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Samantha Greenwald

Bill of Rights: Primary Documents of American History (Virtual Programs & Services, Lib... - 2 views

    • Samantha Greenwald
       
      This can be used especially on Constitution Day (September 17th).
    • Samantha Greenwald
       
      A bibliography is provides as well as other external resources for students and teachers to explore.
    • Samantha Greenwald
       
      This site provides exhibitions and primary source documents which provide more detailed descriptions of certain events/people which teachers can use to expand student learning.
    • Samantha Greenwald
       
      This is one site of three that provides primary documents. The other two discuss national expansion and reform and the civil war and reconstruction.
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    This Library of Congress website provides access to primary documents including letters, notes, papers, Washington's inaugural address, and copies of the amendments to the US Constitution.
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    Any other ways in which teachers might use this site?
Lauren Olson

Napoleon - 0 views

    • Lauren Olson
       
      Check this out! It's one of the best European history sites for kids I've found. Challenging activities for all age groups. I would definitely use this in an elementary classroom as a "free time" activity or suggest it as a resource for students looking to write papers on the subject.
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    Website with infinite information on the First and Second Napoleonic Empires.
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    Even though Napoleon's empires often get skimmed over in world or European history courses, this website makes the subject worth an extra day or two. There are easily comprehended histories, research databases, pictures, and even a "kids' corner" that is accessible to even the most reluctant student.
Jordan Manuel

firstamendmentcenter.org: Welcome to the First Amendment Center Online - 1 views

  • OTHER HEADLINES Free-speech cases top Supreme Court's agenda Opening day of term produces flurry of rejected appeals on several First Amendment topics. 10.04.10 Mich. worker's blog sparks free-speech debate Controversy centers on assistant attorney general who used his personal website to attack University of Michigan's openly gay student body president. 10.04.10
    • Jordan Manuel
       
      Features mainly information from news articles, but also primary source documents (court cases).
  •   speech     press     religious liberty     assembly     petition var FADE=1; var DELAY=3000;     BROWSING? SEE ALL TOPICS     Special topics / What's new
    • Jordan Manuel
       
      I would use this site to provoke debate among my students over the issues involved in First Amendment rights.
  • Lesson plans
    • Jordan Manuel
       
      This site is valuable for many reasons, but also it provides some intriguing lesson plans for all ages of students.
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    A resource for study of the First Amendment. Offers a wealth of info on past and current first amendment issues.
Joellen Kriss

Several of Region's High-Profile Private Schools Are Changing Leadership - washingtonpo... - 0 views

    • Joellen Kriss
       
      This notes the shift and commercialization of schooling. "Heads of School" in any situation, private or public, have to be super human in their ability to do everything. They have to please everyone, and do it all with a smile.
  • In the past, school heads could luxuriate in a Mr. Chips-like existence, focusing primarily on education. Today, they have to be schmoozers who raise funds to pay for costly programs, construction titans who dream up new facilities, and managerial stars who keep students, parents, alumni and teachers mixing smoothly.
    • Joellen Kriss
       
      These are the people that hire the teachers that teach the chilrden. It's an interesting cause and effect kind of relationship: people are less willing to leave their old jobs because they can't hire their own kind of people in the next position, meaning the job will be harder and less of their own. It adds a whole additional dynamic.
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  • One of the fastest ways that heads put their mark on a school is with the people they hire,
  • making teachers slower to retire and less likely to shift jobs, and also making it harder to lead a school than in the past.
    • Joellen Kriss
       
      See previous Sticky Note
  • candidates who have already headed other schools remain in short supply
    • Joellen Kriss
       
      This is a really interesting statement and 100% true. School culture after a while becomes a given, so when a new head of school, whether they be of a private school or the superintendent of a public school district, comes in, that hiring board (of directors or of education) needs to now put it out on the table and naturally, things are reassessed in some way. It's kind of a thought provolking idea.
  • "A lot of what has been implicit in school culture has to become explicit" when the schools start meeting candidates,
    • Joellen Kriss
       
