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Padlet

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What is it?

In a nutshell, Padlet is an online bulletin board. History teachers, however, can use this tool in myriad ways. For example, Padlet users can pose open-ended questions and elicit multiple student responses—ideal for posing document-based questions using primary sources. Users can also create their own "post-it" notes in response to a directed question. Teachers can also use Padlet as an online posterboard—a natural fit for group projects. Padlet can also function as a "bell-ringer" or "ticket-out-the-door" activity, as well as a homework assignment.

Getting Started

Although registering is not required, it is free and easy to do via Padlet's own registration portal, or using a Google (or Open ID) account. Once users are registered, they can create their first bulletin board and (in the top left corner) edit the title and description of the "wall." Teachers can create a topic, or simply post a question for students to answer. Users can also edit the image associated with the wall, which functions as an identifying logo. (Students looking to create a World War II wall could use, for example, a propaganda poster like Rosie the Riveter as the logo.) Lastly, users can select the design template and set access privileges (which includes a custom URL ID).

After the wall is established, users can add a "post-it" note by double-clicking anywhere on the wall. Text, audio, video, and images can be posted to the wall (videos and images automatically display a Zoom picture when clicked on—a temporary pop-up window for viewing.)

[Note: Do not place any "sticky notes" too close to the wall title and description. If the top of the sticky note is hidden underneath the wall title and description, it can be hard to move the note.]

Examples

An easy way to experiment with Padlet is to give it a try with a simple question. Once users become more accustomed to how Padlet functions, they can construct walls that employ more Web tools. We posted a sample question on a 1960s U.S. advertisement for a non-coffee product so that readers of this Tech for Teachers entry can add their own thoughts. Try it out! Leave a "sticky" note and tell us how you would respond to the coffee question, ad, and TV commercials.

The use of various multimedia sources makes historical questions more complex, engages students, and goes beyond what is possible in a traditional worksheet/whiteboard approach.

Embedding an image for viewing and providing a directed question allow the coffee example to work like a document-based question (DBQ). Additionally, the coffee question can be expanded into other discussions. In this case, a YouTube clip on coffee advertisements opens up questions about gender relationships in 1950s-1960s America. The use of various multimedia sources makes historical questions more complex, engages students, and goes beyond what is possible in a traditional worksheet/whiteboard approach. By modeling specific uses for Padlet, teachers can also empower students to create their own effective walls for classroom use and history-based discussions.

A few technical issues are worth considering. Each sticky note is limited to 150 characters. Also, images heavy on text might not be legible, even in their zoom pop-windows. If this is the case, viewers can find larger images by either right-clicking the image and saving it to their desktop, or enlarging the zoom view on the computer screen. Lastly, and most problematically, the site tends to become tied up and non-responsive. We have encountered many instances when Padlet fails to load properly. However, the value of the tool should encourage users to be patient and hope for a more consistent service in the future. Padlet is a simple tool, but one that can accentuate the best teaching practices teachers employ on a day-to-day basis. For students, carefully posed questions will allow them to respond in many ways—which only helps classroom discussion.

For more information

Check out the Padlet Blog to see some other ideas for using Padlet.

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Little Bird Tales

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What is it?

Finding digital tools for social studies in the elementary classroom, especially in the early grades, can be a bit difficult. Little Bird Tales is a helpful tool in making social studies come alive for young students through its simplicity and marriage of visuals and sounds.

Getting Started

Registering with Little Bird Tales (LBT) is quick and easy; the focus on small learners means that privacy concerns are respected: the site contains no ads, merchandising, or external links, and only requires a valid email to sign-up. LBT also offers a teacher account, which is accessible via an email request (teachers should provide the same email used to sign-up). Before working with students, teachers should be aware of the technical specifications, such as supporting browsers, image file size, and storage capacity—the FAQ page addresses these points fairly well.

