Nicholas Kapetanis's List: History

Settling of America, Finance, Ancient Egypt

I teach middle school students, and I am pretty sure that all middle school students are addicted to MySpace and Facebook. One way that I experimented in using this technology to my advantage in the classroom was to have my students create a Facebook or MySpace page for a historical figure. For instance, I had my students choose a historical figure that we had studied throughout the course of American History and create a page for that figure. They had to include songs, video clips, images and stories and poetry that would relate and connect with the historical figure that they chose. My students absolutely loved it because they were using technology that almost all of them were extremely familiar with. They also thought it was cool because it was like they were creating an alternate identity (even though it was a real historical figure's identity). I loved it because the results I saw were very well done, far superior to what I could have pulled off using Facebook or MySpace. The lesson for me was to try to use technology that the students are using...don't force new things on them all the time.

My favorite microworld is in sociology. I have one copy of SimSocieties on my computer. Throughout last semester I had students create their own society. This allowed them to see and create a society in which they needed to know all of the elements of an successful society. The kids loved it. Once they finish their society and "run" it for a week, each group gets to present their society on the projector. I assess their work through their presentation. They have to explain what worked and what was unsuccessful, then they must explain why they chose to create their society the way that they did.

A multimedia assignment that I have is through blogs. Each week I post a psychology article on our blog site. The students must respond to the article, then each student must respond to at least one other students post. I assess each students articles and responses. This process is great because it allows me read the post before they are actually posted to the site.

Dan McDowell has created some very powerful Wiki experiences into very impressive lessons

Geographic Network

A catalog of several hundred of the most useful USGS maps for teaching and learning, organized by 12 themes: topography, geology, image, culture and history, national parks and monuments, international and world, water resources, planetary, environmental, land status and land cover, energy and physics, and earthquakes, volcanoes, and landslides. Images of each map can be viewed in detail.