      Holy Moly.
  • Branch's total compensation from Georgetown Day, including benefits and expenses, was $442,097 for the year that ended in June 2008. At Bullis, Farquhar's total compensation including benefits and expenses was $336,222. Total compensation for public school superintendents in the Washington region, including benefits and perks, averaged $350,078 in fiscal 2007-08, according to a 2007 Washington Post analysis.
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    This Washington Post article talks about the competative hiring market for heads of private schools in the DC area, but also raises some interesting points about school culture in the process.
Alan Edwards

Eager Students Fall Prey to Apartheid's Legacy - 1 views

  • KHAYELITSHA, South Africa — Seniors here at Kwamfundo high school sang freedom songs and protested outside the staff room last year because their accounting teacher chronically failed to show up for class. With looming national examinations that would determine whether they were bound for a university or joblessness, they demanded a replacement.
    • Alan Edwards
       
      In the black townships of South Africa, many public schools do not meet the students' high expectations of career or college preparation. This article describes how students have worked for justice: protesting (at times violently) and teaching themselves lessons when teachers fail to show for work.
  • Here in the Western Cape, only 2 out of 1,000 sixth graders in predominantly black schools passed a mathematics test at grade level in 2005, compared with almost 2 out of 3 children in schools once reserved for whites that are now integrated, but generally in more affluent neighborhoods.
    • Alan Edwards
       
      Apartheid is alive and well in South Africa's education system.
    • Alan Edwards
       
      The author relies on interviews with current teachers, students, and administrators in South Africa. She also cites data and perspectives from the Development Bank of South Africa. In her piece she examines the current situation in a single township, then ties the issue to the entire nation.
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    • Alan Edwards
       
      The author works to briefly explain how the schools were intentionally segregated in order to continue the subjugation of blacks and colored people. In the wake of N. Mandela's election, she explores how corruption and unequal distribution of resources has contributed to the education system's condition today.
    • Alan Edwards
       
      The crisis in South Africa is a reminder of the horrible education inequalities between the rich and poor, the white and the black. The student responses to their situation is at times inspirational as well as disheartening. For older students, this article could be used to encourage student involvement in dialogue with decision-makers of the school. Schools need to be responsive to the positive needs of its student body.
  • KHAYELITSHA, South Africa — Seniors here at Kwamfundo high school sang freedom songs and protested outside the staff room last year because their accounting teacher chronically failed to show up for class. With looming national examinations that would determine whether they were bound for a university or joblessness, they demanded a replacement.
  • Post-apartheid South Africa is at grave risk of producing what one veteran commentator has called another lost generation, entrenching the racial and class divide rather than bridging it. Half the students never make it to 12th grade.
  • But South Africa’s schools also have problems for which history cannot be blamed, including teacher absenteeism, researchers say. And then when teachers are in school, they spend too little time on instruction. A survey found that they taught for a little over three hours a day, rather than the five expected
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    NYT's Celia Dugger examines the quality of education for South Africa's majority black population. 15 years after the election of Nelson Mandela and the official end to apartheid, the nation's school system remains a bastion of inequality.
Alan Edwards

Television News Archive - 0 views

    • Alan Edwards
       
      The Television News Archive was created and is maintained by Vanderbilt University in Tennessee. AU subscribes to the archive, which allows us to view many of the streaming videos online.
    • Alan Edwards
       
      You can search for a specific news broadcast by topic or date. Often you can find specific segments during a news program or you can watch the entire news program. If you are looking for a specific date in history you can go right the the day, week, or month that the event occurred or was being covered.
    • Alan Edwards
       
      In the classroom, I think this would be a great medium for independent research. Students could focus on a topic or event in recent history and report/analyze the news coverage of the topic/event. In general, the media could help students understand how Americans understood or misunderstood an event.
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  • The Vanderbilt Television News Archive is the world's most extensive and complete archive of television news. We have been recording, preserving and providing access to television news broadcasts of the national networks since August 5, 1968.
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    The Television News Archive is a database of nightly news broadcasts in the US from 1968. American University subscribes to the database, and it can be accessed through the library's website. At the news archive, you can search the database of nightly news programs for a specific date or topic. Then, you can watch many of these streaming videos online.
Laura Wood

