Semester+4+Portfolio+2010

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=Field Study Question= How can a classroom Wiki increase computer mediated communication for sharing and discussing Current Events in the news?

Current Events Blog

Find news articles that fit into the various perspectives of Social Studies: Society Politics Economy Geography History Culture Leisure and Entertainment

You must read the article. Summary the main point of the article. Form questions from the 4 Levels of Questioning. = = =Field Study= GP Current Events Wiki

= = =Journals=

January 13, 2010

In the short amount of time that we were able to toy around with VoiceThread ([|http://voicethread.com]), I found it to be a little bit confusing while setting it up. But after watching a few of the examples posted on the website, I was a little bit more intrigued about some of the ideas it can bring to a social studies classroom. In our GP social studies department, the teachers are trying to unify the students and teachers in a common goal to learn history through 6 benchmarks or understanding. And, one of those benchmarks is learning history through "analyzing primary documents." I thought it would be interesting to post a historical photo to create a voice thread that students can comment about. The historical photo could be accompanied by my own introduction and questions to promote discussion. Students then have options for how they could post comments. They could record their voice, type their thoughts, or even phone in their discussion. As I became more curious about how I could implement voice thread in my class, I went to the website and found examples of voice threads for social studies ideas. I definitely will pursue using this in the classroom as a means of differentiated instruction.

VoiceThreads of Interest: Classroom 2.0 Map of the World with students creating dialogue about where they are from. 11th Grade - Reconstruction from Molly Lynde 5th Grade - Ellis Is. Narratives from Barbara De Santis

March 24, 2010

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In this study, the focus is on responses to current events curriculum by students and teachers as well as methods of implementation into the course content. Current events aid in the development of decision-making skills and helps train students to be active and democratic individuals. Current events help students acquire new knowledge and adapt to social and cultural life. This study takes a look at the context in which current events is brought into the social studies curriculum. Most teachers in the study use newspapers and television as resources in their classrooms. I was interested to find that the time for using current events is between 1 to 10 minutes if the class. Therefore, teachers are not finding current events valuable enough to replace other subjects in the curriculum. Typically, teachers include current events in their courses once or sometimes more than once a week. Methods used for teaching current events were question-answer, research paper, discussion, and role plays. Another study suggested that students’ point of view in relation to the current events made the activity more effective for learning. More than half the social studies teachers stated that students were indifferent to the current events because of parents’ indifference and fewer course hours.





=Capacities=

=Experimenting with Technology= Kevin Amboe had us work on a mini-Moviemaker project. I decided to create a GPTV commercial for an upcoming school event to go watch Disneynature's new movie release, __OCEANS. media type="file" key="GPTV Oceans Trailer.wmv" width="300" height="300"__