Truly Historic

What an amazing evening to be a history teacher!  President Obama just announced that the United States was successful in finding and killing Osama Bin Laden.  Events like this are going to be remembered by our generation forever and are on par with Kennedy's assassination and the first moonwalk.  I think Obama did a wonderful job of reminding our very divided country how much things have changed since 9/11.  Hopefully this will bring even a small amount of unity back for a short time.  It is hard to say what this means in the larger scope of things.  I worry that we are entering a very scary time on the international level and for our troops.  That being said, this is a truly symbolic announcement and it will be something I always remember.

I was in my wood shop class in middle school the morning of 9/11 and I can remember a similar sense of fear and confusion as the one I felt when they first announced that Obama was making an emergency address to the country.  I'm currently watching the re-play of Obama's address on CNN which is being played on a split screen with coverage of the celebrations taking place in Washington D.C. and around the country.  This is really amazing.

Senior Research Presentation

This is the presentation I gave for my senior seminar class. My topic was on the transition from high school to college for students with Asperger's Syndrome. Obviously the presentation is lacking without my explanation of the slides but I was proud with how it turned out. One of the main reasons I had to post this here was because I was unable to have my class view it in any other way and they needed access to it. Enjoy!

MC 498 Presentation on Prezi

MSUMUN

Last weekend I was fortunate enough to participate in my fourth, but hopefully not last, Model United Nations conference on campus. Since I started at MSU I have been involved with an organization on campus that creates, organizes, and staff a conference for high school students to compete as delegates to the UN. When I was in high school, I had heard about Model UN teams and conferences but never chose to participate in them myself. Through James Madison College, some of my friends convinced me to interview to be on the staff when I was a Freshman, even though I had no idea what I was doing. Luckily, they gave me a chance and I completely fell in love with the program. We begin initial conference preparations in October and then work all year to train and prepare ourselves to host high schoolers on campus for the whole weekend. Personally, competing in Model UN is not something that interests me, but being a part of the staff has been a really wonderful experience. It combines my passions for history, social issues, and teaching in such a perfect way. The students, both college and high school, that I work with are the most interesting and engaging individuals that I know. In just the four years I have been on staff I have seen the conference grow into something really amazing. It has become more professional, better respected, and more successful than any of us could have imagined. This year, we had almost 500 delegates from 30 schools and four different states, discussing some of the biggest challenges that face our world today.

This year, I was responsible for a group that, instead of being an official UN committee, was a mock Michigan Senate for the weekend. It was a challenge for us because it had never been done before and went against what most people were expecting at an MUN conference. We were nervous about how it would be received and whether or not the students would understand why we felt that this was an important avenue to explore. The committee far exceeded our wildest expectations in even just the first day. The high school students were prepared, involved, and passionate about their topics. The truly embodied their Senator's positions and eagerly jumped into the topics we had prepared for them (Revitalization of Detroit, Reform in K-12 Education Standards, and Transitions and Innovations for the New Michigan Economy). I am so truly inspired by these students and it just helps remind me that I am doing exactly what I need to with my life. Sometimes it so easy to lose sight of that and being involved with programs such as MSU Model UN has really helped me develop my own passions. Explore our website for more information about the conference.

Digital Stories

The History of the Peace Sign on Prezi

This week I've spent some time playing with various different digital presentation programs that are available online. The one I chose to use is called Prezi. In the most basic sense, it is a really creative and interactive version of PowerPoint. You can still give a cohesive and interesting presentation with pictures and text, but it can be controlled by the viewer so it is more conducive to being shared online (such as in a blog) than only for use as a presentation. It makes the project much more entertaining and interesting to watch and explore than a simple PowerPoint.

I chose to put together a very brief project on the history of the peace sign. The idea behind it was for a lesson on counter culture of the 1960s. I really enjoy planning lessons that employ collaborative learning. There is that old adage that you learn more by teaching others, but I really do believe it is true. I like the idea of having students research something specific in groups and then sharing it with the rest of the class. This could be incorporated into a current US History class (usually 10th or 11th grade). I would be really interesting to hear how effective my sample presentation was. Since I know the full narrative in my head, I would like to know if I was able to convey the information with minimal text.

Overall I really enjoyed using Prezi. It was a little bit difficult to get used to the different wants to manipulate text and pictures because it is so different from any other program. Also, there are several tutorials on the site but once you enter the design template there is not much assistance. Some of the sample presentations on the site are really amazing but they unfortunately require a higher (i.e. you have to pay for it) version of the program. I'm looking forward to playing with the site more to see what else you can do with it. I think the future I would make sure I pick a topic that lends itself to using a lot of visuals. The peace sign was an interesting idea but I didn't realize that pictures for it would not vary much.