FBI Youth - Home - 0 views

    • Laura Wood
       
      So clearly the coolest link on this webpage is the "History" link. This will link you to the history of the FBI which is interesting in and of itself BUT also contains some links to primary documents. For example there is a link in 1966 called "six civil rights activists murdered" that takes you to the FBI file of the murder investigation. It might be really neat to have students look at this file and look at other accounts of this incident to understand how police/FBI officers interact with communities and crime. There's another neat account under June 1933 of the Kansas City Massacre!
    • Laura Wood
       
      The "FBI Investigates" tab is a little like the spy museum. It takes you through two cases, what happened and how investigators solved the crime. For any CSI - philes this might be some great info.
    • Laura Wood
       
      "FBI Adventures" is a little not as cool as I'd hoped. While they do give brief snapshots of country profiles, students don't get to actually investigate anything on their own. What they Could do is begin to see how even crime is globalized and how countries now have to work together to protect citizens - an interesting angle on globalization/global studies.
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    • Laura Wood
       
      The "SA Challenge" is tragically lame. It's basically a cyber scavenger hunt to find the answers to questions about the website. Then you self check. If you find all the answers you get to be the director of the FBI - at least that's what the website says. Lame.
    • Laura Wood
       
      Again, "Games" are tragically low tech and pretty lame. Word hunt, etc.
    • Laura Wood
       
      "A day in the life" would be good for any students who were thinking about becoming FBI agents. Always good to give students career choices.
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    FBI's youth website. Probably designed to entice kids to want to be in, support and trust the FBI. Some very cool stuff (no lesson plans). Check out the super rad "History" link!
Lindsay Andreas

Education World ® Professional Development Center: Creating a Better World" - 0 views

  • So why teach? It sounds exhausting, stressful, and almost impossible to do well! In fact, we teach because the rewards are outstanding. When your students tell you at the end of the year that they can’t believe how much they’ve learned…that is a reward. When former students, now in college, return to your classroom to get a hug, to thank you for what you did to help them believe in themselves, and to tell your present students what it was like in “their day”…that is your reward. I just received a letter from the parent of a former student who is now in graduate school. She wrote that she saw a quote and thought of me. It said, “You make a child feel good about himself and that’s a motivation to excel.” That is a reward. So, in answer to our questions of the 60’s, as teachers, we did change the world. We changed it when we taught children to believe in themselves and to share that knowledge. We changed it by teaching our youngest students to listen, to share, and to respect their classmates and themselves. We changed it by giving our students the tools and skills they needed to change their world. We made this a better world -- one child at a time.
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    In this short column, a retired teacher reflects on the amazing rewards from teaching she was given over the years. Sometimes it is easy to forget why we want to teach. This would be a good article to read when starting to think about education philosophy for the portfolio. Personally, I suddenly feel the urge to contact some of my former teachers and thank them.
Erin Power

Teacher turns 'crazy idea' into new school - CNN.com - 1 views

  • Kim Ursetta
  • Denver, Colorado'
  • want to start a new kind of school," she said, a union-sponsored public school led by teachers, not a principal
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  • We've been doing schools the same way in this nation for 150 years, so if we don't step up, then nothing is going to change
  • bility ranks among the top barriers blocking the nation's children from receiving the best education possible.
  • A board-certified, 16-year teaching veteran, Ursetta, 38, believes the lack of teacher flex
  • Although they follow school board-approved curriculum and standards, instructors can easily rearrange lessons to "make better sense for the kids" -- making better connections between different subject matter, Ursetta said.
  • The lack of quality school leadership is a big reason that experienced teachers leave their schools,
  • Race to the Top also aims to give a boost to charter schools -- special public schools that are given more independence in order to encourage innovation.
  • To qualify for Race to the Top, the rules call on states to create "data systems" linking student success with teacher performance.
  • National Education Association
  • members fear it opens the door to measuring teacher performance by how students score on tests.
  • "What we're really against is using a single [student ] test on a single day" to assess teacher performance, said NEA Executive Director John Wilson. "What we're more accepting of are multiple indicators," and teacher performance "observed in classroom should count as the major part of evaluation."
  • many teachers are reacting coolly to Race to the Top because they "feel like it's too much like No Child Left Behind and are looking for something different.
  • Dubbed Race to the Top, the program is essentially a contest pitting states against each other to win a share of $4.35 billion in grant money from congressional stimulus legislation.
    • Erin Power
       
