Primary Sources: NewseumED Tools

Your class may not be able to travel all the way to Washington D.C. to visit the Newseum–the museum of news–but you can still take advantage of the Newseum’s archive through NewseumED Tools! NewseumED offers a wealth of tools for teachers, but one thing that sets it apart is its primary source material.

newseum
[newseumed.org]
NewseumED’s search engine allows for you to search for materials by state, time period, topic, type of artifact, and more. You can access Life magazine covers from the 1930s; you can have access to international newspapers.  Primary sources are easy to access.  

NewseumED also has suggestions for how to best incorporate their artifacts into your lesson plans, including media literacy activities. The EDCommunity allows you to communicate with other teachers. EDCollections contains curated groups of artifacts on a variety of potential topics, including the First Amendment, the Civil Rights Movement, and Women’s Suffrage.

Getting Started

  • Dive into a historiography lesson by exploring how different news outlets from different regions covered the same event
  • Spice up a foreign language class by accessing real historical documents in their original language
  • Teach your students the difference between primary and secondary sources–and what can be learned from each

2nd Graders Remember Dr. King

Here are some resources and ideas to help everyone learn about the life and important contributions of Dr. Martin Luther King.

You can learn a lot from simply watching this video developed by (I think) a 2nd grade class (Please help me find the original source so that I can properly cite and acknowledge their outstanding work.).

EdTech Ideas

You and your students could also make your thinking visible using technologies such as: Google Slides or PreziStorybird, ToonDoo or PixtonBlubbrPinterest or Learnist in combination with AudioBoo or  SoundcloudGlogsterDipityVoiceThreadSlideCastZentation, or GoAnimate or PowToon.

Photo Album

Here are a few of my photos from what was then the recently finished Dr. Martin Luther King Memorial in Washington, D.C.

Storybird: Encourage Creativity, Promote Writing, & Add Excitement to Reports, Presentations, & Tutorials – for #isummitconf

Storybirds are short, art-inspired stories, presentations, reports, or tutorials you and your students make to share, read, and print. Storybird is a fun, collaborative website that can be integrated in all content areas. It can be an effective resource for teaching parts of a story, the writing process, promoting creativity, and more. STEM and social studies teachers can use Storybird for engaging alternatives to traditional lessons, reports and presentations. Storybird also seamlessly keeps a portfolio of each student’s work.

Participants will be guided in setting up accounts and helped as they begin using Storybird.com’s tools and services. Participants will learn how to use the teacher-specific tools.

Below are my slides from this workshop that I’m sharing today at iSummit in Atlanta, GA. All the workshop materials and resources (including a video tutorial, additional examples, notes, etc.) are available on my wiki, Learning Telecollaboratively.

View more presentations from Clif Mims
Example Storybirds

Halloween Brothers on Storybird

 

You’re Mootiful on Storybird

 

Developing Young Authors with Storybird

Storybirds are short, art-inspired stories you make to share, read, and print. It is a fun, collaborative, storytelling website that can be an effective resource for teaching parts of a story, the writing process, promoting creativity, and more. Storybird also seamlessly keeps a portfolio of each student’s writing development.

Below are my slides from this workshop. All the workshop materials and resources (including a video tutorial, additional examples, notes, etc.) are available on my wiki, Learning Telecollaboratively.

View more Presentations from Clif Mims
Example Storybirds

Halloween Brothers on Storybird

 

You’re Mootiful on Storybird

Happy Pi Day: Vi Hart Challenges What We Know about Pi

(Repost from 03/14/2011)

Happy Pi Day!

What is Pi Day?
I’m a math educator and I’ve celebrated Pi Day for many, many years. It isn’t the most widely celebrated holiday, so let me explain what it means. Today is March 13, which can also be noted as 3/14. The mathematical notation Pi is rounded to 3.14, so math classrooms around the world celebrate Pi Day today.

Do We Have It All Wrong?
Vi Hart shared this video which challenges what we think we know and understand about Pi.

 

Online Geography Gaming Tips and Resources

I ran across an interesting set of slides via @skipz on Plurk. The slides seem to be the ongoing work of Tony Cassidy. I encourage you to browse through the presentation and consider the ideas for integrating technology with geography.

Online Geography Gaming – Tony Cassidy
A compilation of more than 100 online games and simulations for use in the geography classroom.

Vi Hart Challenges What We Know about Pi

Happy Pi Day!

What is Pi Day?
I’m a math educator and I’ve celebrated Pi Day for many, many years. It isn’t the most widely celebrated holiday, so let me explain what it means. Today is March 13, which can also be noted as 3/14. The mathematical notation Pi is rounded to 3.14, so math classrooms around the world celebrate Pi Day today.

Do We Have It All Wrong?
Vi Hart shared this video which challenges what we think we know and understand about Pi.

Wordles of Every Inaugaration Speech [Video and Gallery]

Governing Dynamo has developed a gallery of all 56 American presidential inaugural addresses that includes full transcripts, Wordles (word cloud visualizations) and video footage. The video below can be a useful way to navigate through the gallery. Click on the glowing green dots in the video to learn more about an inaugural address.