for students in a history class writing a big paper. What two-column note-taking does is that it helps the students to identify information in a lecture or reading. The good notes that students take, thanks to the organization that is encouraged by this strategy, prepare them to start writing a good paper. Students compile key ideas from the text on the left side, and they write their response or interpretation of the key idea in the right side. I will definitely use this strategy to help students take good notes while reading a text. This will allow students to develop their organization, note taking, and analysis skills.
Interaction StrategySimulation and Interactives
This is an excellent strategy that will help students learn in an interactive way. Particularly, I love that the site offers some interactive maps where students are required to find the countries on the map. Once they find the right country, the site displays a whole list of information about the country, including its capital and other valuable information that is important to know. This interactive way of learning with maps can be really helpful for our students since a big majority of our students today lack geography skills.
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