      I think this is an interesting concept that we (as future teachers) should consider. Most of the teachers I've spoken to feel that schooling is not done the most efficient or successful way. Why not consider other options? The thing I love most about this article is that this school came about someone, Ursetta, simply thinking that way - what could other options be? Then Ursetta looked at the steps she had to make and brought it into actuality.
    • Erin Power
       
      This source relies on interviews and studies conducted by CNN. A teacher could use this site to remember to be inventive in their approach to administration. This is valuable to social studies teachers so they constantly keep rethinking and questioning how to teach
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    This article talks about a Colorado school which has gotten rid of administrators and is run solely by teachers
Erin Power

Reauthorization of ESEA: Why We Can't Wait -- Secretary Arne Duncan's Remarks at the Mo... - 1 views

    • Joellen Kriss
       
      What a conundrum this is...
  • People want support from Washington but not interference. They want accountability but not oversight. They want national leadership but not at the expense of local control.
  • And now that I'm here I'm even more convinced that the best solutions begin with parents and teachers working together in the home and the classroom.
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  • Many teachers complain bitterly about NCLB's emphasis on testing. Principals hate being labeled as failures. Superintendents say it wasn't adequately funded.
  • And many parents just view it as a toxic brand that isn't helping children learn.
    • Joellen Kriss
       
      I like how he/his speech writers recognize here that schooling is something that belongs to the states. It seems like he's saying that the federal government is just stepping in for a moment, until things start going well.
  • Until states develop better assessments—which we will support and fund through Race to the Top—we must rely on standardized tests to monitor progress—but this is an important area for reform and an important conversation to have.
  • it places too much emphasis on absolute test scores rather than student growth—and it is overly prescriptive in some ways while it is too blunt an instrument of reform in others.
    • Joellen Kriss
       
      SUPER DUPER BINGO! NCLB encourages hig TESTING standards, but not LEARNING standards!! Good for you Arne (that's what he wants his staff to call him...in case you didn't know.)
  • NCLB is that it doesn't encourage high learning standards. In fact, it inadvertently encourages states to lower them. The net effect is that we are lying to children and parents by telling kids they are succeeding when, in fact, they are not.
    • Joellen Kriss
       
      This is one of the issues in my practicum schools and one of the big debates there right now.
  • We don't believe that local educators need a prescription for success. But they do need a common definition of success—focused on student achievement, high school graduation and success and attainment in college.
    • Joellen Kriss
       
      ...because the goals are and always have been, decent, but the means, are and always have been, bad (to keep it clean.)
  • In my view, we should be tight on the goals—with clear standards set by states that truly prepare young people for college and careers—but we should be loose on the means for meeting those goals.
  • They are simply not ready for college-level work when they leave high school.
    • Joellen Kriss
       
      But do they really?
  • Before we do, however, we want to hear from you. We want your input.
  • We don't need another study. We must stop simply admiring the problem. We need action.
  • And so the work of reauthorizing ESEA begins in states and districts across America—among educators and policy makers, parents and community leaders. This work is as urgent as it is important.
  • And yet we are still waiting for the day when every child in America has a high quality education that prepares him or her for the future.
  • Our shared goals are clear: higher quality schools; improved student achievement; more students going to college; closing the achievement gap; and more opportunities for children to learn and succeed.
  • Let's build a law that respects the honored, noble status of educators—who should be valued as skilled professionals rather than mere practitioners and compensated accordingly.
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    Secretary of Education Arne Duncan's speech at the Monthly Stakeholders meeting this past week. It's a part of a series of town hall style meetings that the secretary is holding with those who have a stake in the policy they will be shaping: teachers, parents and others. The speech is interesting mostly because, what he's calling for sounds great to me, but I wonder if there's any possibility of anything this reasonable ever happening. Secretary Duncan seems like an ok guy (didn't know he is a former superintendent) but I still wonder what the next big thing is going to turn out to be and how/if it's going to help.
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    The Duncan speech we were talking about in class
James Leslie

Ideas about becoming a social studies teacher - 0 views

  • Sadly, much too often, social studies courses are regarded as relatively unimportant subject matter, whether in elementary school, middle school, or high school. This perception leads to diminished attention paid to social studies as a serious subject area, yet in the overall development of the intellect of students, no other subject matter content holds as much promise.
    • James Leslie
       
