This week I viewed three lessons on the Technology Applications Network site. I only found five secondary social studies lessons and only two were for World History. The World History lessons were “What an Age!” addressing different aspects of the Renaissance and “The Holocaust: Their Story.” The other lesson was a U.S. History lesson on “Major Events of the 20th Century.” The Renaissance and U.S. History lessons were quality lessons while the Holocaust lesson seemed a bit weak. My overall concern with the lessons is that they are all projects which require a great deal of time to complete.
The “What an Age!” lesson seemed to be a lesson I could incorporate on a much smaller scale in my classroom. The teacher devoted 5-6 days of class to planning and presenting while I only have one day for the Renaissance. I liked that the teacher gave the students choice about their topic and that the students presented the topic of the Renaissance rather than the teacher. I also liked that the students were required to provide visuals—you can’t teach the Renaissance without pictures.
If I were to use this project, I would use the portable laptops at my school and have the students create the presentation during one class period and present the next class period. The students are only given the option of a power point in the sample lesson plan, but I would probably allow Animoto or Moviemaker to make the presentation more interesting. The closure activities in the lesson suggest asking the students questions such as, “why did you include this?” or “what impact did that have?” These seem to be topics that should be covered in the required presentation.
The “Major Events of the 20th Century “ assignment would also be a project I would assign to my students with some modifications. Since my class is World History rather than U.S. I would change the requirement to world events rather than U.S. events. The students would be allowed to choose the technology they used to create their presentation as they are in the lesson plan. I would also require each group to develop a quiz for their presentation. Requiring students to take a quiz ensures they will pay attention and also gives groups feedback on how effective their presentation was. Like the Renaissance activity, students are encouraged to teach their peers while the teacher acts as facilitator. The extension suggestions for this activity were also quite valuable.
The project’s author estimates it will take 3-4 weeks to complete this project. This would work for my curriculum because the students could create the projects after the AP exam. The biggest criticism I have of this project is the option for students not to use technology. The lesson plan says, “this is not the time for teaching new computer skills.” The teacher should probably have one technology, such as power point, that would serve as a backup technology.
The last lesson plan I looked at was on the Holocaust. While I liked that the students were able to research a topic on their own, the product seems a bit weak. The students were to create a newsletter describing different peoples’ accounts of the camps. This seems pretty easy to plagiarize from existing websites. The assignment does not integrate the potential of desktop publishing software or what newsletters really look like. Pictures, announcements, and advertisements were not required. This would demonstrate further technology skills and creatively incorporate knowledge of the Holocaust. The presentation portion of the lesson plan was also quite weak. The suggestion was to make a news show or simply read the newsletter to the class. A trial, judging the newsletters, or making a movie in moviemaker would be more engaging.
Looking through these lessons I was shocked that there were so few lessons for high school social studies. I wondered if people were afraid to share or if they weren’t creating lessons such as these. Then I began to wonder why they were all projects. At this point, I answered my first question. I was concerned about projects because there is not time in my course to spend several days or weeks on the same topic. If this is my situation, then it is the situation of others in social studies. Now that I’ve answered that question—How can lessons incorporate technology without becoming projects that take days or weeks to complete?
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