Tag: University of Portland

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Podcast: Students Make A Difference with PBL

This is cross post from UP TechTalk Podcast S05E01: Connecting Student Learning to Real-World Outcomes with Project Based Learning by Maria Erb

Peter Pappas designs learning experiences that provoke reflection.  The UP School of Education adjunct instructor is known for pairing tech tools with creative assignments that lead to students having an external audience for their work, working as professionals do in a more public environment.

Utilizing the concepts of Project Based Learning, Pappas’s students have developed multi-touch books with iBooks Author on historical topics that have been downloaded 16,000 times from iTunes.  The blog Pappas uses for his course is public on the web and gets comments from beyond the classroom.  Students are startled to find out that someone besides a teacher cares about the work they do in class.

“Students really want to make a difference,” Pappas said.  This year, his students will be developing curriculum for the Oregon Jewish Museum And Center for Holocaust Education that can be used by middle and high school teachers when they bring students to the Oregon Holocaust Memorial in Washington Park.

At a time when we’re revisiting questions about history and people’s perspective on history, I think it will be somewhat cathartic for my students to feel they could make a statement and speak on behalf of people who perhaps can’t speak for themselves.

In this podcast, Pappas talks about project based learning and some of the other ideas that have helped to shape his current style of education.  Listen to this intriguing discussion about student engagement and more. Full Episode Transcript PDF

UP TechTalk App Picks of the Week
  • Peter picked Apple Clips, a new social video app from Apple.
  • Ben recommends Overcast as the best podcast catcher/listening app on iPhones and iPads.

Continue the conversation at the Teaching & Learning Community Blog: https://sites.up.edu/tl

UP TechTalk is a bi-monthly podcast with cohosts Ben Kahn and Maria Erb of Academic Technology Services that explores the use of technology in the classroom, one conversation at a time. Visit the UP TechTalk archives for a plethora of excellent content from our UP faculty guests. Get a sneak peak at the future with our UP Tech Talk special 5 part series The Future of Learning.

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Fight Fake News with Critical Thinking

Lessons in Critical Thinking is now available free at iTunes. It includes critical thinking lessons in science, math, literature and media literacy. This new iBook is a collaborative project by my ED 424 ~ Computers and Educational Technology. During our discussion of digital literacy and “Fake News,” we realized that our middle and high school level students need more practice in the critical evaluation of information. So our edTechMethods class of senior pre-service teachers decided to develop engaging lessons which promoted critical thinking skills in their content areas using the edtech tools of their choice. Then, using iBooks Author, they compiled the lessons into this iBook .

For more on this class, visit our course blog edtechmethods.com

Student-designed lessons include:

  1. Dihydro-What? Science Lesson by Kristen Turner
  2. Using TV Ads to Teach Persuasive Writing by Jennifer Upchurch
  3. The Choice is Yours: integrating a “choose your own adventure” into math class by Eli McElroy and Tamalin Salisbury
  4. How to Read Between the Lines of Research by Hannah O’Brien
  5. Do You Believe It To Be True Or False? by Jeremy Jon Reyes Pingul
  6. Civically Sublime by Kurt Anderson, Bekah Kolb, Ryan Greenberg

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Founding Fathers: From Revolution to Government

My Social Studies Methods class at the University of Portland recently published a free multi-touch iBook – Exploring History: Vol IV. It features eight engaging questions and historic documents that empower students to be the historian in the classroom. For more info on our project and free download of a pdf or multi-touch iBook version click here.

To better publicize student work, I’m featuring each chapter in it’s own blog post. See more in the series here

From Revolution to Government by Valerie Schiller

Valerie frames here lesson with two essential questions: How did the debates of colonial America shape the Constitution? Do these issues still affect American government and its citizens today?

Image credit: The First Continental Congress illustration at the US Capitol
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Holy Propaganda, Batman: Comics Go to War

My Social Studies Methods class at the University of Portland recently published a free multi-touch iBook – Exploring History: Vol IV. It features eight engaging questions and historic documents that empower students to be the historian in the classroom. For more info on our project and free download of a pdf or multi-touch iBook version click here.

To better publicize student work, I’m featuring each chapter in it’s own blog post. See more in the series here

Holy Propaganda Batman! by Karina Ramirez Velazquez

Karina introduce her lesson:

Welcome Historians! This book will help us understand World War II through the lens of comic book covers. I will give a brief introduction on the start of the Golden Age of comic books, and after an introduction of the start of the World War II (1939) and how that influence comic books. The essential question for this book is: What can early comic book covers tell us about World War II? The target audience for this book is ninth grade high schoolers. The historical skills that will be studied are sourcing, contextualization, corroborating, and close reading. The final project will be creating your own comic book cover or meme against or for the U.S. involvement during WWII.

Image credit: Four Favorites “Right in Der Fuehrer’s Face” Wikipedia
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Envision the Moon: From Verne and Méliès to NASA

My Social Studies Methods class at the University of Portland recently published a free multi-touch iBook – Exploring History: Vol IV. It features eight engaging questions and historic documents that empower students to be the historian in the classroom. For more info on our project and free download of a pdf or multi-touch iBook version click here.

To better publicize student work, I’m featuring each chapter in it’s own blog post. See more in the series here

Imagination, Innovation & Space Exploration by Molly Pettit

Molly introduces her lesson with an essential question: What is the relationship between imagination and innovation within the context of space travel?

Imagination and innovation are two key forces that drive history. The stories are everywhere – the phones in our pockets, the computers on our desks, the cars we drive, the medicine we take when we’re sick, even the indoor plumbing we use in our homes.
This chapter will examine how imagination and innovation have influenced space travel throughout history. Using historical thinking skills such as contextualization and close reading to examine text and media sources to unravel the relationship between imagination and innovation, students will analyze how both influenced one of the biggest dreams of the 20th century, and fueled ambitions for the future.

Image credit: By Georges Méliès [Public domain], via Wikimedia Commons