      Social studies is more importan than many people think.
  • "I think we include social studies in the curriculum for the wrong reasons. It doesn't help us avoid the mistakes of the past, and if voting turnout is an indicator of good citizenship, it doesn't have much to do with that either. Social studies is probably best understood as an organized way of helping students develop understandings and appreciations that have long-term staying power, and that will influence them in positive ways to do the right thing when doing the right thing is hard to do."
    • James Leslie
       
      Can we find ways to enhance the use of what we may teach to students.
  • First, you must understand the content of the social studies at a level appropriate to that which you intend to teach. To understand content means more than mere memorization of facts. To understand content for a teacher means that you can explain it in more than one way to others, whether the content concerns facts, generalizations, principles, themes, and so on.
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  • Second, you must be able to translate the content you so understand to make it learnable, interesting, and challenging for students at the age and grade level you are teaching. It requires rearranging what you know. This applies to social studies more than any other content area simply because social studies as a discipline lacks any widely agreed-upon structure.
    • James Leslie
       
      Interesting to note that teaching the same subject at different levels can look different.
  • Third, you must consider pedagogy. This means that you not only understand the content in more than one way, can translate it into a form understandable, learnable, challenging, and interesting to your students, but that you also have the skills to actually teach the content. Pedagogy without subject matter content isn't worth very much. Simply "knowing about" teaching methods won't do.
  • There is probably no more important skill required in teaching social studies than the ability to explain events, ideas, principles, and social interrelationships. In some ways, good social studies teaching rests on the ability to tell stories well. For social studies, this story telling ability is grounded in the depth and awareness of the connective possibilities of the content. Helping students make new connections, to find challenge and meaning in social studies content is what excellent social studies teachers do every day.
    • James Leslie
       
      There is a great need to make teaching history reletive to students today.
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    This is an interesting site that shares reasons why social studies is important and how a person can effectively teach it. It also has a link to the role of values that should be expressed in social studies.
Alan Edwards

Battle Lines: Letter's from American Wars - 0 views

    • Alan Edwards
       
      This website was created by the Gilder Lehrman Institute of American History. Their collection includes thousands of letters written during wars of military service. It is an active site, and they ask people to send in war letters to expand to the collection.
    • Alan Edwards
       
      As people get older and they come across old letters in the attic, hopefully they will want to contribute their personal correspondence for a greater public understanding of war.
    • Alan Edwards
       
      I think this would be a great activity during the study of any war. It would also make for a great activity on Veteran's Day. Using Joellen's SOAPS (speaker, occasion, audience, purpose, subject) analytical tool, students could examine different letters.
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    • Alan Edwards
       
      The site is asking for people to submit war letters, a reflection of a commitment to keeping the project active.
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    The Gilder Lehrman Institute created this site on letters written during war. You can view copies of original letters written by soldiers, generals, presidents, and family members during conflicts from the Revolution to the Persian Gulf War. But wait, there's more: actors read the letters aloud while you read along. They have organized the letters by five different themes: Enlisting, Comforts of Home, Love, Combat, and The End of War. Each theme includes letters from all different eras of US history.
Lindsay Andreas

Op-Ed Columnist - The Uneducated American - NYTimes.com - 0 views

  • Until now, the results of educational neglect have been gradual — a slow-motion erosion of America’s relative position. But things are about to get much worse, as the economic crisis — its effects exacerbated by the penny-wise, pound-foolish behavior that passes for “fiscal responsibility” in Washington — deals a severe blow to education across the board.
    • Lindsay Andreas
       
      The gradual decline of funding priority for education may not be immediately felt but I think the effects later down the road could be bad. I think we take education very much for granted.
  • But these days young Americans are considerably less likely than young people in many other countries to graduate from college. In fact, we have a college graduation rate that’s slightly below the average across all advanced economies.
    • Lindsay Andreas
       
