Category: History

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Student as Historian: Library of Congress Summer Workshop

LOC grant promoI’m excited to be teaming up with LOC American Memory Fellow, Marta Turner of NWRESD to offer a workshop this summer for 20 Oregon teachers and librarians (grades 4-12). It’s jointly sponsored by the Library of Congress, the TPS Regional Program & NWRESD. Participating teachers will receive $500 stipend at conclusion of the program. We’ll even turn our work into an iBook to be published at iTunes.

Register here The deadline is 5 pm May 20, 2015 
Notifications will be sent out to participating teachers on May 21st.

The Library of Congress’s “Teaching with Primary Sources Program” offers instructional strategies to support the effective use of primary sources from the Library’s vast digital collections. This workshop will guide 4th -12th grade teachers through the LOC digital collections to blend historical thinking and literacy skills into an engaging student-centered classroom. Participants will receive a $500 stipend at conclusion of the program.

We’ll begin the process with some “flipped” learning – participants will explore the LOC collections in an on-line course via Versal. That way we can devote our on site workshop time to designing lessons. More info and our “flipped” pre-course here. Sessions will be held June 25 & 26 from 8:30 to 4:00 at NWRESD 5825 NE Ray Circle Hillsboro OR 97124 Map

This workshop is limited to 20 Oregon teachers (or librarians). Grade range 4th -12th. Open to public and private school educators.

On-line course and two day workshop will feature how to:

  1. Utilize the web resources of the LOC / TPS.
  2. Teach historical thinking skills.
  3. Integrate CCSS close reading strategies into history instruction.
  4. Foster critical thinking skills that support the “student as historian.”
  5. Guided practice in designing lessons utilizing the LOC collection.
  6. How to use Google tools and other tech resources to teach history in the digital era.
  7. Collaborative publication of participant-designed lessons in an online collection and an interactive iBook to be published on iTunes.

Participant commitment:

  1. To maximize workshop interaction, participants will be required to complete a brief preparatory online introduction to the LOC website prior to attending. They will also be asked to develop a preliminary lesson proposals aligned to CCSS ELA literacy standards prior to attending the on site workshop. This preparatory work will commence on June 10th and take an estimated 10 hours to complete. PSU Continuing Education graduate credit is available for this course work.
  2. Create a CCSS-aligned lesson using primary resources from the Library of Congress to be shared in workshop publications.
  3. Participate in on-line revision and peer review of lessons (as needed) to insure publication of iBook by September 2015
  4. Complete a pre/post survey from the Library of Congress
  5. Share your lesson with your staff or in another media form.

Image credit: Washington. West façade Library of Congress
Library of Congress LC-DIG-ppmsca-18034

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Teaching and Learning in a Digital World

Pappas keynote Ed Tech SummitI’m pleased to be the keynote speaker at the 5th annual Ed Tech Summit 2015 in Ashland Oregon (April 17, 2015). It’s co-sponsored by Southern Oregon University and the Southern Oregon Education Service District. It showcases innovations and best practices for integrating technology into schools and classrooms. Hands-on sessions are led by teacher experts in the field as well as technology hardware and software specialists.

Here’s the teasers for my keynote and two breakout sessions. Click here for more on my presentations.

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Tune into live screencasts of my keynote and two breakouts on Periscope. They are viewable in the Periscope app or your desktop browser. Follow me on Periscope app for auto notification in the app. Or follow me on Twitter @edteck and you’ll see a tweet as I begin each screencast.  (Copies of the screencasts are archived on the Periscope app for 24 hours following live post) 

Keynote: Teaching and Learning in a Digital World (8:30-9:15 AM Pacific)
Life’s become an “open-book” test. So what doess that mean for schools? Students are awash in a sea of text without context and they explore their digital world with an expectation of choice and control that challenges traditional notions of learning and literacy. This keynote will illustrate how to fuse digital technology and sound instructional practice to craft learning environments that motivate students with the opportunity to think like professionals while solving real-world needs.

Session 1: Leading for Connected Learning (12:45-1:45 PM Pacific)
This session is designed for administrators and other educators interested in the intersection of leadership, instruction and technology. Following up on the themes of my keynote, I’ll use a case study approach to demonstrate the essential elements of the connected classroom – one where students research, collaborate and share their thinking with an audience beyond their teacher.

The session will include key “look-fors” that leaders can to use to reflect on teaching, learning and technology in their schools.

