The Teaching History with Technology Newsletter
(Winter 2007)
The THWT Newsletter offers resources, lesson plans,
and tech tips to help history and social studies teachers incorporate technology effectively into their courses.
The THWT newsletter is produced by Tom Daccord, veteran history teacher, academic technology specialist for the Humanities, webmaster of Best of History Web Sites and Teaching Literature & Writing With Technology, and President of the Center for Teaching History With Technology. A "laptop teacher" who has instructed in a computer environment for the last six years, Mr. Daccord has been featured in the Boston Globe ("Making Tech Connect" December 29, 2003) for his contributions to teaching with technology
editor's note: We are very excited that Carla Beard, creator of WebEnglishTeacher.com and a nationally recognized education technology consultant will be joining us this summer for our Teaching English and Language Arts Workshop in Boston in June. Click the link to the right to learn more about our workshops this summer!
Center for Teaching History with Technology Announces Summer 2007 Technology Workshops!
This year we are pleased to offer two teaching workshops in Boston and one online workshop this summer:
Teaching History with Technology Workshop
For the fifth straight year, we will offer our Teaching History with Technology workshop, and this year we will hold it in a beautiful new computer lab at the Noble and Greenough School in Dedham, MA. This four day workshop will focus on finding and incorporating the best history resources, lesson plans, teaching resources, and templates on the Web, as well as the creation and implementation of one's own technology integration activity. The workshop will also introduce some exciting teaching activities with Web 2.0 new and emerging technologies. The workshop will be offered from July 9-12, and professional development credits will be available.
Learn more about the Teaching History with Technology workshop
Teaching English and Language Arts with Technology
This year we will also offer for the first time Teaching English and Language Arts with Technology with award-winning technology expert and veteran English teacher Carla Beard. Ms. Beard is the webmaster of WebEnglishTeacher.com and has presented on technology topics at national conferences. This three-day seminar will introduce English and Language Arts teachers to the best resources available on the Web for teaching grammar, literature, essay writing, and poetry. Tom and Carla will also help teachers find the best teaching tools, lesson plans, and templates and then allow time for teachers to begin developing their own lesson plans with technology integration. This seminar will also have a special focus on using word processors to teach writing and grade essays. The workshop will be offered in Dedham, MA from June 26-28, and professional development credits will be available.
Learn more about Teaching English and Language Arts with Technology
Enhancing History and English Instruction through the Internet (Online Workshop)
We are also pleased to introduce a new online workshop this year: Enhancing History and English Instruction through the Internet. This workshop will run for five weeks from May 15 to June 22 and cover a variety of topics that will help teachers take advantage of the many teaching resources available online, with a special focus on free web sites and downloads. Each class participant will be given his or her own blog to communicate with the instructor, Tom Daccord, and with other participants. Each week, participants will receive new materials and assignments, including online readings, podcasts, videos, that can be completed according to the participants own schedule. Tom will use the blogs to answer questions and offer extensive feedback. Professional development credits will also be available for this online workshop. Because of the limited size of our online workshops, Tom can offer plenty of personal help getting started making this an ideal workshop for participants joining their first online class.
Learn more about the online Enhancing History and English Instruction through the Internet workshop
Tom Daccord and Justin Reich of the Center for Teaching History with Technology to Publish Books in 2007
Tom has just finished editing the Best of History Web Sites, a reference guide to the best history sites on the web, which will be published by Neal-Schuman in the coming months and can be pre-ordered online. in addition, Tom and Justin are finishing up contract negotiations on a second book, A Teacher's Guide to Teaching Humanities with Technology. We are very excited to have a chance to share even more of our tips, tools, lesson plans and ideas about teaching. If you have any thoughts on what should be in our new books, please email us at HistoryWebMaster at Gmail dot com.
New Section of Teaching History with Technology!
We have a new page devoted to using Web browsers with tabbed browsing to deliver classroom presentations. We've named this new technique BrowserPoint, as you can easily deliver multimedia presentations like PowerPoint right from your web browser.
Visit www.thwt.org/browserpoint.html to learn more about teaching with tabbed browsing.
New Recommendations From the Best of History Web Sites
"Race: Are We So Different"
http://www.understandingrace.org/home.html
"Race: Are We So Different" is an excellent educational web site from the American Anthropological Association that explores race from three lenses: History, Human Variation, and Lived Experience. The History section provides articles on race from the 1600s to the present while the Human Variation section explores human biology and genetics. The Lived Experience section is heavily interactive, with a Game of Life Experience, a Race Blog, a Sports Quiz, and more. There are educational materials available for download at the site as well as impressive multimedia features: You can watch a movie about a teenage girl’s experience and take a 3D trip into cell structure. In all, "Race: Are We So Different" is a great introductory web site for students into the complex issue of race.
