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Contents contributed and discussions participated by Alan Edwards

Alan Edwards

New Deal Network - 1 views

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    Created by the Franklin and Eleanor Roosevelt Institute and historians, the New Deal Network is a great online resource for the era. Check out the documents sections where they have materials organized by topic. (e.g. Japanese Internment, Tennessee Valley Authority, Anti-Semitism). This could be an important resource for teachers preparing lessons as well as student research.
Alan Edwards

Spark up the American Revolution with Math, Science, and More - 3 views

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    Michelle Lee, a middle school teacher in Michigan, wrote this interdisciplinary lesson plan for teaching the American Revolution. There are some great ideas for incorporating geography, math, sociology, language arts, phys ed, and music into the social studies/history classroom. -----------Once you click the link, hit the full text button on the right hand side.-----------
Alan Edwards

Al Jazeera English - AJE - 0 views

shared by Alan Edwards on 07 Nov 09 - Cached
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    Aljazeera is news organization based in the Arab gulf. Their coverage spans world-wide, and they are a great opportunity to study the news from a non-western perspective.
Alan Edwards

Ancient Mesopotamia: This History, Our History - 2 views

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    This website on Mesopotamia and early civilizations is maintained by The Oriental Institute at the University of Chicago. It provides a wealth of information about the early civilization between the two rivers and includes great photos of artifacts, teaching materials, and interviews with archaeologists. For students, it might be fun to use this site as a webquest, where they would have to explore the site to answer questions.
Alan Edwards

Our Documents - Home - 1 views

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    The National Archives and Records Administration created this site for teachers who want to incorporate documents into the classroom. They offer lesson plans and ideas for teaching the texts.
Alan Edwards

World History International: Main Contents Page - 2 views

    • Alan Edwards
       
      This site was organized under the direction of Robert A. Guisepi, a ancient world historian who died recently. There are few citations in the texts, but the reader is told that most of the articles come from books that Guisepi and other historians have written
    • Alan Edwards
       
      As I have been preparing lesson plans on the early civilizations over the the past few weeks, I have turned to this site for content. I have found that the conclusions drawn by this team of historians about what is important to teach students about the ancient world is similar to the ones drawn by my cooperating teacher.
Alan Edwards

Opinion - Remembering the Tiananmen Protests - 0 views

    • Alan Edwards
       
      The events of the Tiananmen Protests (remembered as 6/4 as in June 4th, 1989 to most Chinese) are recalled and analyzed by a western reporter in Beijing at the time.
    • Alan Edwards
       
      This piece offers pictures and the audio recording of the reporters voice in a half dozen or so 2 minute recordings moving in chronological order.
    • Alan Edwards
       
      The report includes history of the conflict, the role of students, and graphic details of how the Chinese government ended the protests. In the classroom, students could use this to learn more about Tiananmen and the job of journalists.
Alan Edwards

Op-Ed Columnist - More Schools, Not Troops - NYTimes.com - 0 views

  • Dispatching more troops to Afghanistan would be a monumental bet and probably a bad one, most likely a waste of lives and resources that might simply empower the Taliban. In particular, one of the most compelling ar
    • Alan Edwards
       
      I botched this quote up with the highlighter, but the jist is that instead of considering deploying 40,000 more troops to Afghanistan, Obama should consider building 40,000 more schools in Afghanistan.
  • a single additional soldier stationed in Afghanistan for one year, we could build roughly 20 schools there.
  • guments against more troops rests on this stunning trade-off: For the cost o
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  • guments against more troops rests on this stunning trade-off:
  • Matthew P. Hoh, an American military veteran who was the top civilian officer in Zabul Province, resigned over Afghan policy, as The Washington Post reported this week. Mr. Hoh argues that our military presence is feeding the insurgency, not quelling it.
  • Education isnā€™t a panacea, and no policy in Afghanistan is a sure bet. But all in all, the evidence suggests that education can help foster a virtuous cycle that promotes stability and moderation.
Alan Edwards

