Teacher Tap

 

Group 2: Humanities (English, Social Studies, World Languages)

questionTry It!
Go to Today's Meet.
Share an example of how you use technology in your classroom.

Locate Quality Content

 

Google Ideas

Go to What Do You Love? from Google.

Go to the standard Google search page. Search for a topic of interest.

Example: Search for Triangle Shirtwaist Fire using all the Google tools and you'll be amazing at what you'll find.

questionTry It!
Do a Google Search and explore the menus across the top.
Search infographics for your classes. Add the word infographic to a web search.
Look for kits at KitZu for free visual ideas.

Infographics

Search for particular types of resources such as audio, video, or graphics. For instance, incorporate infographics:

Example (English): What Does Meaningful Mean?, Analysis of On the Road, Is Print Dead?, Rise of e-books, E-books vs Real Books, Books to Read, Avenger's Family Tree, Most Expensive Books
Example (Social Studies): ECORNomics, Travel and Tourism, The Lottery Economy, An Old City, Immigrant Labor, Illegal Immigrants, How Our Laws Are Made, Where Americans Are Moving,  Visualizing Human Migration, America's Poor,  On the Rise: Poverty in America,  The State of the United States,  What Americans Love and Hate About the U.S.A, Where We Volunteer, Volunteer Portrait,  Volunteers, California Vs the World, Average Age of Congressman, The True Size of Africa, Napoleon
Example (World Languages): Language and Your Brain, Most Widely Spoken Languages, Language Families, World Language Families, Most Difficult Languages. Look for infographics in your language areas. They are great for translation activities because they are graphics and students can't use the translators. Examples: Cradle of Dance

Explore Worldmapper, Gapminder and DebateGraph for other interesting views of the world.

Weave these into activities. Find examples at Building Inquiry-based Environments.

Want to try making one? Soon you can use visual.ly. Or, try combining tools like Wordle and create-a-graph.

questionTry It!
Search infographics for your classes.
Use the resources above. Or use Google and add the word infographic to a web search.

Data Collection

Build your own data set for an assignment. Use a tool like Flisti.

questionTry It!
Try our Recycling Poll.
Build your own poll with Flisti.

Build Relevant Assignments

Explore the resources related to your subject area interest: English, Social Studies, World Languages.

questionTry It!
Select an online resource and develop an assignment. Rather than summarizing what they read or answering questions, ask them to compare, organize, create, or evaluate.
Ideas:
Compare one article, perspective, or approach with another.
Provide an example. Ask students to create identify or build another example.

Examples: Compare family history with national and world history on a timeline.

Organize Assignments

What's the fastest and easiest way to share assignments, links, and resources with students? Design an effective, efficient, and appealing entry point for your course materials.

Messages: Today's Meet, Twitter, E-mail (pros: quick; cons: redo each semester)
School Website: (pros: already available; cons: cumbersome)
Documents: Word, PowerPoint (pros: quick, traditional; cons: software-based)
Shared Documents: Google Docs (pros: quick, traditional: cons: student gmail accts)
Social Bookmarks: Delicious, Diigo (pros: quick; cons: limited text)
E-Journal: Blogger, Word Press (pros: posting control/reply option; cons: redo each semester)
Wiki Pages: Wikispaces, PBworks (pros: flexibility, student involvement; cons: passwords, access)
Visual Pages: Glogster, SpicyNodes (pros: interesting, visual; cons: overstimulating)

questionTry It!
Think about how you will organize access to online resources so that students move seamlessly from reading to responding to creating to communicating.

Example. Students are reading Ship Breaker. What resources will bring the book alive for young people? What resources will excite or surprise students? How will these materials and assignments be organized in a meaninful way?

Example: Mr. Chase's Government Class uses a wiki to structure class activities. There's no textbook. Activities and assessments use real-world resources. Students take the U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services test.

Example. How Laws Are Made

Example. Patents and Primary Sources

 

Use the links on the left to move through this online workshop

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