The Living Weapon
http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/amex/weapon/
This week American Experience launches “The Living Weapon”on PBS stations. This series explores the highly classified biological weapons program begun in 1942 under President Franklin Roosevelt. Roosevelt’s decision to embark on the program demonstrated American willingness “to use a kind of weapon that military leaders had long shunned as dishonorable." For this series, PBS gained access to previously classified films and has put a number of them online: http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/amex/weapon/sfeature/foiafilms.html
The companion web site also outlines the history and development of diseases that could be used to destroy a city and unveils "Operation Whitecoat, " a Cold War project using Seventh day Adventists as human subjects in the country's biological weapons program.Visitors to the companion web site can also listen to the lead researcher’s recollections on developing biological weapons and view a map of America’s bioweapons program. In all, the Living Weapon series and web site could serve as an excellent inter-disciplinary introduction to today’s concerns over the spread of weapons of mass destruction.
The Pocahontas Archive and The Literature of Justification
http://digital.lib.lehigh.edu/trial/
The Pocahontas Archive and The Literature of Justification are two sections of a promising new Lehigh University digital project entitled "History on Trial." The Pocahontas Archive provides an essay introduction to the legendary figure as well as a searchable bibliography and an image collection. The image collection is particularly interesting; it features varied depictions of Pocahontas from 19th and 20th century sources. The Literature of Justification section presents case studies of European "justification strategies" and American Supreme Court decisions regarding Indian land rights. Of special interest are the "provocative" excerpts from primary and secondary sources and the audio commentary that accompanies some of them. Visitors will also discover a chronological display of documents, a small array of images, a bibliography, and several introductory essays. The creators of History on Trial aim to complete three more sections: Reel American History, Enola Gay Controversy, and Vietnam Wall Controversy. Reel American History will contain student projects on ten films about early America. (For now they are available at http://www.lehigh.edu/ReelAmericanHistory.) Both the Enola Gay and Vietnam Wall sections present the controversies via chronological presentation of documents. Though History on Trail remains under development it already represents an excellent tool for introducing student researchers to the struggle over shaping representations of history.
History of the Netherlands
http://www.minbuza.nl/history/en/home
The Dutch Ministry of Foreign Affairs has recently launched an ambitious Web site chronicling the history of the Netherlands from 50BC through the present. The site is broken up by time period into a series of short, readable essays that Chronicle the rise of one of Europe's great naval powers and empires. The essays are illustrated with works of art and photography, and the entire site would be a fine reference work for anyone beginning research into the Dutch and their impact on Europe and the world.
Voices on Genocide Prevention: An Interview Program with Jerry Fowler
http://www.ushmm.org/conscience/podcasts/
Voices on Genocide Prevention by the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum is a blog featuring a series of podcasts moderated by Jerry Fowler of the Committee on Conscience at the Museum. The podcasts feature interviews with researchers and scholars on Darfur, Chad, and the Democratic Republic of Congo, as well as interviews with Michael Gerson, Senior Fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations, Lee Feinstein of the Council on Foreign Relations, and others. Visitors can subscribe to both the blog and the podcasts and consult a list of related web links.
CBC Archives
http://archives.cbc.ca/index.asp?IDLan=1
The Canadian Broadcasting Corporation (CBC) has created the CBC Archives website, a collection of disparate video clips on historical topics, such as Canadian participation in World War II, as well as numerous cultural topics, such as the controversial hockey commentator Don Cherry. Visitors can browse through topical subjects such as Politics & Conflict & War, Disasters & Tragedies, and Politics and Economy. There is also an index of Great Interviews featuring Canadians Tommy Douglas (father of Medicare), Margaret Atwood (renowned novelist), Roméo Dallaire (Lieutenant-General who served in Rwanda) as well as international figures such as British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher, actor Errol Flynn, activist Malcolm X, feminist Gloria Steinam and others. Furthermore, In the "On This Day" section you can find out what happened on a particular day in Canadian history and In the For Teachers section you will discover educational materials for Grades 6-8, Grades 9-10, and Grades 11-12.
WGBH Forum Network
http://forum.wgbh.org/wgbh/
The WGBH Forum Network is a free online archive of public lectures at educational or cultural organizations in the Boston area. Of special historical interest are the series of lectures examining the Civil Rights Movement from Brown v. Board of Education to the civil rights initiatives today. Visitors can browse archived content by category or contributing institution. Visitors download the lectures if desired and subscribers to the WGBH Forum Network RSS|New Lectures feed will receive their listing automatically.
