This week I focused on increasing my PLN. I followed a lot of new people and organizations. I found some great resources to use and also some great educators to follow. I never really realized the scope of just how influential Twitter can be in education and how many great people are out there that are willing to interact and help in any way possible.
Find #1: @DocsTeach is a tool to help teach students about history using primary sources. This is a big area we focus on in 8th grade and after browsing their Twitter found a lot of neat resources to add to my curriculum. They have ready to use lesson plans which are a huge help.
Find #2: @RealTimeWWII provides a day by day account of WWII and the events that took place. The account started at the beginning of the war in 1939 and each day presents information on what happened on that day. The account is currently in 1943 and then will start from the beginning again in another 2 years. It is something that I could use during our WWII unit to show students the daily happenings of war and especially any notable battles.
Find #3: iCivics is an organization that helps to bring Civics alive and into the classroom. I wrote about one of their apps for my software analysis but use several more in the classroom as well. Although I am only familiar with their apps, I found that they provide full lesson plans which look very engaging. I’m looking forward to trying some out next year.
Find #4: Another one of my favorite finds this week was from @AppleEdu. We are 1:1 with iPad’s so I’m always looking for ways in which to integrate them more effectively into my classroom. On Tuesday they had a conference on how to incorporate audio stories and podcasts into the classroom which is something that I had been looking for. One of the biggest takeaways is that students use this as a way to synthesize information through podcast form just by using the voice memo app on their iPad. I may use this as an assessment type in the future.
Find #5: My last big takeaway from this week is the use of podcasts in the classroom. I put out a question to my followers and received a couple great suggestions on podcasts that are appropriate for 8th grade. Although the Apple conference was partially on podcasts, I didn’t really take away any that I could use.
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