Civil War Unit | Lesson Structure

Bellow are several tools I will utilize to help students understand and demonstrate their knowledge about the Civil War. As mentioned earlier most of these assignments will happen in the classroom with the help of wireless internet and laptops.

Lecture
My goal is to keep my lectures to a minimum and make my role as a facilitator or moderator of learning. Below is the chapter preview lecture I gave to the students when we began the project to introduce them to the content and their contingents.



Fakebook
I ran into this gem awhile back and I think this could be used for other purposes as well outside of history education. Here is one for the Gatsby lovers out there. The beauty of making a Fakebook is that students can demonstrate their knowledge of individuals or events through a medium they are already familar with, social media. Bellow is a mock up I made of the Battle of Fort Sumter and what Facebook conversations would take place as a result. I know it is as historically accurate as The Patriot, but I haven't decided if I want students to err on the side of creative control or literal historical accuracy.


This project may require about 3 days (2 within the class) to complete.  Students could use the "armory" (aka box o' books) for their material or their textbooks.  I am still uncertain about how much freedom I would give them to do online research.

Understanding Online Research

image via | http://thinkingoutloud.gr/

If I do allow my class to use online references, then I will require them to cite their sources. This will also require a brief discussion about why citing sources is important. I would talk with the students about what is a valid and invalid source and have a mock up page for them to critique whether or not a a claim or a source is in fact valid (e.g. the image above). This will help them with their critical thinking and researching skills. I would expect this to take up about 15-20 minutes of class time.

Understanding the Greater Purpose
Why did these young men fight? Why would they risk their lives? For country? money? adventure? This is a question I want my students to ask themselves and seek out through an activity involving Civil War diaries. First, I would show the students this video clip from the movie Gettysburg

 

After the video, I would briefly talk about the idea of war and why people fight in them. I would then direct students to a couple of online databases dedicated to Civil War soldier letters/diaries. Some of them include:

• The Civil War Archive 
• Indiana Magazine of History
• Soldier Studies

Students will then break off into their contingents and spend the class time reading at least three letters from their respective side. As they read, students will create a Google doc and fill out a document created by the teacher that asks the "who, what, where, when, and why" questions. Students will e-mail this to the teacher afterwards.

Each group will present three major reasons why soldiers fought in the war. We will then discuss the differences between Northern and Southern soldier reasons for fighting in the war.

Since this can be a daunting task for many students I may have a list of article links for them to use in order to spend more time engaging with the content and less time searching for it. This assignment will take the entire class day.

Personal Diary Assignment
A follow up assignment for individual students would be to take the knowelge they gained from the diaries/letters and create their own letter home based on their Identity Card given to them at the beginning of the simulation. The letter would need to include these elements within one paragraph:

• Standard date, address, and salutation
• What the soldier is currently doing
• How they feel about the war so far
• Is it any different from what they might have felt at the beginning?
• What do they hope for in the future.
• Closing, name of soldier, location of writing.

Students will have 3 days to complete this at home. It will need to be e-mailed or handed in by the beginning of class.

Next: Assessment of Student Performance

Civil War Unit | Contnent Instruction

Ultimately, the goal for my students is to come away with an understanding of what the experiences of the Civil War was like for
soldiers and civilians in both the North and South as well as have a firm knowledge in the key events and people who were important during this time.  I hope to achieve this goal through various hands on projects for individual students and their respective contingents. Students will be able to access data bases of Civil War letters, they will create a Fakebook profile for an individual from this era, and they will utilize Google docs to generate their contingent's Battle questions.  All of these activities will teach students valuable research skills as well as utilizing (and having fun with) their familiarity of Facebook.

Next: Lesson Structure

Civil War Unit | Content Standards & Overview

Civil War Simulation:  Instead of focusing on one assignment I decided to present a unit instead. I will not go into much depth about the nitty-gritty details of the simulation, if you want the full write up, then you can go here. Otherwise, my intention is to share several student centered/ tech utilizing assignments that could be used for this simulation.