Once an account is activated, creating a digital tale is fairly simple. Click on "create a new tale" to construct the tale cover. Users can either draw an image—using the built-in art pad—or upload a saved image (note: minimum image size is 600x420 px). Add a title, submit author information, and a record an audio introduction to finalize the tale cover. Users should also test microphone quality for volume and clarity before proceeding with new pages.

Each subsequent page follows the same procedure, and the size of the final project is only limited by the tale box capacity in your account. The main difference from the cover page is that students can enter text for their product—an ideal feature that reinforces reading and writing, while providing students a "script" for their sound recording. Page order can be easily rearranged at any time by dragging each page into the desired order in the sidebar found on the right.

Users can resume editing their tales by logging back in, selecting "My Tales," and clicking on the notepad icon. Other icons on the "My Tales" screen include a play option (to see the video in progress), an email icon to share the video, and a trash icon to delete the tale project.

Once the video tale is completed, users proceed to step three in order to share the tale via email—regardless of whether users choose to keep the video private or make it public. Users who choose to make the video public can do so by clicking on the account homepage (house icon) and selecting "public" under the cover page image (note: Little Bird Tales moderates all videos before they become public).

Examples

It is highly recommended that teachers create a "test-run" project ahead of time before working with students. In addition, it might serve well to have students prepare all images and script beforehand. Users can create their own artwork using the built-in drawing pad, but teachers may need access to a scanner to create image files of original student artwork on paper (note: images and scans should be saved in .jpg, .png or .gif).

Little Bird Tales works well because it captures the imagination, creativity, and voice of the child in a free and easy to use platform.

The strength of Little Bird Tales is the ability for children to tell stories that can be autobiographical (my life, my community, my school, my family), biographical (U.S. presidents, world history figures), or related to other aspects of the early grades social studies curriculum such as the environment, economics, civic ideals, or global communities. Little Bird Tales works well because it captures the imagination, creativity, and voice of the child in a free and easy to use platform. Public Tales on the LBT site include a civics project on American symbols, a story on "daddies", a tale on regional history, a silent tale on global cultures and clothing using beautiful imagery, and an inspirational video by a young runner. Middle school and high school students can also benefit from LBT, as evidenced on a video dealing with homelessness in America. In our experience in working with a 1st-grader, the initial day of trying out LBT was a learning curve for her but she caught on quickly. With simple guidance, she was able to do all the work (although uploading images needed more hands-on assistance.) By the half-way point, she was typing, recording her voice, saving her work, and moving on to the next slide. Fatigue did settle in after a while, so preparing all materials and images beforehand helped her. She also discovered LBT's ability to rearrange pictures in any order—a useful benefit whenever she changed her mind after previewing the video. The student found the playback of the recording useful and empowering; immediately recording a passage again helped her get the video "just right." It took her about 2-3 hours in total to finish the project. Keeping this one experience in mind, it might be best for teachers to first try LBT by having each student create one or two slides for a class video. For example, in a 50-states project, each student could easily adopt one or two states and create a few slides which would allow the entire U.S. to be included in a video project. This model could likewise work for U.S. presidents, famous American citizens, local communities, or other topics with a large number of elements. Such an introductory approach serves teachers and students alike. Children can become familiar with technology in a limited way by creating only a few slides. For their part, educators can invest limited curriculum time for a collective project, before expanding a video project to a more extensive one for individual students.

For more information

Teachers, review the specific features provided by the "Teacher Account," including class and school management.

For more on the tool, read Discovery Education Blog on Little Bird Tales

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Laura Jernegan: Girl on a Whaleship

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Annotation

In 1868, Laura Jernegan, six-year-old daughter of a whaling captain, put to sea with her parents and younger brother. This website, created by the Martha's Vineyard Museum, explores her family's four-year whaling expedition, focusing on Laura's own diary.

Two narratives ground the exhibit: "The Story of Whaling" and "Laura's Story." Each narrative is divided up into three sections—"Before the Voyage," "The Voyage" and "After the Voyage"—and consists of 14—15 individual "chapters," each a short essay of approximately 300—1600 words. "The Story of Whaling" describes the rise and fall of the whaling industry and the nature of a whaling voyage, including preparation and hiring crew.

