Social+Studies+Lesson+2.0

=Engaging Students in Social Studies=

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About
With the tools available today, you can easily engage your students in lessons and actually given them ownership of their learning experience. Teachers become facilitators guiding the students through class instead of dictating facts to them.

Tools Needed
To start, the hard part is acquiring the hardware for the lessons. Most if not all the other tools are free with an Internet connection.

- Google Docs or Google Apps for Education.

-- Allows for collaboration and file sharing, for free.

-- Apps for Education vs. Students' own account.

- Class wiki or online class space.

-- For pushing out material to students.

-- Students can post completed assignments here.

- Screencasting software.

-- This allows students to take lesson a step beyond.

-- Examples are: Screencast-o-matic, Jing, Wink, Windows Moviemaker, or iMovie. You can even create video through PowerPoint and Keynote.

-- Need a site to post finished work.

--- Can be on a wiki or other site such as TeacherTube, YouTube, Blip.tv, Fliggo(?).

- Other Web 2.0 Presentation tools.

-- These allows students to create other forms of presentations.

-- Examples, Animoto, Glogster (make sure it is educational account), Voicethread, Vuvox,

--- All can be embedded in a web page.

The Lesson Itself
LCD Projector, Teacher laptop

- Brainstorm with class, encourage students to come up with key questions.

-- Use Google Docs or Apps to create questions, rubrics, and/or Presentation Template.

Assign Sections in Book.

- Students use Google Docs or Apps to build notes and collaborate.

- Start building project using Google to create presentation.

- Creative Commons Images for presentations.

- Digital cameras for own images, or Flipcams for creating own videos.

- Do not forget to watch for copyright issues. If pulling images from Internet use Creative Commons sites.

Resource Links Page
Links to the above mentioned resources can be found here. Feel free to find out more information.