examples




 * Examples of different 21st century tools and activites from the presentation**


 * A Virtual Press Conference with George Washington** - Using [|Voki], a source to create speaking avatars. Students were divided into groups and given a question that would be posed to President George Washington. Using some secondary resources, they had to develop a 60 second response in first person, Their responses were recorded and uploaded to George Washington avatars. Student then used the "press conference" to respond to quaetions about Washington's Presidency. The entire activity took one 40 minute class period. Examples are available from 4 class periods - periods [|1,] [|2], [|3], and [|6].

**Collaborative Script Writing** - Using Google Docs, students wrote collaborative scripts from scenes of various individuals discusing the ratification of the Constitution. Students were able to work asynchonously to develop creative and engaging scripst utilizing secondary source material. NOTE: We discussed Google Apps for Education in the presentation. This is a free hosted document sharing network for your school or district. Click here for more information on [|Google Apps for Education Edition]. 
 * Collaborative Scrapbook** - Using wikispaces, students made sense of the the study of Constitution by making a scrapbook of current events and issues dealing with the Constitution, constitutional principles, the three branches of government, and the Bill of Rights. Students populated a wiki scrapbook with links to news articles, videos, images, and anything else that demonstrates how the Constitution lives and breathes today. The material was then used to guide a class discussion before a test on the Constitution. 4 examples are avaialble Constitution Scrapbook 1 / Constitution Scrapbook 2 / Constitution Scrapbook 3 / Constitution Scrapbook 6.
 * Historical Simulation Blog** - In this activity, students [|relived the journey of Lewis and Clark and the Corps of Discovery], with their thoughts, experiences, and reactions recorded on a travelblog. They began by reading a background essay on the expedition. The following day, we used our school campus as "the unknown" and traveled around, reading primary source accounts and historical information on our journey. Using a flip video camera and a voice recorder, the journey was chronicled. Finally, the members of the expedition each had to reflect on the experience through a written blog entry by writing a paragraph with a one word thesis, based on their notes on the journey and the information recorded online. A variety of tools were used in this activity, including Blogger, Flickr, and GCast.


 * Field Trip Journal** - On our [|annual trip to Washington D.C]., our class used a blog, podcasts, video streaming, and Flickr to record our experiences and share the information with our friends and families back at home. Students provided much of the commentary, shared images using their iPhones, and posted descriptions using twitter.

**Cold War Trading Cards** - Using [|VoiceThread], students created historical "trading cards" concerning events of the Cold War. As individuals or in partners, students researched an assigned topic, created voicethreads with images of the topic, historical facts, and a narrated primary source quote. The cards were used to review for a Cold War quiz. Want to see the assignment and a sample of the card collection?


 * Comments on the Road to War** - After discussing the events leading to the Civil War and role playing various perspectives on the war, students were asked to comment on the major events using [|VoiceThread]. Brief summaries of the events were discussed oneach thread, and then students left their oral or typed comments. the threads were used as review for a quiz on the causes of the war. Some of the threads can be viewed here.
 * Current Events Radioshow** - Twice a month, the Gator Radio Experience broadcasts live from the Palo Alto area. These radio shows are moderated and facilitated by students and feature music, interviews, news of the day, and commentary. The shows are interactive in nature, as listeners canparticipate via a chat room, polls, and forums. Past shows and summaries can be accessed at the [|Gator Radio Experience blog], and the show broadcasts live every other Wednesday on Ustream at http://www.ustream.tv/channel/gator-radio-experience.
 * Interactive Cartoon Timeline** - To chronicle Campaign 2008, students analyzed editorial cartoons and placed them on a timeline using Dipity. In the timeline, students summarized the issue of the cartoon, described the techniques used by the cartoonist, and summarized the editorial comment of the caroons. some students were able to add vide to their summaries as well. The timelines were used in class to review the campaign, and students used them as a source of information for an online quiz. Check them out at [|Period 1] / [|Period 2] / [|Period 3]/ [|Period 6]


 * We Were There** - To describe some of the majore events of the Civil Rights Movement, students created collaborative "first person" accounts and developed short videos based on primary and secondary resources. Notes and scripts were written online, and movies were created using Windows MovieMaker. The resulting products were posted on YouTube, viewed as a class, and shared with the school community. The assignment details are available, and you can enjoy some examples at We Were There.
 * Historical Facebook** - Historical individuals were connected online using Ning in two different activities. In one, students were assigned the role of a delgate to the Constitutional Convention. The researched their role and then created a historical "Facebook" page. They had to respond to specific profile questions based on their views on government, make "friends" with delegates of similar interests, join "groups" based on their views, and respond to forum discussion questions. Check out their work at [|Convention 1], [|Convention 2], [|Convention 3], [|Convention 6] In the second, students were given roles from the Civil Rights Movement and made an online community. The members had to respond to profile questions, ask each other questions, form "freindships' participate in discussions, and post information about their lives. Their product is available at [|Civil Rights 1], [|Civil Rights 2]. In both cases, students remarked that they enjoyed the activity, but all wanted more social interaction as their characters!   
 * Digital Porfolio** - As a test of utilizing emerging technolgies and recording learning over a period of time, the final unit of the year was completed by using online materials and a digital notebook for all students. A variety of 21st century tools were utilized as students studied the Civil Rights Movement and the Cold War. Students took online notes, posted vidoes and annotated collages, created historical discussions, illustrated speeches, chatted about the Cubamn Missile Crisis, and made historical trading cards. Examples can be found at Turning Points 07 and Turning Points 08. Some highlighted notebooks include Carol, Dror, Meredith and Nicole, and Holly.


 * Oral History** - One of the more exciting aspects of the portfolios were the inclusion of oral history projects, in which students chose an individual and interviewed them about their experiences concenring a a specific topic from the time period. Students had to research the topic, develop questions and conduct an ionterview, and provide a reflection on the experience. A collection of these interviews can found here, and some highlights include an interview with Cold Warrior Werner I Juretzko and a Vietnam War Interview with Mr. Keenan.

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 * Washington DC Class Trip Blog**: We post all kinds of updates to our class trip blog when we take the 8th grade students to our nation's capitol each spring. We've always posted daily photos and a daily blog update, but over the past two years we added a few additions to the blog that the parents and students alike have really enjoyed. We use a Gcast account to post several audio updates to the blog from a cell phone. Last year we had a few students posting photos from the cell phones directly to the blog. We even had a few students posting cell phone text updates from their blog using a microblog service called twitter. Finally, each night while we were in DC the students did a live broadcast back to the parents and the school community. They gave a brief