Group items tagged

From the website: "Based in Providence, R.I., What Kids Can Do (WKCD) is a national nonprofit founded in January 2001 by an educator and journalist . . . they felt an urgent need to promote perceptions of young people as valued resources, not problems, and to advocate for learning that engages students as knowledge creators and not simply test takers. Just as urgent, they believed, was the need to bring youth voices to policy debates about school, society, and world affairs. Using the Internet, print, and broadcast media, WKCD presses before the broadest audience possible a dual message: the power of what young people can accomplish when given the opportunities and supports they need and what they can contribute when we take their voices and ideas seriously. The youth who concern WKCD most are those marginalized by poverty, race, and language. On this website, WKCD presents young people's lives, learning, and work, and their partnerships with adults both in and out of school. Our community of readers stretches from youth organizers in some of this country's toughest urban areas to policy makers at the national level. We believe that a good story well told crosses geographies, generations, class and race, and position. Our publishing arm, Next Generation Press, honors the power of youth as social documenters, knowledge creators, and advisors to educators, peers, and parents. WKCD is a grant maker, too, collaborating with youth on multimedia, curricula, and research that expand current views of what constitutes challenging learning and achievement. Starting in 2006, WKCD began working with youth worldwide. WKCD has become an international leader in bringing the promise of young people to the attention of the adults whose encouragement can make all the difference."

Here they have collected various articles about how youth around the country and around the globe have been actively involved in policy making and shaping. This may be great to get teachers and students started thinking about project ideas or to inspire students (and teachers!) that students really can make a difference.

ARG! My diigo isn't working at all. Very frustrating. I have to highlight stuff four times and then add the comments in on this page. Technology is not my friend this week.

So if you do a rad civics project with your students, students can then write an article about what they did and send it in to WKCD. They will then put it up on this cite and your students will have something to be uber proud of. This is another reason to make sure you photo document rad projects.

"contains 1,000 primary documents in text, image, and audio that emphasize the experiences of "ordinary" Americans throughout U.S. history. All of the documents have been screened by historians and are accompanied by annotations that address their larger historical significance and context. Browse a list of documents sorted by time period, beginning with the earliest. Or visit the Advanced Search to quickly locate documents by topic, time period, keyword, or type of document."

"helps students and teachers make effective use of primary sources. "Making Sense of Documents" provide detailed strategies for analyzing online primary materials (including film, music, numbers, photographs, advertisements, oral history, and letters and diaries) with interactive exercises and a guide to traditional and online sources. "Scholars in Action" segments show how scholars puzzle out the meaning of different kinds of primary sources (from cartoons to house inventories), allowing you to try to make sense of a document yourself and then providing audio clips in which leading scholars interpret the document and discuss strategies for overall analysis."

"is our annotated guide to more than 850 useful websites for teaching U.S. history and social studies. We have carefully selected and screened each site for quality and provide a 1-paragraph annotation that summarizes its content, its strengths and weaknesses, and its utility for teachers. Information is provided on the type of resource (text, images, audio, and video) available. Browse sites by topic and time period or look through a list of some of our favorite sites. Or visit the Advanced Search to quickly locate WWW.History sites by topic, time period, keyword, kind of primary source, or type of resource. We also include extended scholarly web reviews as a regular feature of History Matters. In collaboration with the Journal of American History (JAH) we review approximately 25 websites per year. The reviews are co-published by the JAH and History Matters and appear in both venues. The archive page offers all featured web reviews."

The teachers at Takoma Education Center told me about the protests and I think it really emphasizes how much of an impact the lay-offs have on the students themselves and the level of personal investment they must feel in their education.

I thought our classmates doing their placements at McKinley would be interested in this!

Daily 60 second podcast!

Also, you can search previous podcasts to find ones that have to do with your specific lesson. Listening to the Podcasts could be a "Do now" activity or an activity at a station students rotate through.

Daily 1 question civics quiz! These questions are not always about post Constitutional US. Some of the questions that I have seen had to do with Enlightenment thinking, the middle ages, ancient Greece, etc.

Mission Statement From the site: The Center for Civic Education is a nonprofit, nonpartisan educational corporation dedicated to promoting an enlightened and responsible citizenry committed to democratic principles and actively engaged in the practice of democracy in the United States and other countries. . . . The Center specializes in civic/citizenship education, law-related education, and international educational exchange programs for developing democracies. Programs focus on the U.S. Constitution and Bill of Rights; American political traditions and institutions at the federal, state, and local levels; constitutionalism; civic participation; and the rights and responsibilities of citizens.

Some notable audio/mp3/ipod selections from the DC Public Library that I feel would be great for Social Studies, specifically. The Civil War (Shelby Foote) He is considered a top scholar, along with James Mcphereson. If there are two names you should be familiar with for Civil War scholarship, they are it! My Brother Sam is Dead. You may have read this when studying the American Revolution, a great way to incorporate literature into the study of history. Thomas Jefferson & His Time (Multiple Volumes) TJ, enough said!

For the visual learners of your class. Some PBS Home video selections, a very reputable education source.

This doesn't relate to Social Studies directly but I think it is a pretty cool feature, language tapes can be really expensive, why not utilize a free library membership?