Dedicated to relinquishing responsibility for learning to the students
This semester my EdMethods students used Microsoft Sway for their final lesson design projects. This document-based lesson by Nick Krautscheid explores American reactions to the Vietnam War through a variety of source material – popular music, news coverage, letters and videos.
For a direct link to the Sway click here.
More lessons in this series.
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My University of Portland students recently completed a PBL project, designing curriculum for the Oregon Holocaust Memorial. More here.
Students designed resources to enhance the visitor experience to the Memorial. Here we showcase the work of James Bayless and Kelly Sutton. They used KnightLab’s TimelineJS to support lessons plans to contextualize events surrounding the Holocaust. All events were placed into two categories: the rise and fall of Hitler and the escalation of Nazi repression and murder. See the timeline in context here.
TimelineJS is an open-source tool that enables anyone to build visually rich, interactive timelines. Beginners can create a timeline using nothing more than a Google spreadsheet. This opens up the opportunity for groups of students collaborating on a single Google spreadsheet the produces a common timeline.
Here’s more on how to use Timeline JS.
How to Use TimelineJS from Northwestern U. Knight Lab on Vimeo.
Image credit: pixel2013 / pixabay
My University of Portland students recently completed a PBL project, designing curriculum for the Oregon Holocaust Memorial. More here.
We designed resources to enhance the visitor experience to the Memorial. Two of my students used different online StoryMap tools that invite a comparison. Both are easy to use and do a good job of pairing content with location. The added feature of KnightLab’s StoryMapJS is that it has a built in timeline.
KnightLabs StoryMapJS
David Grabin used KnightLab’s StoryMapJS to tell the story of Menachem “Manny” Taiblum a Holocaust survivor who escaped the Warsaw ghetto, fought alongside the Polish resistance, resettled to Palestine, moved to Brazil, then to New York City and eventually settled in Portland, Oregon.
David writes: I downloaded pictures from websites like Wikicommons and Flickr. These sites have photos that are within the public domain and have usage rights that permit them being re-published. Even though they are public domain, I made sure to cite them if the author requested it. I picked points on a world map that approximated stops on Manny’s journey, and in each location I added an image and blurb containing excerpts and paraphrased info from his interview. After editing the final product, the project was ready to be added to the website. Direct link to map
ArcGIS StoryMap
Nancy Guidry choose ArcGIS Story Map. It’s built into ArcGIS, a leading mapping and GIS platform. It’s available to anyone with a ArcGIS account, but you can also sign up for a free non-commercial ArcGIS public account or sign in with your Facebook or Google credentials. The site provides a variety of templates to showcase different types of stories. Once you have an account, you will get a “My Stories” page to manage your maps.
Nancy writes: I used ArcGIS Story Maps to create this map of concentration camps throughout Europe. I used data provided by the Oregon Jewish Museum to input location and death data for each camp, and found photos from each camp online. The embedded version does not look as nice as the original; click here for a direct link.
Image source: Couleur / Pixabay
My University of Portland students recently completed a PBL project, designing curriculum for the Oregon Holocaust Memorial. More here. We used a variety of free online storytelling tools to contextualize the Holocaust for memorial visitors.
I like to collaborate with my students in our projects, so I created a web section called Voices. It features inline audio oral history clips of survivors talking about family members murdered in the Holocaust. Working with the Oregon Jewish Museum and Center for Holocaust Education (OJMCHE) I extracted the clips from their rich oral history archives.
I used a free tool called SoundCite. KnightLabs describes it this way: Audio is a powerful device that can add emotion or context to a story. Unfortunately audio clips force uncomfortable choices: read or listen, but not both. Until now. SoundCite is a simple-to-use tool that lets you add inline audio to your story. The audio is not isolated; it plays right under the text.
Here’s a demonstration of SoundCite using a portion of an interview with Anneke Bloomfield. She was born on April 19, 1935, in The Hague in the Netherlands. Anneke’s father worked for Shell Oil, while her mother (a retired schoolteacher) stayed at home with Anneke and her three brothers. Anneke also had a younger sister who was born right at the end of the war.
Tap on highlighted area to hear interview
“Well there was another incident before this. My dad was in the underground and he had me send messages to certain people a couple times. And one time on my way home, I had to be home before 8:00 because they would shoot – Germans always changed rules, every time – no more light at this time, no more heat, no more this, no more that. And this time anybody who was on the street after 8:00 would be shot. And this was about the third time I did this message thing for my dad. And as I got to the underpass there were two German soldiers and they had picked up two Jews or whatever; it looked like men from a distance for me. And they thought it would be a good place to break loose. And instead they didn’t get away with it so they was pushed up against the wall and they were killed. And now I have to go underneath there. And I am like eight and a half going on nine, and I was so afraid to go, so I thought, “Well I am going to turn around a take the long way home.” So I ran and ran and ran and I thought, “Oh I hope I am going to make it before 8:00.”
Image credit: neil godding / Unsplash
