Find #1
One of my biggest takeaways from this week is following Dr. Joe Harmon (@DrJHarmon) who is with iCivics. I use iCivics material a lot during our Constitution unit and found an awesome tweet from him that contained some great project based learning opportunities for social studies. The resource is a collaborative Google Drive folder that allows people to add their own resources. I have been wanting to incorporate more PBL into my curriculum and this is a great resource! I can't wait to dive into it and see what awesome projects we can do next year and also add some of my own into the drive.
Find #2
This week I participated in the #SSChat held on Monday night. I was a little late after realizing it had already started after I found out about it, but enjoyed reading through all of the responses and adding my own answers. The chat is held by someone different each week and had some really thought provoking questions to reflect on. There are so many different perspectives that it is really neat to see how everyone's answers differ. I am looking forward to participating with everyone next week!
Find #3
Find 3 brought me to Steve Isaacs (@mr_isaacs) who is an Education Program Manger for the company that made the ever popular Fortnite. I have went to a couple conferences that mentioned gamification in the classroom but never really followed up on it. He did a Zoom presentation about the use of interactive 3d in the classroom which I attended on Tuesday. I learned some neat ideas about creating virtual worlds that could be applied to social studies and also about some virtual field trip opportunities. He is very active and I'm curious to see what other ideas I can find.
Find #4
Find four came from the National Museum of American History. I found this quote to be interesting as we often say in history that it repeats itself. By analyzing the past we can (hopefully) build a better future and learn from our mistakes. This got me thinking about how I can utilize the museum in my town to better teach the students about the people who have lived here in the past to better empower my students. Although I serve on the Board of Directors, it is a resource that I haven't utilized as much as I should of in my classroom. Also, I can take what happens in my classroom and apply that to the museum as well.
Find #5
The last find for this week came from the Illinois Holocaust Museum. I am always looking for new ways to teach students about the Holocaust as part of our WWII unit and is something that seems to be covered every year in school. Although the kids are always interested, I want new and fresh ways to teach it to them. I signed up for a "trunk" that they send online that sends different artifacts and lets the students explore different parts of the Holocaust. I had no idea this was even a thing until I stumbled upon their Twitter looking for something else. It seems they used to send actual trunks but not with COVID.
Summary
This week I mainly followed accounts and got some great ideas to apply to my classroom. I was able to retweet some great resources for social studies teachers and other things that may apply to other subjects. I am looking forward to next week interacting more and participating in more Twitter Chats like #pblchat next week. I'd also like to find more social studies educator accounts to follow and interact with!
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