In the past, lessons on these two cities have not been conducted using much technology. It is one of the first lessons as we finish up doing the introductory and beginning of the year activities in class. I will have a description of how I usually present and have students work with this material in my final project. It is mostly covered in a way that involves students reading, me presenting slides, and students either writing about the achievements of these civilizations, or creating Google Slides that serve the same purpose.
I want to modify classroom learning on this topic to allow students to explore more on their own about these two cities, and develop a final project that demonstrates that they understand the major achievements of the Indus Valley Civilization. I am still working out the details of this, but I am leaning towards having students either create a podcast or blog. I was thinking that either form could be done as a travel theme, and could be carried out during the year as we explore different civilizations all over the world and in different time periods. I want to use both of these technology tools in this manner during the course of the year. I am still thinking of which one to start with for this topic. Right now I am more comfortable with the blog because we are using them every day, and I am more comfortable with that. I am going to play with podcasting a little more this weekend, and may change my mind about which to start with. I will end with my "to do" list which I will be working on over the weekend, and may change a bit as I think of more ideas.
To Do List
- Create short narrative about how this material was covered in class in past years.
- Create list of categories for achievements...ex. agriculture, technology, city planning, architecture.
- Choose the medium students will use to report out their findings-probably blog or podcast
- Consider how my beliefs about how students learn will be demonstrated in the structure of the lesson and the products created by students.
- Link the activities and learning to texts studied in class this week.
- Create an outline of the paper that can be used to inform the slides for the Pecha Kucha.
- Write paper and begin laying out the slides and script.
**This to do list is subject to change as I collect info and plan this out.
John, I think the inclusion of either a blog or podcasting element could be really fun for your students. I could see either tool being used as a means to document their learnings (i.e. you have students create a blog post or podcast as checkpoints to document what they learned throughout this unit) as well as a final product. I think providing choice is always a good option for students, so if you think you have the bandwidth to allow both options for this project, it could be really neat (and perhaps always a way to make it so that there is some variety in what those final products look like!). I look forward to hearing about what you decide to do!
ReplyDeleteI love these ideas! I would love to see how they play out in your classroom. Also curious if you plan on introducing any interesting history podcasts.
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