"Laura's Story" narrates the voyage of the Roman, the ship on which Laura and her family set sail. The voyage included a stay in Hawaii, mutiny, and the Roman's sinking in the Arctic (everyone survived). "Laura's Story" also looks at the lives of Laura and her family before and after the voyage, as young children and as adults. Each essay include links to images, descriptions, and other sections of the website that clarify and enrich the text.

For Laura's own description of her time at sea, "Explore Laura's Journal" lets visitors browse her 43-page journal. Written in a child's bold handwriting, the journal is short and easy to read, and can be viewed in the original scans, as a text transcript, or with a magic lens feature that translates the writing into print as the mouse runs over a page.

Further background information supports the two narratives and Laura's journal, including:

"About Whales," a mini-exhibit answering basic questions about six whale species;
an interactive timeline reaching from 1774 to 1955, including both general world history events and whaling events;
"Explore the Ship," a diagram of a whaling ship that visitors can click for information on crew positions and parts of the ship; and
a "Map of Whaling."

This interactive world map lets visitors display features from six sets of information, turning each set on or off and overlaying them. The sets include the four routes of the Roman's journey, three typical whaling routes, posts and sites important to whaling, 1878 whaling grounds for four species, major ocean currents, and whale migration patterns for three species.

Finally, visitors can view zoomable photographs of 175 different whaling-related objects in "Artifacts," read the descriptions of 15 crew positions in "Meet the Crew," and browse 16 pieces of logbook art, 36 photos, and 53 whaling-related images in the "Picture Gallery." An A-to-Z glossary offers definitions for 180 historical and whaling terms. Visitors can also explore the biographies of five people, including all of the members of the Jernegan family and, in "More About," can read 10 more 1,000-3,000-word essays on subjects like race and whaling, women and whaling, and 19th-century children's literature.

In the "For Teachers" section, educators can download two units on whaling: a four-lesson unit for grades 1–3, or a six-lesson unit for 4–5. "For Further Study" features a bibliography of 75 books for children and adults and eight annotated links.

A thorough website centered around a very unique primary source—use it to invite young children into history through the voice of a peer!

Artifacts and Objects

Literary Sources

Maps

Newspapers and Periodicals

Women's History Month

Splash Pullout Women's Month

Learn Women's Month

Civil War & Reconstruction, 1850-1877

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How to Introduce Students to Primary Sources

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Local History and Student Historians

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Finding a Speaker Willing to Use Digital Networks

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Question

Is there a historian that would be willing to Skype a 4th-grade classroom on the American Revolution?

Answer

There are two levels to your question—how does one find a historian who would speak to a 4th-grade class, and how does one find a historian who will Skype into the classroom? The first question is much simpler than the first. In my experience, historians greatly value current and future students of the discipline, so I often find they are quite receptive to opportunities to talk about their subjects. At the American Historical Association we maintain fairly wide-ranging databases of faculty in almost every field of specialization, and regularly suggest names of specialists that might speak on particular historical topics.

While a growing number are willing to experiment with technologies such as Skype, most tend to just dismiss them as too much trouble

The next question you should ask is—how generally you want someone to speak on the topic? For instance, would you be looking for someone who could provide a broad overview and then take questions from students, or would you be more interested in someone who could talk in some greater depth about a specific aspect of the Revolution? There are hundreds of historians who work and teach in this area of American history to choose from, but that is where the added criteria about finding a historian who will Skype into the classroom creates a complication. In a survey of historians conducted last year, AHA found that they are much more likely to use technologies for personal research than interpersonal communications and teaching. That statistic certainly bears out in my work with other members of the discipline. While a growing number are willing to experiment with technologies such as Skype, most tend to just dismiss them as too much trouble. I often have to coax historians to participate in meetings with Skype, even though they often find it all much simpler and easier to use than expected. Hopefully, as these technologies become more ubiquitous that problem will disappear, but for now it would significantly complicate your request. I can't think of any databases other than our directories of history departments and members. (Unfortunately they are gated, though I am always happy to dig into them for anyone who writes or calls looking for help.) Part of the problem may be that I am a little too stuck in the world of academics. The best first step for finding a potential speaker is probably to just look on your bookshelves for the authors of books on the subject, or even Wikipedia, which has a pretty good list of popular surveys on the topic. From there, a quick Google search on the author's name will usually take you to their faculty page, which will almost always have an email address. You really don't have to be shy about writing to ask them if they would be willing to speak to your class. A simple and direct request, noting that you are trying to develop your students' appreciation of history and desire to help them understand how history gets made should elicit a generous response. Even if they cannot assist, they are likely to have a student or two who also writes on the subject and could also be asked to serve. In my experience, most historians are happy to assist as time and opportunity allows.