Overview
This simulation pits the North against the South in a 3 week simulation where 6 contingents, or table groups, (4 North, 2 South) fight against one another to attain victory. Contingents will achieve victory by getting the highest score by the end of the three weeks. Points can be gained or loss through various means:

• Battles, contingents will battle one another by asking each other trivia questions about the Civil War from the classroom armory (aka box o' books)
• Destiny Dice, Are you feeling lucky, punk? Dice (either real or virtual) are rolled and each outcome has a corresponding consequence that can either bring fortune, or disastorous for a contingent.
• Daily Assignments/Trivia, there will be daily assignments and trivia for students to complete every day that will give students the ability to earn points.

With the aid of the laptops and web apps, students will work, research, share,  and engage one another collaboratively within their respective contingents in order to understand what it meant to live durring this tumultous time period as well as understand the key events throughout the war.  The simulation will immerse the students into the this great conflict and there will be various web based assignments to help students better understand what it meant to either fight or live as a civilian during this time.

Content Standard:
8.10: Students analyze the multiple causes, key events, and complex consequences of the Civil War.

ISTE Standard:

• Student Centered Learning. Planning, teaching, and assessment centered around the needs and abilities of students.
• Curriculum Framework - Content standards and related digital curriculum resources that are aligned with and support digital-age learning and work

Context
This simulation is designed to be implemented within an 8th grade U.S. History classroom. The foundation for this unit is based off of the Interact Simulation of the Civil War, but tweaked for my own purposes. I originally ran this simulation with my master teacher this previous school year and I thought there could be some changes made to better fit a tech friendly classroom.  Before I begin I must make it clear that there are several assumptions to be made that will be necessary for this project to work:

• There is a laptop available for each individual student
• The classroom has Wi-Fi accessibility. 
• Students have a Facebook and G-mail account.

Next: Content Instruction

Civil War Unit | Assessment of Student Performance

Even though this simulation has a competitive point structure, students will be told early on that their performance in this area will not affect their grade (although the winning contingent does get a bag of candy, or veggies depending on your nutritional standards). However, grades will be given based on the various assignments mentioned in the previous post.

General Grading Rubric
Both the Fakebook and Civil War Soldier will have a similar grading rubric:


Peer Grading
A problem I noticed in the last simulation was that some students were able to coast by on the backs of their group mates. Although I can never guarantee all the participants are actively engaged throughout the time, I can tell students that they will also be graded by their peers. Here is what the grading form would look like:


This form will be given at the end of the simulation and the final chapter test. I will remind the students that I will not disclose this information to their peers and that it is important for them to be as honest as possible.

Next: Technology Utilized

Final Project | Civil War Unit

Below are links to the various components of my project. This project will show a "technological" view of a Civil War simulation I did in the previous school year. There are many other components to this project that I don't have time to spell out here but a copy of it is available if you want to see it

Image via | http://sharpwriter.deviantart.com/

• Content Standards
• Content Instruction
• Lesson Structure
• Assessment of Student Performance
• Technology Utilized
• Evaluation Survey 

RSS and a new way to access information

A while back my friend Jordan showed me the wonder that is Google Reader. Before then I was using  Mac Mail for my RSS needs and often found myself frustrated with its limitations. Within the past six months I have subscribed to various different blogs/ news sources each dealing with their own theme. I am now able to categorize all my feeds into various interests (Theology, History, Educational Tech, ect.) I love it and Google Reader is a great platform to access all my news and interest from one easy spot.

Although RSS has been around for a relatively long time, there are still some underutilized applications for the classroom
1. Resources
Students could use the RSS feed as a one stop shop for various resources within the classroom. Within the sphere of history, students could access various daily primary source document feeds or trusted history sites to aid them in projects or activities. 

2. Posting and Assessing Student Work
Another possibility for RSS utilization is similar to what we are currently doing in this class. Students can create their own blogs where they post their assignments so it can be critiqued/ peer-reviewed by other students. Having a class feed would bring all that information under one easy to view stream. This would be a cheaper, efficient, and more familiar way for students to post their work online as opposed to the plethora of other education-based sharing sites (e.g. Blackboard).

For a fuller idea of what feeds could look like in the classroom check out Dairik Baird's article on RSS and Education, its a bit old, but there are some practical tips for those unfamiliar with the topic. 