Combat Stress and the Fort Hood Gunman - Room for Debate Blog - NYTimes.com - 0 views

    • Alan Edwards
       
      Room for Debate seems like a great format for learning about different positions on an issue from current events. Today's essential question: Is post-traumatic stress among caregivers a significant problem? These wars in the Middle East have reminded our nation that soldiers must often fight for their survival on two fronts: overseas as well as at home.
    • Alan Edwards
       
      In today's Room for Debate, the Times as assembled a trauma specialist, a psychologist, a prof. of psychology, and a couple of authors. Each contributer is introduced a sort of credibility check, listing their relevant experience and stake in the discussion.
    • Alan Edwards
       
      The Times hosts these conversations on any current event. Recent discussions have been on Palestine, Last Week's Elections in the US, Afghanistan, Warren Buffett, Biofoods, etc.
Alan Edwards

"The Public Be Damned" A Thematic and Multiple Intelligences Approach to Teaching the G... - 3 views

    • Alan Edwards
       
      This article and lesson plan was created by two professors (a secondary social studies prof and a history prof) at Ball State University. It was published in The Magazine of History, a publication of the Organization of American Historians. Each edition of the magazine includes a section on educational materials. Often they include websites that are helpful for teachers and students.
    • Alan Edwards
       
      The first part of this website is a brief summary of important themes of American history between the end of the Civil War and the beginning of the 20th century. The second half of the page is a 5 lesson plans on the time period. Each of the lesson plans is designed for a different multiple intelligence.
    • Alan Edwards
       
      The mathematical intelligence lesson asks students to compare rents charged to white and black tenants in the late 20th century. This reflects the move to the cities as well as racial discrimination. The information on rents comes from Jacob Riis' How the Other Half Live. Like all the other lesson plans offered, they include procedures, handouts, and possible assessment questions. This is a great resource for teachers who are looking for fresh ideas and methods of incorporating MI into their classrooms.
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  • Urbanization--Logical/Mathematical Intelligence. The first activity allows students to compare the rents charged to white and black tenants during the Gilded Age.
  • Rise of Jim Crow--Verbal/Linguistic Intelligence. Paul Laurence Dunbar's poetry provides an ideal vehicle for students to analyze the various perspectives taken by African Americans toward Jim Crow laws and civil rights. Lyrics of Lowly Life (1895) illustrates one perspective, the accomodationist paradigm adopted by Dunbar and others during this period.
  • V. Immigration--Body/Kinesthetic Intelligence. In his 1890 landmark book, How the Other Half Lives, Jacob Riis discussed the dismal conditions in which thousands of New York immigrants lived. Most of the residential tenements were "unventilated, fever-breeding structures" that housed multiple families. Riis's floor plan of a twelve-family tenement provides an ideal prompt for an activity that illustrates the dark, cramped living quarters germane to these Gilded-Age dwellings.
  • VI. Westward Expansion--Naturalist. Like many Americans during this period, John Wesley Powell was lured by the majestic beauty of the West. Following his service as a Union army soldier (in which he lost his arm at the Battle of Shiloh), Powell ventured westward. In 1869, he initiated the Powell Geographic Expedition, sponsored by the Smithsonian Institution. Powell recorded his experiences in a diary, which today serves as an outstanding resource for students to better understand the transformation the West went through during the Gilded Age.
  • VII. Industrialization--Interpersonal. During the Gilded Age, technological innovations provided an impetus for unprecedented industrial growth and urbanization. While laborers fueled this growth, they certainly did not reap the rewards. Instead, they found themselves economic victims of industrialization and urbanization. In an 1884 study, the Illinois Bureau of Labor Statistics detailed the economic status and living environment of numerous laborers in Chicago, Illinois.
  • VIII. Imperialism--Intrapersonal. Numerous Americans witnessed firsthand the impact of imperialism on indigenous people, through their military service during the Spanish-American War. One particular American soldier, James Miller, discussed what he witnessed during his exposure to the war in Puerto Rico.
  • IV. Politics--Musical/Rhythmic Intelligence. One of the most effective instruments at the disposal of politicians has always been the campaign song. The Populists, perhaps more than any other political party or movement in the late nineteenth century, were prolific songwriters. The Populists were often quite critical of monopolies, railroads, and old party bosses in their songs. The 1890s campaign song My Party Led Me, by S. T. Johnson, provided voters with a rationale for leaving their old political party and joining the Populist cause.
  • III. Populism--Visual/Spatial Intelligence. Political cartoons have always been a popular and powerful means for critiquing society's ills.
Alan Edwards

