Historical Explorations Andre LeMoine Orozco Academy, Chicago, Illinois

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Historical ExplorationsAndre LeMoineOrozco
Academy, Chicago, Illinois

• Use the Collaboratory to organize and maintain
  data to facilitate historical research
• Integrate technology easily into your social
  studies curriculum
• Encourage students to take responsibility for
  their learning in a safe and productive
  environment.

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Civil War Music

• Compare and contrast opposing view points
• Get students focused on a topic with minimum
  fuss.
• Eliminate lost assignments
• Be able to check student progress any time

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Chicago Metro History Fair

• Students help create lists of sources to share
• with peers.
• Students can work on
• their slide shows anywhere they have internet
  access.
• No need to hear excuses about printer ink or
  incompatible platforms

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Civil War Project

• If you only have access to a few computers on a
  daily basis, you need to rethink the way you
  teach.
• I broke the class into seven groups.
• Each day, a different group rotates to the
  computers, while the other students are engaged
  in other learning centers

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Saving Time

• Everything students need
• is already provided for students in the
  Collaboratory, so students can work with minimal
  teacher direction.
• The more students use the Collaboratory, the more
  productive they become.

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Prepared Directions

• When students logged in to the project, they had
  access to clear directions.
• The songs they needed to listen to were only a
  click away.

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Organized Sites in the Cybrary

• Students had access to their songs organized by
  region.
• By adding descriptive passages to each category,
  you can provide necessary background knowledge.

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Give Students Some Choices

• By completing the research ahead of time, you
  know what information is available and if it is
  appropriate.
• Students will save time avoiding endless
  searches, yet have room for exploration.

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Sharing What They LearnedThe ePortfolio

• Students were able to use their ePortfolios to
  record their observations about these songs.
• Students were able to research and include
  appropriate images.

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Advantages of the ePortfolio

• Students did not lose their work in some folder
  within the bowels of the network server.
• Students did not have to print their work.
• I could check work periodically and critique with
  the whole class using a projector.

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More Advantages of the ePortfolio

• I could tell when students started and finished
  their projects.
• With a simple click, students could have access
  to their peers work.

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Chicago Metro History Fair

• I wanted an alternative to the traditional
  display board.
• I wanted more of a focus on the content of
  student analysis, instead of lots of glue or
  fancy power point transitions.
• I wanted students to share their information.

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Using the Cybrary to get Students Thinking

• Students were given access to a list of topics.
• A brief narrative explained each topic and one or
  two sources were provided.

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Have Students Add Links

• As students find useful information, they can
  suggest links to be added.
• This feature is what the Collaboratory is all
  about.

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Creating a Slide Show

• Once again, students use their ePortfolio to
  create a slide show.
• Eliminates the need for students to have
  Power-Point.
• Allows them to work anywhere.

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Sharing Presentations

• With ease, student slide shows can be shared with
  the whole class.
• You dont have to waste time waiting for the next
  student to find and load their project.

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Emmett Till

• This project was created with a student teacher.
  They are the ones to target.
• Ms. Nunez knew that the death of Emmett Till
  would resonate with the students.
• This project was similar to the others, except we
  included a greater variety of resources.

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Go Way Beyond the Text

• Access to graphic photos and headlines make
  students experience history.
• Students hate history classes, because most text
  books are so sanitized and brief, students cannot
  connect to the human story.

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Link to Streaming Video

• Students were able to listen and watch an
  interview with a film-maker.
• Gave students the power to stop and rewind. Great
  for some of my very weak readers.

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Personal Writing

• Many students chose to write a poem about their
  feelings or a letter to Emmetts mother,
  expressing their feelings.
• All writing had to show an understanding of the
  facts.

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How did I learn this?

• My first experience was overwhelming.
• After attending this conference last year, I
  realized this was the answer to many of my
  dreams.
• I sat down during the summer, when there were not
  10,864 papers to grade and signed up for an
  eCourses. You will need just two days.

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What I should be doing

• I should have students using the comments section
  to give more feedback.
• I should use the Nexus more for creative writing.
  It would be a great way for students to get lots
  of feedback as their stories develop .
• I should be getting more teachers involved.

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• Questions?
• Comments?

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• Thank you!

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An idea for the Scariest Story Project

• Upload some visually interesting images in the
  Media Repository.
• Challenge students to write the scariest story
  based on one of those images.
• Use the polling feature to have participants
  elect a winner.