Tech Edge, Mobile Learning In The Classroom - Episode 10, History Apps

Trainin Author

04/18/2016 Added

187 Plays

Description

Technology Information: History Applications

Searchable Transcript

Search:

[00:00:00.000]Coming up on mobile learning in the classroom,
[00:00:02.191]History Apps.
[00:00:04.134](upbeat music)
[00:00:16.483]Hi. My name is Guy Trainin, and this is
[00:00:18.456]mobile learning in the classroom from Tech Edge
[00:00:21.493]and today, we're talking about History Apps
[00:00:23.699]and websites.
[00:00:26.156]Really the audience today is more for secondary
[00:00:29.105]classrooms, middle school and up.
[00:00:31.334]Lots of opportunities for younger kids, but today we
[00:00:33.447]want to focus on what happens in those classrooms
[00:00:36.466]from about sixth grade and up.
[00:00:38.695]The first one I want to talk about is a fantastic
[00:00:41.133]website.
[00:00:41.755]We're going to dig deeper into it in another episode,
[00:00:44.937]but teaching Big History.
[00:00:47.026]The Big History Project is a fantastic website,
[00:00:51.043]and you can see teaching Big History has a lot of resources
[00:00:54.838]for teachers,
[00:00:56.251]but it has set lesson plans for students set as well.
[00:01:00.472]So if you go through this, this is getting to know,
[00:01:03.050]so there are guides for teachers to walk you through
[00:01:05.743]what is Big History.
[00:01:07.415]What is available on the website,
[00:01:09.430]and then, thinking about
[00:01:11.925]how you can use it effectively
[00:01:14.642]in your classroom.
[00:01:15.891]So these are really ways to look at
[00:01:19.987]History from
[00:01:21.917]the big expanses of how History has unfolded
[00:01:25.504]and then being able to look deeper and deeper
[00:01:28.523]into specific cases within those longer,
[00:01:32.559]larger timelines
[00:01:33.829]as we can explore them.
[00:01:35.930]So if we go into the unit, you can see
[00:01:38.276]that it actually starts with the History of the Universe
[00:01:41.178]and then goes beyond that.
[00:01:43.523]I'll login to Agriculture and Civilization
[00:01:46.774]because this is the start of a real meaningful
[00:01:50.838]prehistory from that perspective,
[00:01:51.952]and you can see we've got readers,
[00:01:54.483]we've got unit guide,
[00:01:55.830]and we've got unit slides,
[00:01:57.618]so there's a series of materials that will help.
[00:02:00.162]You can see from the quality here,
[00:02:01.718]they're fantastic materials.
[00:02:03.599]They're fantastics photographs, maps, videos, etc.
[00:02:07.755]This, for example, is why was agriculture so important
[00:02:10.936]so you get a short video that explains the key ideas
[00:02:16.455]and you see how the whole thing focuses
[00:02:19.605]on how do we zoom in on a specific period,
[00:02:22.970]talking to different Historians,
[00:02:26.074]learning to think like a Historian.
[00:02:28.373]So you can actually build up as you learn
[00:02:32.088]the specific features within these units.
[00:02:34.799]This is a fantastic way to get kids engaged
[00:02:37.539]and to really foster their interests
[00:02:40.233]and their ability to understand the larger themes
[00:02:43.832]and then the value of details
[00:02:46.572]or regional source materials
[00:02:49.033]and all of that,
[00:02:49.887]including writing in their own notebook.
[00:02:52.256]You can see that there are articles,
[00:02:53.742]there are videos,
[00:02:55.158]there are activities,
[00:02:56.273]infographics, etc.
[00:02:58.953]I'll just give you an example of one of the articles.
[00:03:01.340]One of the things I like best about these articles,
[00:03:05.369]besides the fact that they have been actually collected
[00:03:09.235]for your use,
[00:03:11.199]is the fact that each one of them also has
[00:03:13.823]a reading level attached,
[00:03:15.750]so you know if it's appropriate for your students or not.
[00:03:18.560]In this case,
[00:03:22.646]it's on the bottom left
[00:03:24.210]so you know is this something that is appropriate
[00:03:26.509]for my students or not.
[00:03:28.668]And then you can continue from there.
[00:03:31.826]All of these are very well written,
[00:03:33.846]and it moves us away from the traditional textbooks
[00:03:36.702]where all the material is supposed to be in the book
[00:03:39.001]into this interactive website
[00:03:41.021]where you can get a lot of materials
[00:03:43.065]and you can go deeper
[00:03:44.086]or just skipping to another topic
[00:03:47.175]within the unit, which is an interesting
[00:03:51.401]and innovative way to think about
[00:03:53.142]how we do curriculum in the Social Sciences
[00:03:56.616]in general.
[00:03:58.358]So this is Big History
[00:04:00.006]and BigHistoryProject.com
[00:04:01.696]and I promise that we will go back
[00:04:04.529]and explore this in depth
[00:04:05.899]with Social Studies teachers who are using this
[00:04:08.848]in her classroom or his classroom
[00:04:10.636]relatively soon.
[00:04:12.424]So this is a resource.
[00:04:14.617]If you are interested in resources for the classroom,
[00:04:16.557]this is a fantastic one.