Bibliography

Ask a Master Teacher

American Historical Association Accessed March 2, 2011.

Humanities and Social Sciences Online. Last Modified March 2, 2011.

OIEAHC - Omohundro Institute of Early American History & Culture. "Institute Colloquium." Accessed March 2, 2011.

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Animoto

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What is it?

Animoto takes photographs and allows users to add sound and text, as well as control some editing of the video project, in order to share stories through a short video presentation. Students will find the ability to express themselves through new media tools an attractive aspect of Animoto, and teachers can utilize this tool as a way to bridge curriculum and student engagement or develop digital storytelling projects. For students and teachers tired of PowerPoint presentations, Animoto is just as easy to use and provides a wider multimedia experience.

Getting Started

Pre-planning is a helpful first step in creating your video project. Gather all images and video clips and save them in a desktop folder. If a particular soundtrack serves the needs of the project, make sure the sound clip or song is in .mp3 format. Finally, on a piece of paper, sketch out the storyboard for the video—in particular the placement of text in the video. Animoto offers a handful of different account types that vary in price from personal to business. The "Professional" account priced at $22/month ($264/year) is the most common and offers HD quality videos, more than 25 professional fonts, and pre-built storyboards.

Once images and videos are uploaded, users can click and drag images at will in order to construct a desired sequence. Other features allow users to spotlight certain images or videos for a more focused display during the final presentation...

After users open an account, the first step is to upload photos and videos via three options: from files on the computer, from Animoto's own collection of photographs, or from another website. Uploading images and videos from the computer allows users to select multiple files and conduct a batch upload. Once images and videos are uploaded, users can click and drag images at will in order to construct a desired sequence. Other features allow users to spotlight certain images or videos for a more focused display during the final presentation, add text slides, rotate and/or duplicate images, and delete any unwanted selections. It is worthwhile to note that one of Animoto’s biggest drawbacks is the limit placed on text entries. Text restrictions may prove to be frustrating for users, but one simple way to bypass these limits is to create a PowerPoint slide with the desired text, save that PowerPoint slide as a .jpg image, and then import the file as a picture into Animoto. Step two directs users to add a music file, or soundtrack, to the video either through Animoto’s own selection of songs or your own .mp3 files. Users can also select at which point the music begins. The final step is the editing process and finalization, where users can establish the speed of transitions, the design template, and select whether the video is short (30 seconds) or full length. After all selections are made, users go to the final section where the credit information is provided for the title of the video and the creator(s). Here is where Animoto users will find a second frustration: once everything is ready to go, users select “create video” and the process of finalizing the video can often take quite a while. Nevertheless, Animoto emails video creators once the video is finalized . . . so you don’t have to wait around. (Update: Animoto’s site updates may have fixed the speed delay in finalizing videos.)

Examples

Teachinghistory.org used a quick mock-up video at the 2011 AHA conference to show attendees how five simple images can tell a story. Other video examples include The American History of Chocolate, The Great Exchange, and Civil Rights.

For more information

Animoto’s website, as well as their education page.

USA Today’s blog TechnologyLive looks at the updates and improvements of Animoto.