      I wonder who he is talking about specifically with this statement? European countries? I wonder how much of an impact in that is because many of them have free higher education, or at least highly subsidized. But then again their tax rates are outrageous. The great thing about our system is that we have a lot of choices, so it's hard to compare in many ways too.
  • For example, the Chronicle of Higher Education recently reported on the plight of California’s community college students. For generations, talented students from less affluent families have used those colleges as a stepping stone to the state’s public universities. But in the face of the state’s budget crisis those universities have been forced to slam the door on this year’s potential transfer students. One result, almost surely, will be lifetime damage to many students’ prospects — and a large, gratuitous waste of human potential.
    • Lindsay Andreas
       
      I think this is a very interesting example, it always seems to be a question of equity or choice.
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  • Beyond that, we need to wake up and realize that one of the keys to our nation’s historic success is now a wasting asset. Education made America great; neglect of education can reverse the process.
    • Lindsay Andreas
       
      "Not a wasting asset" is so on point. I think it is hard for policy makers to realize that results are not instant. It is a hard balance, to look like you are making gains quickly or willing to wait for systematic change.
Debbie Moore

The Valley of the Shadow: Two Communities in the American Civil War - 1 views

  •  
    The Valley of the Shadow (also called the Valley Project) website is a part of the Virginia Center for Digital History at the University of Virginia. The material in the site documents the lives of two communities during the Civil War period; one community from the South and one community from the North. The site is an online library or an archive filled with primary resources such as letter, diaries, census records, government records, newspapers, speeches, maps, images and other materials. The site contains thousands of documents. The archive is divided into three sections: The Eve of War (Fall 1859-Spring 1861), The War Years (Spring 1861-Spring 1865), and The Aftermath (Spring 1865-Fall 1870). An example of one such document is a letter written in August, 1864 by a young militiaman to his parents telling them that he is well and that he will be sending home his pay. I have added a few lines because I find it so interesting and compelling. The letter comes from a camp near Petersburg. Dear Parents it is with the Greatest of Pleashure that I seat My self to inform you and My Brothers and Sisters that I like it well and am well feal Hartey like ite beter now than Ever I did I hope that youens Ar all well and all the Rest about [unclear: tomstorm] ile now state to you that I Received your Letter last Knight And was Glad to here from youens And was glad to here that Youenes wasened yet dissturbed By The Johneys Rebes you Stated in your letter that tha Wes moveing every thing out Of Town now if tha wold be men tha wold take In the same document but another page, the young man writes about his pay. Read this letter we ar getting Paid off to day I draw 1.20.10 that is one hundrad 20 dollars 10 cts Ile ex press 1 hundrade 10 dollars and mebbey fifteen dollars I dont want to ceep so mutch money here I cend it to you and if you want to make youse of it whi you may get the Chirldren wat ever tha want that is in the eating line And Close but you must be A littl
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    I ran out of room in the box above.....anyway, I am not certain what the citation rules are regarding this but I found the letter on the website that I have bookmarked, The Valley of the Shadow. Anyway, it is a great site….there is soooo much more.
Laura Wood

Virtual Jamestown - 0 views

  • Newest Timelines
    • Laura Wood
       
      Has timelines arranged around the following: "a) Jamestown in the Global Context b) Journey to Jamestown - the Voyage of the Susan Constant and the first 90 days at the fort c) Jamestown, 1606-1608 d) Virginia, 1608-1612 e) New England, 1602-1620"
  • Chesapeake Indians
    • Laura Wood
       
      Includes contemporary interviews with Native American descendants of Jamestown as well as maps of the Native American towns that predated Jamestown in this area. Also contains a Google Earth map based on the original drawings of John Smith. "Dr. Julie Solometo researched and organized the entry on the Paspahegh Indians. What the English called Jamestown, the Indians called Paspahegh territory.. Interviews and videotaping of contemporary Indians was done by Phyannon Berkowitz, Jeffery Dalton, and Crandall Shifflett."
  • Complete Works of John Smith
    • Laura Wood
       
      From the Site: "Letters and first-hand accounts allow us to see seventeenth-century society as no other record can. . . . They are best approached with the questions: what are the authors trying to tell us and what are their agendas? These materials do give us a sense of the contingencies, uncertainties,and dilemmas that surrounded choices and when read critically should lead to a better understanding of what factors shaped individual decisions. newspapers A full-text searchable database (XML) gives us a powerful tool for tracing and comparing topics, ideas, concepts, motivations, and much more from vantage points of time, space, power, authority, race, class, gender, and ethnicity"
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  • Teaching Materials
    • Laura Wood
       
