Refined Technology rich lesson plan

I have always wanted to teach history or social studies and one of the lessons I have always wanted to teach is WWII. With the technology given to us today I feel that not only can we as teachers teach stronger lessons I feel that the students will have more interest. For my lesson I will be covering World War II and all important factors that led to the outcome we know of today. The grade level I will be teaching will most likely be 10th graders or sophomores in high school. The goal of this lesson is for the students to be able to recognize and understand all the main events that took place in World War II and be able to understand why and what outcome came from the main events. My lesson will include a power point presentation, use of the World Wide Web, and some kind of tablet. The lesson will most likely take 3 days depending on how my class works and if they follow the directions properly.
To start my lesson I will start out by asking all the students what kind of background they have with World War II. It is essential to stimulate their minds before the lesson so that they may show some kind of interest in what they are about to learn. After that I will then play some old radio broadcasts from that era, most likely some sort of advertisement or something that they can relate to. After having a general discussion on the radio segments I will then show a power point presentation covering all the basic essentials a class needs to know about World War II. The power point will include sound bites and videos from that time period. It will cover all the main turning points and people that affected the war in different ways. I will then show an interactive map of all the fronts during the war and what there movements were as time went on during the war. By doing this it gives each student an idea of just how big WWII really was. After the power point and the map presentation I will get to the main assignment of the actual lesson which will involve the use of the internet and a tablet of some kind. This will most likely be on another day due to the fact that each class has limited amount of time. This is where we come to the scenario in my lesson.
I feel that the cooperative learning theory is easily the most effective when used properly. In the beginning of the year I divided my class up into groups of four and I had the group’s name themselves. These groups were to be used throughout the rest of the year. To start I will first divide all of my students into their groups. I will pull out a hat which has a bunch of folded up pieces of paper in it which has events from World War II written on them. The students will then pick one team leader to come up and draw from the hat. After the groups have found out what their main topic are they then will then use the internet and begin researching on whatever event they pulled out from the hat. I will give them some guidelines to researching there topic. They will need to find out when it happened, where it happened, which people played an important key role in this event, important vocabulary from this event and a brief outline of what it is or what happened. This is where the students will log on to their delicious account and load the stack that I have made for them containing all kinds of sites for WWII. After this the students will begin using their blog’s.
In the beginning of the year when I had all the students put into groups and name themselves I then had the groups create their own group blog on blogspot.com. For this assignment after the students are finished researching there topic they will then go record all of their findings on their blog. Students enjoy blogging because the blog is something they have created and anybody can view them. Once all students have finished recording all of their findings into their blog’s I will then create a class wiki using wikispaces and this is where all the groups will then mold and form our class wiki into a legitimate World War II wiki page. This is where I will go look at the blog pages and class wiki and give out a grade on accuracy and actual amount of work done. This is how student learning will be assessed. I may also give a test using questions I have created using the class wiki.
I am able to do large scale lessons like this because the school I am teaching at has supplied a tablet for every student in my class. By doing this it opens the doors to a million different ways to teach a lesson. That is the glory of using technology in the classroom not only does it help boost the interest of students in your class but it also makes the job of teaching a little easier. Instead of taking home millions of worksheets and papers you now just have to log onto your computer and with a few clicks of the mouse the grading is finished. Technology is a force that weather we like it or not we can’t stop.

Blogging in classrooms....

Podcasts are something that I was not very familiar with until this past lesson in class. I feel that they can be a useful tool if in the right situation but there are times when I feel that they may become a hassle. I feel that podcasts can be useful in a classroom environment for reminders for students on the weekends or before a test. They can be used to remind the class to bring their books or if a paper is due. I feel that in my class I would use the podcast as more a study guide kind of thing. I would basically give a whole lecture on the test and try to fill the class in on some main points to remember. My grade level would be any grade in high school. It would also be useful to use podcasts due to the fact that all of my class will being using blogs and a class wiki. By using the blogs I can embed my podcasts onto the site where the students can use them whenever they wish. I feel that podcasts are interesting in the fact that they basically are just like using a tape recorder except for the fact that you can put these on the internet. If anything I feel that using the podcasts with video would be the most helpful because by doing this you can implement pictures or videos. This would most likely gain the student’s interest a lot more than just plain dialog. Podcasts have always been interesting to me and they I have talked to people that like using them but I still am not sold on using them inside my classroom. Maybe one day I will find a way but as for right now I still feel that blogs and class wiki’s are the way to go.

Cheers


Eh

Podcast overview!!!

Podcasts have always been a real mystery to me. I never quite understood what the point of them was until reading this and learning how to create them in class. Podcasts are a great way to get information across to students in a quick way. Students today love new and different things and I believe that by using podcasts this could definitely cause them to gain more interest in whatever the lesson is dealing with. Another great use for podcasts is to throw out reminders for students over the weekend in case they need to bring a certain object to the classroom or if they need to be reminded about an assignment. I feel that by using podcasts you are given more time to plan out what you are going to say and I feel that by personally creating a podcast for a class it gives the class more of a personal relationship with the teacher. I’m still a little skeptical on podcasts but maybe one day I will see what everybody else sees about them.