Race & Place: An African American Community - 0 views

    • Alan Edwards
       
      This website was created and maintained by the Virginia Center for Digital History, the Carter Woodson Center for African and Afro-American Studies, and the University of Virginia. You can contact these folks about the project via email.
    • Alan Edwards
       
      The site emphasizes a great holistic approach to studying an African American community in Virginia after the fall of the Confederate States of America and up through the first half of the twentieth century. They include oral histories, maps of Charlottesville, census reports, city records, political materials, personal papers of residents, newspapers (including two African American papers), as well as images.
    • Alan Edwards
       
      For educators, I think this might be a great way to teach Jim Crow and/or Reconstruction in the South through exploratory web quests. If the students have access to computers in a school, they could investigate the website at their own pace and answer essential questions or pose questions themselves for others to answer. Also, teachers could use the primary sources as classroom aides for their students to examine.
Alan Edwards

D.C. Launches Rigorous Teacher Evaluation System - 0 views

    • Alan Edwards
       
      Bill Turque's article in yesterday's Washington Post feels like a balanced view about a controversial plan. It definitely relates to some of the issues we've been chatting about in and out of our classes. These issues of teacher evaluation, standardized tests, teaching methods, and unions is important for anyone teaching in DC.
    • Alan Edwards
       
      So this year, it appears that the folks downtown will be testing a new method of teacher evaluation based on five in-class evaluations and the teacher's students grades and test scores. The program will only apply to about 20% of the teachers in D.C.
    • Alan Edwards
       
      DCPS will use a team of expert teachers to evaluate the teachers in 2 of the 5 evaluation sessions. They will look for active student engagement, diverse teaching methods, and teachers who work to create a safe learning environment for their students. I think that it's great that teachers will be a part of this evaluation process because great teachers have opportunities to give the best advice for these teachers. Moreover, the experts would have a degree of independence from the school's administration and union influence.
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  • Rhee is investing $4 million in the system, called IMPACT, which will also assess teachers against an elaborate new framework of requirements and guidelines that cover a range of factors, including classroom presence and how carefully they check for student understanding of the material. But IMPACT is likely to be another flash point in Rhee's turbulent relationship with local and national teachers union leaders. They say that growth statistics are too unreliable to include in performance evaluations and that the new assessment system -- which the District can legally impose without union consent -- is an instrument to identify and remove struggling teachers, not a means to help them improve.
  • This year only reading and math teachers in grades 4 through 8 -- fewer than 20 percent of the District's 3,800 classroom instructors -- will be evaluated on the basis of growth on the annual District of Columbia Comprehensive Assessment System, or DC-CAS. Student value-added will account for half of their evaluation.
  • To allay teacher concerns that assessments will be tainted by personality clashes with principals, IMPACT will employ a corps of third-party "master educators" to conduct two of the classroom observations. The District's old system, like those in most other cities, required fewer classroom visits and left them largely to school administrators, who often had neither the time nor the expertise in subject matter to render fair evaluations, educators say. The master educators, who do not report to the principals, have backgrounds in the teachers' subjects.
  • IMPACT documents suggest that no nuance will be left unexamined in the 30-minute classroom visits. Observers are expected to check every five minutes for the fraction of students paying attention. Teachers are supposed to show that they can tailor instruction to at least three "learning styles" (auditory, visual or tactile, for example). They can lower their scores by "using sarcasm that visibly hurts or decreases the comfort of one or more students." Among the ways instructors can demonstrate that they are instilling student belief in success is through "affirmation chants, poems and cheers."
Alan Edwards