Flying with Google Earth

This week I spent some time exploring and playing with the Google Earth download available through Google. I've heard so much about it and seen it used mostly just for fun. Now that I have downloaded it I've realized what an awesome tool it could be in a classroom. With budget cuts and funding in schools being revoked, as well as the logistics usually involved, field trips are scarce at every level of school, but Google Earth would enable me to take a class half way across the world to look directly at some of the things we are studying. They have really neat historical and location features that I could use to show landmarks, geographical areas, cities, and interesting sites that correspond with lessons. This goes nicely with the last TPACK exploration that I did about virtual field trips as well. To pair a virtual tour of the Smithsonian with a walking tour of downtown Washington D.C. and the Smithsonian museums would be an incredibly effective lesson without leaving my classroom. Here is a screenshot I took while I was exploring the MSU campus -

Another feature that could be really useful is the Tour function. This allows you to record and share a tour of a specific area and provide narration. This could be used to either supplement a lecture or lesson, or as a presentation school for student projects.

Also, here is a really interesting blog (unofficial yet endorsed by Google) that explains some of GoogleEarth's features, gives tips, and information related to using the download.

Interesting Article...

Big tech news today...Google is choosing to not withdraw their company from China but instead route searches through a Hong Kong server in order to go around Chinese censorship laws. This article was really thought-provoking and I will be interested to hear more on the topic. I did know that China had very strict rules regarding internet usage by its citizens but I didn't really realize that something like this would be an option for Google. I commend them on their attempt at bringing equal and fair access to everyone but at the same time it seems to violate pretty serious social norms. It is a very western approach that Google would know better than the Chinese government. I am interested to see what, if anything, is done about this move. Check out the article on CNN.

Practice with Presentations

This week I have been playing around with a couple different applications that allow users to create effective and interesting presentations. Similar to PowerPoint, these programs create a slide-show that you can personalize and use for many different purposes. I tried to use the concept of Beyond Bullet Point or BBP for this sample lesson. Basically, the developers of BBP explain that both the positive side and downfall of PowerPoint presentations is that they are easy to create. That being said, they aren't always made effectively. Individuals learn in many different ways but there are some basic concepts to understand before giving a presentations. Learning is multi-faceted and in order to be effective, the presenter must strike the perfect balance between simple, easy to understand slides, and information overload. The slides need to use the space, time, and images to convey important points.

Too often in classes that I have taken a teacher has created presentation to guide a lecture that was only bullet points, and then simply read us these slides. While being un-creative, these types of presentations are insulting to one's audience. If learning were as simple as reading, we wouldn't need to attend a lecture on it. Effective presentations waste nothing - they use speech, text, and images to the best of each of their abilities. Here is a look at a sample presentation that I have created as an introduction to the US Supreme Court.

TPACK Exploration

As I've mentioned before, I am pretty overwhelmed with amount of information I have access to through the internet. Although it is fraught with complications from human and technology error, the internet gives us ways to view resources that we could never have imagined several decades ago. As a teacher, this prospect is incredibly exciting. With limited funds and the practicality of numerous field trips, we are able to share things with our students in a much smaller time frame with much less planning. Recently, I've been exploring the world of virtual museums and the opportunities that they present for a classroom. These are websites that have been developed in conjunction with an actual museum that allows access to the information displayed in permanent exhibits, traveling displays, and from their research or records. The wonderful part about museums (in any form) is the wealth of information they make available to the public. The purpose of them is to share in the education process and to spread knowledge to as many people as possible.

The idea of TPACK is to integrate Technological, Pedagogical, and Content knowledge into interesting, and useful lessons with a classroom. The emphasis of this theory is that all three are very important but that these types of learning and knowledge can all interact really successfully, and sometimes better than when used on their own.

Two of the websites I explored were from the Smithsonian (http://www.si.edu/) and the Library of Congress (http://www.americaslibrary.gov/) From the technological knowledge standpoint, these sites are fairly easy to use. As long as one has computer and internet access, these websites are available. Although it is an advanced idea, and the sites themselves are complex, they are easy to navigate and search for both myself and potential students. These types of resources can employ aspects of my personal pedagogy because it can assist me in creating engaging lessons. Although I would love to take every single one of my students to the Smithsonian in person, realistically I will be unable to, so I want to be able to offer the next best thing. The content of these sites is geared mostly towards social studies classrooms. Because the SI is home to so much information, it can really be used across many disciplines - or possibly in some type of cross curriculum activites. The LoC site specifically deals more with American history and has a lot of interactive features that would be interesting to incorporate.