The Social Network and Your Classroom.

image via | Compu Info Systems

Social networking is often categorized in the same group of technologies such as personal laptops and Smartphones, which are blacklisted from ever making an appearance on campus much less the classroom. As I pointed out in class last week, the draconian rules established for both hardware and software applications are often applied to limit their presence before their potential usefulness can be revealed. Despite these “perceived risks and dangers” of opening up the firewall to allow social networking sites such as Facebook or Twitter to our students to access, there is a free and relatively easy opportunity to get connected with our students outside of the classroom in a way never conceived of before.

Most of the arguments I hear about why social networking shouldn’t be used is to maintain teacher and student privacy.  I too believe privacy is a serious issue, but there are various ways we can look at this. First, I believe as educators we are role models and being so we must carefully watch how we conduct ourselves in front of our students both inside and outside of the classroom. I believe that teachers and administrators who chose to friend students have an excellent opportunity to model how they (the students) should act online and within the community.  However, I equally stand by the claim that as educators we are mandated reporters. If students post pictures/comments about their crazy weekend or there is evidence of online bullying, we are put into that awkward position of potential liability. An argument by Cory Doctorow points to a more psychological issue with encouraging the use of social networking and sharing their personal information: 

Another way to resolve this issue specifically for Facebook is to understand the difference between friending and creating a page.  When we friend a student they see everything we do and we see everything they do (but limitations can be set on how much they can see within Facebook’s convoluted privacy menu). Again, this puts the teacher in the territory of awkward liability. Creating a Page entitled “Mr. Tinsley’s History Emporium” or “Room 4G Class Page of Awesomeness” (you can tell I spent time thinking of these names, right?) offers students to see the activities posted on the wall and keeps them out of your profile. The same applies to the teachers being able to look into the student’s profiles as well.

The Possibilities

 Continuing the lesson: Have you ever taught a lesson on something and then go online later that night to find a really interesting article or video clip that drives the information home in such a way that your students should see it too, but then you forget/ don’t have to time to go over it in class the next day? Yeah, I have had that happen many times and my bookmark list continues to grow because of it. Social networking sites can be that venue to continue the lesson outside of the classroom. 
     Social networking can be an excellent way to extend the reach of education into the homes of our students.  Discussion topics about lessons can be posted by both the teacher and students.  Students who are struggling with certain aspects or of the lesson or assignment can post it on the wall and either the teacher or their peers can help point them in the right direction.  

Classroom updates: No matter how many times a teacher has told a student throughout their career in education, students who were absent class will always ask the question, “So, what did we do yesterday?” Ideally the answer would be, “Didn’t you check the Facebook post yesterday?” Although social networking will probably not stop this habit, it will at least help as a reference point. Students who were absent can keep up to date with a posting about what was discussed in class with a link to the various downloadable assignment online.  

Parental Support and Accountability: In the short time I have spent in education so far I have come to realize the need for parents to be aware of what their children are doing in class.  I believe the parent/teacher relationship is often very weak, when it should be strong for the benefit of the student. Social networking can be an excellent venue to strengthen such bonds and allow parents of students a glimpse into the classroom and see what their child is learning. Parents would be able to see and comment on photos or videos of their child’s presentations. The question of “What did you learn at school today?” can be replaced with “I saw that you learned about the battle of Antietam today, did you know that your great great great great great grand father was in that battle?” 

Opportunities for building leadership: Another beauty about having a Facebook page instead of a profile is that you can create other admins to help maintain the site. I believe this would be an excellent opportunity to include some of the more tech savvy and responsible students into roles of leadership. Selected students who are made admins can help monitor conversations on topics and be in charge of making a daily update about what was discussed in class today for other students who may have been sick. Delegated responsibilities and tasks like these can give the students a sense of ownership about the content produced.  This would also help lighten the load for the teacher in terms of the responsibility of overseeing the entire effort.

A resource to make life easier:

I started using Hootsuite for my church’s social media needs earlier this year and I have loved it ever since! This free website lets you aggregate  and post to all of your social networking hubs into one spot.  The best part is that you can schedule postings for a later date and time, which is great if you want to get ahead and not worry about having to post every single day.