History Day Update

Sorry that I missed the last meeting! I heard that there was a lot of great stuff about Wikis and Google docs. As you sat in the PRFC media center, I was with my students at the Metro West History Day competition. This was the 3rd year that CMSW competed and the first year that we had kids qualify for state! Two of my groups (6 kids total) will be moving on with their documentaries! I am very excited and exhausted all at the same time.

The reason I bring this up in my MILI blog is that technology and information literacy had a lot to do with our success this year. I really focused in on databases like Historical Newspapers. Jeanne and I made sure that the kids had tools like easybib.com to make life easier. We also used UnitedStreaming with one of the groups and that made their documentary look extremely professional. I think we had the right combination of kids this year who were willing to work hard and wonderful collaboration among teachers and media specialist.

I asked the kids to reflect on their experience with History Day. Two things came across loud and clear. They need more tools to help with procrastination (research calculator) and more help locating primary sources.