      LESSON PLANS!!!! Some of these are even in our exact format!!! All are on Jamestown. Lots about runaway slaves and indentured servants, some on Native American relationships. Most make use of primary documents. Check em out! :-)
  • Virginia
    • Laura Wood
       
      MAP!! Okay so sort of hard to read but here is a map based on John Smith's records. It's interesting to note how the water lines have changed. hmmmmm.
  •  
    From the website: "The Virtual Jamestown Archive is a digital research, teaching and learning project that explores the legacies of the Jamestown settlement and "the Virginia experiment." As a work in progress, Virtual Jamestown aims to shape the national dialogue on the occasion of the four hundred-year anniversary observance in 2007 of the founding of the Jamestown colony."
Adrea Lawrence

untitled - 2 views

  • Anthropology, the study of both ancient and modern peoples, helps us to understand the full range of human diversity. Each of anthropology's four major fields (socio-cultural anthropology, biological anthropology, linguistics, and archaeology) shares the same goals - to understand what we are and how we came to be.
    • jbdrury
       
      The "general anthropology" sub-section has more resources based on introducing anthropology to the classroom. Many of the sites link back to Smithsonian websites. If you were looking for introductory material its best to start here.
    • jbdrury
       
      The AAA suggests that this website could also be used by science teachers, and so the subsections of "biological anthropology are included", some of which still might be used in a social studies classroom - or better yet - in some sort of unified, inter-disciplinary unit.
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    • jbdrury
       
      I personally find linguistics fascinating; whether it is appropriate to introduce in a social studies classroom I suppose would be a personal choice of the teacher.
    • jbdrury
       
      One of the cooler features of this website is that they breakdown their resources by continent; in this way, as a teacher one could provide background/anthropological information on the countries studied in a variety of units.
    • jbdrury
       
      A useful word bank for anthropological terms
  • Anthropology: The study of humankind from a biological and cultural perspective. Archaeology: The study of past cultures based on material remains. Biological Anthropology: The study of human biological diversity. Cultural Anthropology: The study of living peoples by describing and explaining social and cultural similarities and differences. Cultures: The learned patterns of behavior (i.e., traditions and customs) characteristic of a society. Ethnology: A comparative and historical study of culture. Ethnography: The study of present-day cultures through fieldwork. Linguistic Anthropology: The study of the variety of human languages.
  •  
    Following off of my lesson plan from last week, I wanted to see what kind of resources there are for the social studies teacher to introduce the discipline of anthropology in the classroom. This website, produced by the American Anthropological Association, is a treasure trove of links to other sites regarding anthropology. You could literally search for hours on this site for potential resources, divided by both region and sub-discipline.
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    We might be able to use this in 542 next semester when we get into the epistemologies of each social studies discipline.
Lindsay Andreas

Holiday sales could launch e-book readers as mass-market must-haves - washingtonpost.com - 0 views

  • Sales of electronic books jumped 68.4 percent last year and skyrocketed 177 percent to $96.6 million for the year through August, according to the Association of American Publishers. That's not counting the millions downloaded for free at public libraries, where e-books are fast becoming one of the most popular features. And Amazon has said that its e-book reader, the  Kindle, has become the best-selling product on its Web site.
    • Lindsay Andreas
       
      At the National Book Festival, they had an entire mobile unit pushing the e-book movement. If you have a DC Public library card, they have a lot of electronic options!
  • "To me, it's just inevitable," says Haber, who knew printed books were goners when people told him they liked to touch and feel them. "I heard the same thing from LPs and CDs. The mass market, they want convenience and experience."
    • Lindsay Andreas
       
      Since our class is a certified green course, I thought this statement was rather appropriate.
  • Amazon executives have made near-instantaneous content a company goal. The latest Kindle, which began shipping last month, holds 1,500 titles and can wirelessly download books in 60 seconds. The company envisions a day when any book ever printed in any language can be downloaded in one minute.
    • Lindsay Andreas
       
