History Day Blog

As some of you already know, I created a History Day blog for my students last year. I deleted all of the old comments and started fresh this year. My students got the information on how to blog yesterday. I already have 10+ posts from kids. There is one that I wanted to share with the group to show the power of blogging...

Here's the original post from a student: How do we write a para. about why the topic fits the year theme if we have a person, wouldn't we just say "they had a great impact and legacy"?

Here's the response from one of his peers: For the paragraph you do write about their impact and legacies. To dig deeper you write about what impact they had. What did your person do to change history? Also, you write about what legacies they had and how they got them. Just ask yourself questions as to what did your person do in his or her lifetime to influence the people around them.

Kids teaching/coaching other kids! Yippee!

Thing 18: Online Thought Organizers

Several times a year I have my students create mind maps for different topics that we study. I was intrigued by the idea of online thought organizers. So, I played around with FreeMind.

I don't think that I will ever have kids create Mind Maps using this tool, because I would have to do so much instruction on how the tool works. I think that would take away from my main purpose of using a mind map to teach or review content.

However, I could see some uses for this tool in my classroom. I could create one and then project it in the front of the room to fill out as a whole class activity. Or, I could print them out as a worksheet for individuals/groups to fill out. There are some fun features (blinking fonts) that would be lost by printing them off.

I created a "thought organizer" for Ancient Rome. I have had a student teacher for most of the Rome unit and he has been creating and delivering the lessons. I will be finishing the unit up after Christmas, once we have done some work with History Day. So, this unit is getting very spread out. To bring things back together, I think I will use the Ancient Rome organizer that I created.

Take a look at the Rome Review Chart under "assignments/worksheets" on my web page.

MMSA conference

Metronet was well represented at the Minnesota Middle School Association Conference on Dec 4th and 5th. Jeanne, Kelly, and I presented the work we have done with technology during 2 break-out sessions. I was pleased to focus in on some of my technology "loves": igoogle, blogging, and delicious. We also covered Wikis, podcasting, videography, wordle, google docs, etc... It was a great opportunity to show what we had done so far. I know that we gave them A LOT of information. But it's just like metronet: tons of info that people need to sort through and find the 2-3 things that work best for their classes and with their personality. I think it is so cool that our MILI experience is spreading throughout the state. Even more teachers and students will now benefit from the cool stuff we have learned. Thanks Metronet!!!!