Children and Youth in History - 0 views

    • Alan Edwards
       
      This site is maintained by George Mason University and the University of Missouri-Kansas City. GMU does a lot of work with new media through their Center for History and New Media
    • Alan Edwards
       
      This site dedicated to the agency and involvement of children in history. The focus is international with a collection of primary sources organized by regions of the world.
    • Alan Edwards
       
      In addition to primary sources from around the world, the site also contains a collection of case studies and teaching lesson plans/curricular units. They also include a section of helpful sites related to Children's History.
Alan Edwards

Dave's ESL Cafe - 0 views

    • Alan Edwards
       
      Dave's ESL cafe is a site that is maintained by Dave Sperling. I cannot find any information about the man and his affiliations on the website, but he does have contact info.
    • Alan Edwards
       
      Dave collects and posts lesson plans, strategies, and assessments for teaching English language learners. Dave appears to have exclusive control on what gets posted, and there are a lot of helpful ideas from educators around the world.
    • Alan Edwards
       
      I think this site is a great resource for teachers with ELL students. It maintains a large selection of works collected from educators. Many of the lesson aim at creating a more active and fun classroom. Also, if the forum was up and running it would also be a great place for teachers to help one another with their teaching dilemmas.
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    Dave's ESL Cafe includes a wide selection of strategies, lesson plans, and tools for teaching English language learners. There is a section for teachers as well as a section for students themselves.
Alan Edwards

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

  • KHAYELITSHA, South Africa ā€” 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 ā€” 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 Africaā€™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.
Alan Edwards

Perry-CastaƱeda Map Collection - 1 views

    • Alan Edwards
       
      The online map room is maintained by the University of Texas at Austin, and it is frequently updated with new scans and additions from the library. The folks at the library can be contacted by computer or telephone.
    • Alan Edwards
       
      The site has a plethora of maps, but I think their modern political maps/historical maps are most helpful. For teachers, this is a great resource to help students understand and analyze history.
    • Alan Edwards
       
      The library's online map collection is also searchable-although the search engine is pretty basic
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    • Alan Edwards
       
      There's also a great selection of OTHER map websites, including a huge selection of historical maps or maps about history
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    The Perry-Castaneda Map Collection at the University of Texas-Austin has a great selection of online maps. They have modern political maps, historical maps, maps about history, regional maps, thematic maps (population, climate, energy, ethnic, religious). Many of the maps have large PDF formats that are of great quality and detail.
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.
Alan Edwards

Powers of Persuasion - Poster Art of World War II - 0 views

    • Alan Edwards
       
      The national archives lesson plans uses a great selection of US domestic propaganda posters during WWII.
    • Alan Edwards
       
      The site provides lesson objectives, activities, and a worksheet. If I were teaching I would ask the students about the messages behind the posters as well who the intended audience was. Also, I'd like for students to make their own propaganda posters on issues that matter to them.
    • Alan Edwards
       
      This is a government site with a clear means of contacting the archives via email or tele.
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  • Background Guns, tanks, and bombs were the principal weapons of World War II
  • Guns, tanks, and bombs were the principal weapons of World War II, but there were other, more subtle, forms of warfare as well. Words, posters, and films waged a constant battle for the hearts and minds of the American citizenry just as surely as military weapons engaged the enemy. Persuading the American public became a wartime industry, almost as important as the manufacturing of bullets and planes. The Government launched an aggressive propaganda campaign to galvanize public support, and some of the nation's foremost intellectuals, artists, and film makers became warriors on that front.
  • The Documents
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    The national archives has a killer selection of US government propaganda posters from the second world war. They have some classic works as well as more obscure and controversial pieces. For students and teachers alike, these posters could help explain the government's greatest hopes and fears during the war.
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