      Talk about the great equalizer of the future! If this idea goes big and they can produce it for a more mass audience, this has unbelievable potential. You could potentially have access to so much information. The other thing that is slowly grabbing my attention is the fact that it would cut down on back problems. I had to carry around McKinley's AP US history book last week, and I just about died. If schools picked up on this technology they would just buy e-readers and no more carrying around 50 lbs + of textbooks. They would be more likely to read for homework if they didn't have to drag those beasts back and forth everyday.
Laura Wood

Campaign for the Civic Mission of Schools - 1 views

  • Civic Education on the Daily Show!
    • Laura Wood
       
      "In early March, The Daily Show with Jon Stewart featured former Supreme Court Justice (and current CMS co-chair) Sandra Day O'Connor discussing the importance of the civic mission of schools. Click to watch the video."
  • Civic Mission of Schools Report
    • Laura Wood
       
      My thesis draws heavily from this report. It's fantastic. "Written and endorsed by more than 50 scholars and education practitioners, The Civic Mission of Schools report summarizes the status of and need for civic learning in schools, kindergarten through 12th grade. It analyzes trends in American political and civic engagement; identifies promising approaches to educating students for democracy; and offers recommendations to educators, policymakers, government officials and funders."
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    From the website: "The Campaign for the Civic Mission of Schools is a coalition of over forty partner organizations working to improve civic education in America's schools. The Campaign's goal is to increase and improve civic learning in grades K-12 by working for policies that implement the recommendations of the Civic Mission of Schools report. This includes efforts to bring about changes in national, state, and local education policy."
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    They also have civic lesson plans under resources and a toolkit for advocating for the civic mission of schools which I, personally, think is critically important in this age of education for economy, and such.
kimhoss

Democracy Dies in the Blinding Light of Day - 0 views

  • outcome of the election may not have been a product of sober public reason — a necessary element of a fully functioning democracy
    • kimhoss
       
      To what means will one go to obtain power? (loaded question which can be answered in many ways based on varying events, conflicts, and histories which define our past... But what does it mean for leaders to run with honor, truth, and integrity? Are these basic characteristics no longer most important to Americans, to the individual? But instead does it come down to popularity, immorality, and intimidation as the characteristics that define our "leaders" and are supported by Americans? Has there always been a lack of empathy and lack of morals?
  • George Orwell in “1984,” democracy is bludgeoned into submission by totalitarian brutality. In many ways, it was the competing post-democratic vision of Aldous Huxley, articulated in his famous novel “Brave New World,” that seems to be closer to fruition. Huxley argued that freedom would be slowly eaten alive by technological change and an insatiable public appetite for entertainment. Reflecting on that possibility in his 1985 book, “Amusing Ourselves to Death: Public Discourse in the Age of Show Business,” cultural critic Neil Postman wrote, “As he” — Huxley — “saw it, people will come to love their oppression, to adore the technologies that undo their capacities to think.”
    • kimhoss
       
      Orwell and Huxley - it is interesting how stories written in the past about the future become the ideas, perspectives, and truths of our reality today... Individuals have become oppressed bystanders in our society today, due to the love and satisfaction they gain from the use and presence of today's technologies (not the only reason but a big contributor) People cannot or rather don't think for themselves. Their brains cannot process ideas, perspectives, scenarios as it is meant to, imaginatively because it is blocked by the bombardment of news, tweets, statuses, and fomo which comes from the over presence of technology use.
  • But it seems ridiculous that in this time of incredible change that the future of politics has only one possible path or set of options. Coming out of the 1990s and the end of the Cold War, political choice seemed very limited. But now the future is wide open. And there is some hope in that.”
    • kimhoss
       
      Enjoyed the article. I feel the need to share with others as it makes you think about the past, present and obviously the future. Pretty powerful points made which I have highlighted and comment on throughout. Although I am not very argumentative, I can say that democracy has withstood for much longer than many in the past had prescribed and I think as a society we are changing and will continue to change and that is necessary - what was defined and meant in one way in the past is not exactly best defined in that way today. I will be honest to say I don't like change but it is necessary and important for those who are a part of change to be knowledgeable and aware of the process. Democracy is not dead. One cannot return from the dead, but instead it is and has changed and needs to be challenged and needs to be altered to fit the advancing society of today.
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