Session 2: Teaching with Documents: Literacy, Tech and More (2:00-3:00 PM Pacific)
Who’s the historian in your classroom? This session will demonstrate techniques for blending historical thinking and literacy skills into an engaging student-centered classroom. Following up on the themes of my keynote, we’ll also explore some free (and easy) tech tools to help your students research, collaborate and share their thinking with an audience beyond their teacher. We’ll explore key components of document-based instruction.

  • How to choose the right documents.
  • How to guide students through a close reading of the documents.
  • How to frame the task around enduring questions, the kind that students might want to answer.

SOU Ed Tech Summit 2015

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First Ladies as Political Symbol: A Visual Literacy DBQ

First Lady Hillary Rodham Clinton Posing with Big Bird

My Social Studies Methods class at the University of Portland recently published a free multi-touch iBook – Exploring History: Vol II. It features ten 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 multi-touch iBook version click here.

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

First Ladies as a Political Tool by Emily Strocher Download as PDF (5MB)

We do not elect our First Ladies … but we can and do criticize them just as if they were politicians.

Some of the Presidential wives made great First Ladies and some did not, but, overall, the nation has been most fortunate in the caliber and charm of the women who presided at the White House table, stood beside their husbands in innumerable receiving lines and served, each in her own way, in what must be the most trying unpaid fulltime job in the country. We do not elect our First Ladies nor can we turn them out of office but we can and do criticize them just as if they were politicians. (And indeed some of them are!)” ~ Sadler, Christine. “America’s First Ladies,”

As you proceed through this section of the book, answer the multiple choice questions about what category each photograph should be placed in.

  • Why did you choose to place the images in the categories that you did?
  • What is the importance of these themes? Why would photos that support these ideas be important to have?
  • How do you feel these photos illustrate how the First Lady and First Family can be used to spread an idea?
  • What do you notice about where the First Lady is standing in each of these photos? Do you think this photograph was staged or candid? If it was staged, why would the individuals in it be posed as they are?

Reflection by Emily Strocher

In addition to being practice in how to go about making a DBQ, this assignment has also been a solid lesson in how not to create a DBQ. I feel that as an actual practicing teacher, this will be easier as I will have a better idea of what I want and need the DBQ to do. I will have a topic in mind, and a message that I am trying to convey to the students, or messages that I want them to come up with on their own. There will be more structure in place. Creating a DBQ in the manner that we did for this class allowed me too much freedom, I feel. I needed a more concrete goal, as my DBQ turned into doing whatever I wanted to with it, not trying to meet specific requirements for student learning.

Going along with that, I decided early on that I wanted to create an image based DBQ. I found my resources, and shaped my DBQ around what I had discovered. If I were to do this again, I would reverse my work flow. The topic would come first, and then I would find documents that fit with it. There would be more diversity in the sorts of documents that I included, rather than just using images.

While I do like my DBQ, and feel that it would get students to think about something that wouldn’t normally cross their minds, I am less pleased with the process that I went through to create my DBQ. My problems aren’t so much with my content as with my process. If anything, I became too attached to my content, and struggled to make changes because of that. ~ Emily Strocher AboutMe

Image Credit: Photograph of First Lady Hillary Rodham Clinton Posing on the Big Bird Nest Set with Big Bird  to Celebrate the 25th Season of Sesame Street , 10/14/1993
U.S. National Archives’ Local Identifier: P08630-13

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The Marshall Plan: Altruism or Pragmatism?

Europe_Plan_Marshall._Poster_1947My Social Studies Methods class at the University of Portland recently published a free multi-touch iBook – Exploring History: Vol II. It features ten 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 multi-touch iBook version click here.

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

Essential Question: What does it mean to be the victor in war? Is there a responsibility to rebuild the enemy?

The Marshall Plan: Altruism or Pragmatism?
by Samuel Kimerling Download as PDF (11.7MB)

After WWII the United States gave more than $12.5 billion in aid to Europe. Was this all in the name of humanitarian aid? Or were there other economic and political goals behind the plan? This monumental effort raises some important questions regarding the nature of post-war policy.

  • What does it mean to be the victor in war?
  • Is there a responsibility to rebuild the enemy?
  • Does the price you pay for victory entitle you to spoils?
  • Did the Marshall Plan represent altruism on the part of the U.S. or pragmatism in gaining economic and strategic advantages?

We will examine original documents to answer these questions.