[00:04:18.856]The second one, is a series of videos from Crash Course.
[00:04:22.246]Crash Course is a fantastic set of videos.
[00:04:24.196]They're good as an introduction or as a summary,
[00:04:26.681]depending on how you want to use them.
[00:04:28.074]They're short videos that focus on specific issues
[00:04:30.094]within History.
[00:04:31.580]There's World History.
[00:04:32.323]There's also American History.
[00:04:34.506]There are other topics as well,
[00:04:36.364]but we want to focus on Crash Course.
[00:04:38.895]I think that's probably one of the best productions,
[00:04:40.845]personally thinking,
[00:04:42.424]but others like their astronomy and others as well.
[00:04:45.470]It's available very easily through PBS
[00:04:49.139]and on YouTube.
[00:04:51.837]I love using it actually from my iPad,
[00:04:56.625]so if I switch right now to my iPad,
[00:04:58.622]I'll be able to show you how that plays out.
[00:05:01.153]It immediately populates the World History Crash Course
[00:05:05.374]with all of its videos,
[00:05:06.433]and you can see that it covers very thoroughly
[00:05:09.266]all of the issues,
[00:05:10.172]but they're all fairly short videos seven to twelve minutes
[00:05:13.283]for the most part.
[00:05:14.792]They're very fast paced so kids need to know something
[00:05:17.300]about it, they can't serve as all of the learning,
[00:05:20.438]but they're definitely good as refreshers.
[00:05:21.876]They're definitely good as intros.
[00:05:23.525]I've seen people use them both ways.
[00:05:26.218]Another set of videos comes from Khan Academy.
[00:05:29.307]Khan Academy takes a very different attack on this.
[00:05:31.745]This is slower, more designed
[00:05:37.707]videos that are aimed at highlighting the key features
[00:05:41.752]and talking about the key things
[00:05:44.538]in the way that Khan has done his math ones as well.
[00:05:48.671]So he's doing this less as a Historian
[00:05:50.459]and more as a content oriented,
[00:05:54.021]less even issue oriented,
[00:05:55.303]but a lot of the detail is there.
[00:05:57.393]It's pleasing graphically,
[00:05:58.647]and it's really an interesting way
[00:06:00.551]to do it very differently.
[00:06:02.566]So if you're not comfortable with something like
[00:06:04.563]Crash Course, it's fast paced and all of the details
[00:06:07.442]and the big picture there,
[00:06:09.555]this will provide a very different approach
[00:06:13.224]to studying History through videos,
[00:06:15.987]but I do recommend at least trying it
[00:06:19.523]as a way to explore.
[00:06:23.504]One more
[00:06:26.484]resource that I've talked about before
[00:06:28.555]and I think is important to think about
[00:06:31.039]is called History Atlas.
[00:06:32.915]History Atlas, much like BigHistory.com,
[00:06:36.607]what you can see on the screen
[00:06:38.906]is that ability to look at different timepoints
[00:06:41.669]and
[00:06:43.826]anywhere in the world,
[00:06:44.727]so you've got this World Atlas that rotates
[00:06:49.441]and you can examine what happens at the same time
[00:06:51.484]in different places.
[00:06:52.288]You can see who is most prominent on that bottom area
[00:06:55.469]and then you can move through the times
[00:06:59.080]and see what's happening at any given time.
[00:07:03.012]Now we're looking at China,
[00:07:04.684]so we're seeing the Tang Dynasty,
[00:07:06.379]and you can just change this and you can see
[00:07:09.467]the different dynasties emerging and disappearing
[00:07:14.134]in China across time.
[00:07:16.773]You can do the same thing in any other area
[00:07:18.793]of the world.
[00:07:19.415]So if we take the Roman world and we go to the emergence
[00:07:23.780]of Rome, you can see how cities are evolving
[00:07:26.474]in Italy, and we can actually zoom in.
[00:07:30.193]So you can zoom in.
[00:07:31.893]You can see that the level of detail is such
[00:07:33.704]that is really allows you to explore the bigger
[00:07:38.071]movements and not so much the smaller details.
[00:07:43.551]You get these little bubbles that give you some information
[00:07:46.215]about what's happening at that period
[00:07:48.397]in that area,
[00:07:50.497]in this case the Papal States
[00:07:52.401]around 1000 A.D.
[00:07:55.582]So this is a way to explore, again,
[00:07:59.113]large movements in History and have more of an
[00:08:02.014]understanding of how it all interacts
[00:08:04.683]and not just the focus on a specific area
[00:08:08.144]and specific details.
[00:08:09.003]The details are important and they're important to explore,
[00:08:11.023]but this allows you, also, to get the big pictures.
[00:08:14.636]So today, we've talked about some websites
[00:08:16.229]and some apps that help you explore History,
[00:08:18.412]and I'll see you next time on mobile learning
[00:08:20.594]in the classroom.

The screen size you are trying to search captions on is too small!

You can always jump over to MediaHub and check it out there.

Comments

0 Comments

Tech Edge, Mobile Learning In The Classroom - Episode 10, History Apps

Description

Searchable Transcript

Comments icon comment

Related Channels

Comments