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What place in  ancient Egyptian society did scribes hold?  How did they come to write on papyrus and how did they do it? Foy Scalf, an Egyptologist at the University of Chicago,  answers all these questions in this short three minute clip. And here is another look at ancient Egyptian scribes from Smart History, which is now part of Khan Academy. Hosts Beth Harris and Steven Zucker examine a seated scribe made of painted limestone and crystal.

Here is a great introduction to PBL from Edutopia . The video reviews five key elements you need to be successful: establish real world connections, build rigorous projects,  structure collaboration, facilitate learning in a student-driven environment, and embed assessment throughout the project. Edutopia has a short clip for each of the five elements.

Luke Rosa, a social studies teacher in Virginia, developed an interesting way to teach vocabulary. Below, he explains how he does it. Courtesy of Luka Rosa Student Teams Here’s how it works. I place students on teams of 4 (3 or 5 also works depending on your class load), and create a schedule. There are some great simple free schedule-makers online, including Playpass and League Lobster. Students are given sets of 10-15 vocabulary words each week. I print them out in sets of 6 to a page that I cut up in strips and have students paste in their notebooks (see the example photo to the left). We’ll then cover those terms in our lessons that week and students are responsible for defining the words in their notebooks. They can ether get the definitions from our lesson, look them up in a textbook, or find them online. Game Day! Game Day Monday is game day! To make it exciting, I’ll have the Monday Night Football or Fox Sports theme playing as they’re walking in. Students take a vocabulary qui...

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 ...