Reflection by Samuel Kimerling

After switching my topic from the more obscure food history topic to the much more document rich Marshall Plan, my issue was not where to find documents, but just the opposite. There were so many great documents, I found myself following lead after lead on possible directions to take the assignment.  While I learned a tremendous amount about the Marshall Plan, the state of Europe after WWII, and the different opinions throughout U.S. and Europe about the plan, I didn’t feel like I was getting any closer to completing the assignment. But I was finding photos, documents, and getting more information. Through this research I was able to narrow my focus and choose an angle on which to focus: the differing views on the Marshall Plan from Europe, Russia, and at home in the U.S.. My next challenge was to step away from the history and just look at the documents.  What was I trying to say? What were the documents telling me?  I finally focused on assembling documents that could tell a story.  Once I had a clear narrative of what I wanted the students to see, the guiding questions practically wrote themselves. This assignment has been exciting for me on two main levels.  First learning how to write this type of assignment for my students will be something I will continue to work on throughout my career. I am a big believer in having students think like historians.  The other facet is just how much I enjoyed researching the history surrounding the Marshall Plan. Reading all the documents and seeing all the photos was like a DBQ itself.  I will continue to practice, learn, and hopefully inspire my students to do the same.
~ Sam Kimerling Twitter/@kimerlin171 

Image credit: ”Europe Plan Marshall. Poster 1947″ by Reijn Dirksen, published Economic Cooperation Administration – Source. Licensed under Domini públic via Wikimedia Commons

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Combat Troops in Context: A Visual Literacy DBQ

Howard_Chandler_Christy_-_Gee_I_wish_I_were_a_Man,_I'd_Join_the_Navy_-_Google_Art_Project

My Social Studies Methods class at the University of Portland recently published a free multi-touch iBook – Exploring History: Vol II. It features ten 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 multi-touch iBook version click here.

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

Combat Soldiers in Context by Kristi Anne McKenzie Download as PDF (6.9MB)

This DBQ project will explore documents that contribute to the popular image of the soldier in the minds of the American people. As you examine the following documents, remember to keep in mind both the source of the document and the point of view that is being expressed.

  • Who created the document?
  • What was the goal in creating this document?
  • How does the document reflect the period in time?
  • How do the documents support or contradict one another?

Reflection by Kristi Anne McKenzie ~ AboutMe

Advice to Future Self on Undertaking a DBQ Project

1. Start with the document(s) first. Learn about it (or them), and place that document in a time period and look at everything that surrounds it. Follow the rabbit trail from MLK’s “Beyond Vietnam” to Langston Hughes’ “Let America Be America Again” and see where it takes you. The themes will show themselves sooner or later. Humans are programmed to seek out patterns and find the stories. But starting with a theme and hoping to find documents to undergird that theme is risky. It could work, but it could also lead you on a search for something that doesn’t exist.

2. Be careful about trusting your crazy brain. Sometimes it does magic tricks when you least expect it. Sometimes it lets you think it can do the impossible. This is when you need to reach out to, and listen to, the friends who will be bluntly honest with you and tell you when you’re headed out onto unfruitful waters.

3. Don’t try to answer philosophical questions with a DBQ project. Yes, there is an inherent discrepancy between perception and reality. Great. But a DBQ is probably not the correct avenue to explore such an idea. However, don’t be afraid to present the unanswerable questions. Part of life is learning that not all questions have answers.

4. If you know how your brain works best, go with it. I tried to learn how to design a DBQ while simultaneously trying to figure out how to use Learnist and Evernote with my brain balking at me all the way. When I finally relented to how I learn best (paper and Pilot G-2 pen), my brain finally began to kick into gear. If I had accepted the truth of how my brain works sooner, I could have just gotten the work done and copied and pasted my work into these new programs afterwards. Trying to learn a design process while attempting to learn a new computer program was too taxing and, ultimately, unproductive.

5. Don’t let your heart get broken, don’t lose anyone you love, and don’t get ill. These will all interfere with your work.

6. Don’t be afraid to suck at something the first time you try it. Scarred knees are simply reminders that you now know how to ride a bicycle. Embrace the suck. Listen to Samuel Beckett: “Try again. Fail again. Fail better.”

*** Now that the project has been completed, I might add that, in the end, everything came together fairly easily. My training as a historian turned out to be my secret sidekick. I will do this again, and next time I will do it better.

Image credit: Gee I wish I were a Man, I’d Join the Navy by Howard Chandler Christy (after 1917)
Cooper Hewitt Museum Accession Number 1980-32-1170