Review an abstract on "Animoto and language acquisition in the classroom." İrgin, Pelin and Yildiz Turgut "Using Animoto for Language Education" The International Journal of Learning 16 (2009): 1-8.

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LucidChart

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What is it?

Many links and hints and tips and tricks find their way past my screen on a daily basis care of Google Reader, Twitter, and email exchanges with teachers. One day last fall, this video featuring LucidChart came to my attention. The simplicity with which the tool was used to create organization of ideas to tell a story resonated with them as an option for communicating complex ideas in a visual manner. LucidChart identifies itself as “the missing link in online productivity suites.” The web-based, clean interface allows for the collaborative creation of diagrams and flowcharts for publishing. I recommend this tool as fast, easy to learn, collaborative, and functional on any browser.

Getting Started

Registering is a breeze, needing only a valid email address. I created a flowchart in LucidChart to detail the steps for getting started with the tool. Many of the boxes are hotlinked—run your mouse over the textbox, and if a hand appears there is a link to explore. (Make sure you have popups unblocked to view the included links.) The tour, examples, forums, and tutorials are appropriately helpful and clear. If you believe that this is a tool that would suit your educational pursuits, there is an educational version that is available free of charge to K–12 teachers and students. For the more tech-savvy, there is also an integrated function between Google Apps and LucidChart. In an email exchange with David Grow of LucidChart he stated,

“For K–12, we are committed to always providing LucidChart free of charge so there is no expiration. Also, an educational account is essentially the equivalent of a paid Team account which has all of the premium features! We are eager for more teachers and students to be using LucidChart.”

I cannot stress enough that with a tool like this, it will take you a bit of time to feel as though you are a “master,” but you can feel functional almost immediately. The drag-and-drop-style features make it quite intuitive. I created the Getting Started flowchart to demonstrate my own willingness to create and play a bit in the pursuit of encouraging more teachers to do the same.

Examples

Flowchart, Green Card Application Process, Taylor Valentine and Ozzie Dembowski Quite traditionally, my American Government classes work through the three branches of government in their investigation of the American political scene. For the study of the Executive Branch, we look intently at the complex bureaucratic structures developed over time at various levels of government. I find that students often think that the Executive Branch is just the president or governor or mayor, but fail to consider the elaborate web of bureaucracy that the Executive Branch oversees. The end-of-unit project is based on the understanding of a selected bureaucratic “task.” The goal of the project is for the students to actually pursue the task by assembling and filling out paperwork, making phone calls, reading . . . reading . . . reading, and asking questions. At the end of all of it, the partnerships present the body of evidence with the paperwork, but also with a flowchart that details the process by which the average citizen would complete the task. They are to add in links, tips, tricks, hints, and such. At the completion of the project the students had to not only analyze the complex structures of government bureaucracy, but also produce a “deliverable.”

LucidChart was one of the best choices of tool for this task because of its simple, web-based, collaborative functions. Being able to investigate, research, create, and then present/publish their findings meant that the learning was not just a creation for in-class sharing, but could be shared digitally and hence more broadly. One of the most functional tasks chosen by the students was completing the Free Application for Federal Student Aid (FAFSA). As seniors, they are all in the midst of applying for college and now for financial aid. The students that worked on FAFSA were able to share their flowchart with their peers in order to demystify the process a bit. Much of students’ reflection commented on the complicated nature of the processes and the struggle they had to attempt to simplify the procedures down to a flowchart. As a teacher I was able to see the level of research and clarity of understanding in the graphics they produced on LucidChart.

Student Examples:

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Union or Secession: Virginians Decide

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Annotation

Created by the Library of Virginia as part of its Virginia Memory project, this website lets visitors explore the events leading up to and immediately following Virginia's secession from the Union on April 17, 1861. Short essays and more than 200 primary sources, including newspaper articles, speeches, letters, prints and drawings, official documents, maps, and other materials, present the story from a variety of perspectives, including those of women, African Americans, and people both pro- and anti-secession.

