We Didnt Start the Fire

Alright we finally finished our multi-media project. It took a long time but I am very pleased with how it turned out! This movie clip will serve as a great way to introduce modern American to a U.S. History class. It would either be used as an anticipatory set prior to the units of America from about 1945 to 1989. But it could also be used as a summation at the end. It does a good job of explaining the culture and major players of the modern world. One of the Utah State Standards is that students will understand the United States' domestic and international position in the Cold War era. This movie clip gives an overview of that time. The narration that was used was the actual lyrics to the song. We debated putting text in the movie clip but decided that it created too much confusion with how quickly the images were moving.

The next obstacle we faced in using movie maker was how to make the movie clips short enough to go along with the words of the song. It took us a day to figure out that we could zoom into the storyboard part of our movie so that we could make the picture clips really short. We had a few glitches with uploading the movie to youtube but we were finally able to make the movie work. It was an interesting experience using a movie maker program especially one that we were not very familiar with. But I think that overall we made a nice product that could be used in a history classroom.

Google Demo Slam: Translate Beat Box

Okay I found this really interesting its called google translator. I think that this could be very useful when emailing parents of students who do not speak English. I know that most language teachers will not approve but I think it could be really useful in communicating. It allows you to send a message in another language. And allows the parent to send a response in their native language and then you can translate that so you know what to do. This i one thing that I have been worried about in teaching because I want to teach in Arizona where there is a higher rate of Spanish speakers.

MultiMedia NightMare

Well for the multimedia project, I decided to create a movie slide show to the song "We Didn't Start the Fire."  This song written by Billy Joel, talks a lot about the events of the 20th century and how they affected America.  So Mike my partner in crime and I decided to use Windows Movie Maker.  A program that you will soon discover that both of us are not familiar with, however we have conquered the system.  So the first thing I decided to figure out was how to upload the song into the program.  This took a really long time because I have the song in i-tunes but movie maker would not let me import that song in the file format.  So I had to figure out how to do it different.  After going on the internet and trying to figure things out, I discovered from a you-tube clip that you can't import music that you have downloaded from i-tunes into movies maker.  So what I did was ripped the song from i-tunes onto a CD, and then downloaded that song into windows media center and then I was able to upload the song.  Then I figured out how to import the pictures which was a lot easier than figuring out how to use the music.Also I turned in my movie outline this week.

The Spirit of '43 starring Donald Duck

This clip is an excellent way to display WWII propaganda. Its fun and enjoyable for students because its from Disney and it shows how propaganda became an aspect of very part of American life. However, I would like to make a note about the movie clips I have been using on this site. I have used a lot of them. And in my observations of classrooms I have noticed that movies clips are a little over used. I found this clip via google reader, but I think that I will try and find different types of technology that could work in my classroom other than movie clips. I find that it is difficult to find these different tools with things such as history but last week I did find the interactive map. I get a little frustrated with the blogs for teaching history because I don't think they focus on a wide variety of technology.

Sherman's March to the Sea

So this week I was preparing for a lesson that I was going to teach at the high school.  The assigned topic was to discuss Sherman's March.  I was trying to find different video clips that would work for the topic.  While looking for this, I stumbled across a really interesting interactive map on the history channel that I found very helpful for teaching this topic.  It shows the three phases of the march.  You can click on each phase then and see the different battles.  It provides a nice visual for the students to use.  It also allows them to pick individual battles from the march.

Video Links: Sherman's Legacy: Hero or Monster 
                    Sherman's use of Total War     

Map Link: Sherman's March to the Sea