bodner081

Here is a terrific clip form teachinghistory.org on the elements of historical thinking.

History teacher Russel Tarr designed an awesome "Breaking News Generator." Students can use it to create a profile  of an important figure in history. They will have to think about the person's location, develop a title for the news channel, a headline and a ticker which summarizes an understanding the figure.  Finally, students upload an image. Here's a sample I designed. Other uses : Tarr suggests that students could produce a timeline of events and then provide a screenshot for the major events. Students could also produce breaking news screenshots with a biased tone.

English teacher Caitlin Tucker gave this terrific keynote talk to a recent MassCue conference(Massachusetts Computer Using Educators). She urges teachers to create a student centered learning environment and explains how technology can facilitate that environment. We see a clip of  a youth TedTalk one of her students made,  and an RSS animation  students made about why the people burned the books in Fahrenheit 451. Tucker wants a student-centered classroom where kids are at the center of learning.  For example, she noted  that students who created the the RSS animation understood the transformation of society at the end of Fahrenheit 451 much better than if they had just listened to a teacher presentation about the shift.

Here are some resources that I have collected over the past few days for facilitating conversations with students about white nationalism and the events at Charlottesville this weekend. Harvard University School of Education tweeted some of these excellent resources. Facilitating conversations with students about white nationalism. Resources for educators for talking about race and bias , strategies for leading these conversations at the higher ed level , advice for parents for talking about trauma and community violence , from Usable Knowledge Guidelines for discussing controversial topics in the classroom , from the Center for research on Learning and Teaching at the University of Michigan Resources for standing up to hate and intolerance , advice on preparing students for difficult conversations , and a lesson teaching different forms of civic participation , from Facing History Strategies for educators for preparing for conversations about race and racism , a guide for responding

Here's a great new series from BBC about China's huge initiative, called One Belt, One Road, to open trade channels between itself and neighbors in both the east and the west. It will include both land and sea routes, super fast trains on the land and huge container ships on the sea. Why is China committing close to $1 trillion dollars to this initiative?   According to The Economic  World Forum,   one incentive is to improve the economies of poorer countries to the south. Improving these economies could help maintain China's economy. For example, in the homeland of the Uyghurs in Kashgar, an ethnic Muslim minority that has often revolted against its marginal status, China has invested hundreds of millions with the idea that involvement in profitable trade will reduce violence. One former US diplomat called the Chinese initiative, "potentially the most transformative engineering effort in human history," according to CBS News . Here is a clip that reviews some of

Blended learning stations may be a great way to individualize lessons and create smaller learning communities within the classroom. Most of us work on a 90 minute block schedule already and plan three or four activities for each class. Why not turn them into stations?  Students can move at their own pace and you don't have to wait for the whole class to finish an activity before moving on to the next. And its easy for you as the teacher to move between the groups to answer questions and offer suggestions. English teacher, Caitlin Tucker, explains how the stations might work in the five minute clip below.

Here are some great online resources for teaching the Middle East that I put together on a Weebly site. I am teaching a current events course next spring and want to include a unit on the Middle East to help students better understand contemporary issues in the region. One of the best resources I found comes from the British Council and the Social Science Research Council. ​ Its curriculum  includes 5 units to help World History high school educators teach about the Middle East and North Africa in their classrooms.  Curricular themes include Women & Gender, Plural Identities, Empire & Nation, Political & Social Movements, and Arts & Technology.  These units include terrific primary and secondary sources and good lessons for students to evaluate and analyze them. Another site helps students learn Middle Eastern geography with a number of interactive games. And Teach Mideast has country profiles with information on geography, history and government, and culture. You c

Here is an awesome summary of US & Iranian relations by UNC Professor, Dr. Charles Kurzman. You'll learn the history of Iran from the revolution in 1906 to the overthrow of Prime Minister Mohammad Mosaddegh in 1953 to the Iranian Revolution in 1979. Here is a link to a student video guide for the clip.  And here i s a teachers guide .