Website

Well I still have some kinks to work out on my web page but here it is.
https://sites.google.com/site/msdanielleduffy/

Billy Joel - We didn't Start the fire music video

I really like the idea behind this movie with the music from Billy Joel "We didn't start the Fire" it goes through the 50s, 60s, and 70s.  It would be a great way to start the a unit after WWII. I think it also does a good job of summarizing the whole time period.  Because teachers are usually crunched with time to get to this last section of US History I think the overview it provides is important.  Also there is some adult content in here with different issues such as drug use and birth control.  At first I hesitated to use this clip but I think it is an important part of history that students still need to be aware of.  I think it would be helpful to send home a letter to parents explaining that we will be discussing these items in a historical context. 

Also, in different history teaching course and I taking we did something similar to this.  We did a unit on Jamestown and broke it down into different groups.  Then we split up into small groups where we brainstormed ideas about different songs that matched those historical parts of Jamestown.  We then presented all of ideas from the different groups and voted on what song we thought would work best.  Our teacher then found clips of the songs and put them to a slide show.  I really liked how this worked out.

National Archives

This week as I was going through the history blog.  I found someone who posted about the National Archives on youtube.  I went through to the site and found it helpful.   Some of the stuff is not riveting for students but it is neat to see the actually primary film footage.  I was able to look at some film footage of events transpiring before the march in Washington which I found really interesting.  This made the people see like they were really human.  I think it would help students create empathy for each other.
 
http://www.youtube.com/USNationalArchives

Started making a website.

So this week in class we began making a classroom website for our students.  I have never done anything like this before.  It should be interesting to see how it works.  In class other students recommended that you start with a blank website because you can make it how you want it.  Well, I didn't listen  to that advice and used the template.  However, after trying to embed different things into the website I don't think that was a wise choice.  I think that I will start over now and make my own website.


https://sites.google.com/site/dduffyclassroom10/

What will education look like?

After watching the last movie about students and technology I have become increasingly aware of how important it is for students in history to see how history relates to their situation today.  As I was looking through the google reader I found this video clip about the current state of education and found it really interesting.  It uses cartoons as part of the discussion to explain the history of education and many of the problems apparent today.

Internet Saftey

So this week we are looking at internet safety.  For this I decided to look at the movie done by Frontline called Growing Up Online.

It is an hour long documentary on different high school seniors and the world they live in on the internet that their parents are not a part of.  I know I just said an hour but the movie is actually very interesting and you probably will not even realize that an hour has gone by.

This movie brought up really interesting issues in the social networking of our students.  I found a lot of parallels between this movie and the adolescent development class that I took.  Increasingly adolescents try and put on different personalities.  The internet via Facebook, blogging, and my space allows these students to take on these different roles, while their parents don't know about them.

After watching the film, I discussed the issues with a few of my friends that are teachers now.  They have also watched this film.  We discussed the possible solutions to this problem.  Being part of this younger generation we understood the need for these students to begin feeling independent of their parents and making those steps but we also saw the points made by parents that cyber bulling takes place, you limit your studying and social skills.

I think this also brings up a good point is that these students are captivated by this type of technology.  It made me think about as a teacher then how am I going to get these students interested in my field of study when they have these media images flying at them?  

The last thing I did was look at an article by David A. Bednar entitled "Things as they Really Are."  I found this really interesting.  The main point of his article was to examine the difference between the real and virtual world.  It made me realize how many times we begin to live in a virtual world.