The website is divided into six different sections, each providing a different way of approaching the content. “Virginians Decide” divides Virginian history from the beginning of 1860 to July 1861 into 12 chronological sections, covering events including the 1860 presidential election, the meeting of the Virginia Convention of 1861, the formation of West Virginia, and the entrance of Virginia into the Civil War. Each section features a 300–500-word essay introducing the topic, accompanied by 5–45 related primary sources, links to the biographies of related historical figures, and 1–3 more short essays looking at aspects of the topic in greater detail. “Explore” lets visitors search all of the site's primary sources by 11 themes (Business and Economics, Convention of 1861, Elections and Politics, Journalism, Making West Virginia, Military, Restored and Loyal Government, Secessionism, Slavery, Unionism, Women) and seven geographical regions.

Visitors can get to know more about the people in the sources in “People.” Forty 400–2,500-word biographies give overviews of the lives of journalists, members of the Convention of 1850–1851 and of 1861, members of the Wheeling Convention, politicians, ministers, escaped slaves, free black businessmen, writers, army officers, slave traders, and others. Each biography includes related primary sources and links to related biographies. “Timeline” lets visitors browse sources arranged on an interactive timeline covering 1849 to 1862, and “For Educators” includes four downloadable lesson plans (on John Brown and the Fugitive Slave Law).

Of special interest to educators is “Callie's Mailbag.” This section gathers together 22 letters sent to a young educated Virginian woman, daughter of a secession-sympathetic Campbell County family. Callie Anthony was in her early 20s when she received these letters, which date from Dec. 1859 to Jul. 1861 and come from relatives and friends, expressing a wide range of pro- and anti-secession views.

Scanned documents and images can be downloaded in high resolution, and transcripts of written and printed documents are also downloadable. A valuable site for anyone teaching Virginian Civil War history, or wanting to give students a closer look at tensions in a seceding state.

Cartoons

Literary Sources

Maps

Newspapers and Periodicals

Civil War & Reconstruction, 1850-1877

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Virginia Memory

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Annotation

A project of the Library of Virginia, this website makes many of the library's resources available to the public in digital form. Most resources in its digital collections relate to Virginia history, making this a treasure house for educators teaching Virginia state history.

"Digital Collections" contains the bulk of the site's content. More than 70 collections document aspects of Virginian life and politics from the colonial era to the present day, and include photographs, maps, broadsides, newspaper articles, letters, artwork, posters, official documents and records, archived political websites, and many other types of primary sources.

Topics include, but are far from limited to, modern Virgina politics and elections; the 2007 Virginia Tech shooting; World War II photographs; Works Project Administration oral histories; the 1939 World's Fair; World War I veterans and posters; the sinking of the Titanic; stereographs; the Richmond Planet, a 19th-century African American paper; Civil War maps; official documents related to Civil War veterans; religious petitions from 1774 to 1802; letters to the Virginia governor from 1776 to 1784; Dunmore's War; and official documents from the Revolutionary War. Collections can be browsed by topic and title, and are internally searchable using keywords and other filtering tools.

Other features on the site include the "Reading Room," "Exhibitions," and "Online Classroom." "Reading Room" lets visitors explore a primary source for each day in Virginia history or browse a timeline of Virginia history. There are eight essays on unusual sources in the library's collection as well as on new finds in the library's blog, "Out of the Box."

"Exhibitions" preserves 25 exhibits on Virginia history topics that accompany physical exhibitions at the library. "Online Classroom" orients teachers to the site with a short "Guide for Educators," suggesting possible uses for the website's resources, and offers four source analysis sheets and 30 Virginia-history-related lesson plans, all downloadable as .pdfs. The section also highlights two online exhibits designed to be particularly useful to teachers: "Shaping the Constitution," chronicling Virginians' contributions to the founding of the country, and "Union or Secession?", which uses primary sources to explore the months leading up to Virginia's secession in the Civil War.

An invaluable resource for educators covering Virginia state history, this website should also be of use to teachers covering the colonial period, the American Revolution, and the Civil War generally, among other topics.

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Artifacts and Objects

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Literary Sources

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