EDTechLong


Two Indispensable Teaching Tools

For most of my teaching career I had two indispensable tools: the personal computer and the Internet. I know just how vital these two information innovations were because I began my career without them. When I started teaching, I banged out blue and white dittos on my old Smith Corona typewriter and ran them on the ditto machine before my classes. When I wanted to show visuals to my students I made slides, photographing illustrations from library books. 

In the mid 1980’s I met my first Mac.  While perusing its menus, I can remember my delight when I found “cut and paste.” I knew just what it was. In college when I wanted to revise a paper I used scissors to cut out sentences and paragraphs, discarding some words and rearranging others, scotch taping the entire mess into place. This rather inelegant editing process continued until an hour or two before I typed and submitted my final draft.  

When I discovered the spell check feature on my new computer, I was in heaven. Now I could compose and spell check my student handouts. Each was saved as a file to be revised and reprinted the following year. Colleagues could share their files with each other. The personal computer was a revolutionary instrument in the hands of a teacher, and even more powerful when used by students. 

The first stand-alone computers entered our school in computer labs. Later we put six networked machines in a classroom, and more recently, every student received a Chromebook. In the early days students used computers for word processing, multimedia, and a few social science computer games. 

In the mid 90’s the second pillar of the information revolution arrived: The Internet. Our high school received its connection to the World Wide Web. No need for my old slide trays.  I could pull photos off the web and make a slideshow for class in no time. More importantly, students could search the Web, a world of information at their fingertips. Teaching changed and so did learning.

Internet Opportunities and Challenges

An early classroom experience searching the Web shaped my outlook. While studying World War II, my students did a search on the Holocaust. In addition to finding an abundance of visual, written, and historical evidence on the Nazi persecution of European Jews, my students also came across a website denying the Holocaust. It was written by an engineering professor from a Midwestern college. It provoked an important discussion in my class. Students wanted to know why someone held this point of view. They also asked an important question: if everything on the Internet isn't true, how do we determine the veracity of a source? I was not entirely prepared for the discussion. However, as an adult, a history teacher with background knowledge about Germany's genocide of European Jews, I was glad that I was in the room talking to my teenagers when they discovered the link. This incident reinforced my belief of the vital role teachers play in helping their students navigate the Internet, both its opportunities and challenges, too. 

World Studies Resources 

With this experience in mind, I worked hard to find high quality, accurate and engaging, educational websites for each of my courses.  For example, my sophomore World Studies students used the BBC  iWonder website on World War 1. They explored the question: How did so many soldiers survive the trenches? My job was not just to put them on the site, but to design handouts that would help guide students through the information. For example, my iWonder WW 1 search sheet asked students specific questions about the web page content. I also wanted them to use what they had learned. My handout prompt asked, "Now it is your turn to write a letter home. Imagine that you were going "over the top” and into battle the next day. What would you want to tell your loved ones back home?” 

US History Resources 

As the Internet matured more and more institutions were digitizing their content, putting it on the Web. My US History classes, for example, could access excellent primary and secondary source material available at the The Library of Congress and the National Archives. Where our textbook might have one photograph of child labor at the turn of the century, The National Archives provided dozens of photographs in their Lewis Hine: Documentation of Child Labor web collection. You can read how I use these photos resources with my students on my Photos page in this website. 

Along with text and photographs, art, etchings, and political cartoons became abundant on the web, too. My students viewed the illustrations of Tom Feeling, whose work chronicles the horrors of the Middle Passage. They studied the debate over slavery, which was enhanced by examining the Gallery of Abolitionist and Anti-Abolitionist images, original source etchings and political cartoons created prior to the Civil War. Educational publishers also began to provide important Internet content. For example, the Scholastic Corporation created two sites useful in my US History classes, one on The Underground Railroad and the second An Interactive Tour of Ellis Island. The PBS website, Race the Power of An Illusion, which accompanied a film of the same name, provided a way to discuss both historical and contemporary issues of race. I helped students navigate this website by creating the Race the Power of Illusion search sheet. 

In the earliest days of the web, the bandwidth was too narrow and the connection speeds too slow to handle video. However, as these improved video resources became available on the Web, with platforms such as YouTube and the like. Now teachers had a wide variety of video resources to use in their classrooms. For example, my US history students viewed the official newsreel produced by the US government during World War II on Japanese Relocation, and then watched Civil Wrongs and Rights: The Fred Korematsu Story, to hear first-hand what it was like for Japanese Americans in these same Internment Camps. In the spring when my US history students studied Civil Rights, they viewed video segments on the The Freedom Riders and the Voting Rights March to Selma. Teachers were no longer limited to the video collection in the school library. 

Economics Resources 

In the last decade, there have been an increasing number of interactive educational websites available. My senior economics students have been the beneficiaries. For example, Next 10 has created the Federal Budget Challenge, in which students make a series choices about funding key budget priorities. They read pros and cons for each budget item, and they also are tasked with difficult deficit reduction decisions, too.  I’ve used Federal Budget Challenge, along with the National Priorities website and the New York Times Budget Puzzle,  to have students grapple with tax and spending priorities of the federal budget. The Federal Reserve Banks have created some useful resources, such as the Chair the Fed: Monetary Policy game. In this game students must raise or lower the Fed Funds rate, depending upon the specific economic conditions presented each quarter in the scenario. It is a fun and engaging way to get students knowledgeable about the mysteries of monetary policy. 

A variety of government websites provide up-to-date information useful for our macroeconomic lessons. In one activity, students charted  GDP Growth over the last decade, using data from the Bureau of Economic Analysis (BEA).  In another lesson, they looked at the Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) to trace current and historical unemployment rates. Along with helping students understand the theory of economics, the Internet also provides a plethora of websites that can help seniors with practical economic decision making. I’ve designed activities on: The Costs and Benefits of College, Doing Federal Taxes, Buying a Good Used Car, and the Basics of Credit Cards, to name a few.

US Government Resources 

There are many engaging websites for US Government students, too, especially related to studying political behavior. A good lesson starter is to have your students take one of the Pew Research interactive quizzes, such as What do you know about the US government? or the Political Typology Quiz, which helps students situate themselves on the US political spectrum. In addition, the Pew Research Center has a huge amount of information on a variety of social and political topics, making it an excellent resource for student research.  In an election year, have your students use iSideWith, to determine how individual student’s political beliefs align with candidates. You can teach students to read polls on the Real Clear Politics or  FiveThirtyEight, websites and have them follow the electoral map with 270 to Win. You might even have them visit a website I made for my students, A Trip to the Mall, to learn about some of our nation's most important government buildings, museums, monuments, and memorials in Washington DC. 

Course Web Pages

When our school purchased a device for every student, a Chromebook connected to the Internet, I set up course web pages for each of my classes.  The home page for each course web page included an overview of the class, basic classroom procedures and rules, and a grading policy. Connected to the home page was a page for each unit for the course, where I posted the reading guides, along with the direct instruction slideshows I designed.  I also put links to websites used in an activity, along with accompanying handouts. Video links were added too, along with a variety of student projects. On the right side of the course web page was the daily homework assignment, the reading schedule, and any course materials regularly used in the class.

Classroom web pages hardly seems a novel idea now in the age of Google Classroom, BlackBoard and the like. At the time, it was unusual. Students liked having access to a slideshow or reading guide they missed due to an illness or field trip. Parents liked being able to see the daily assignments for their son or daughter posted on the class web page and have a heads up when a test was coming.  And I liked having “one stop shopping” for all the various parts of my class. I’d update the course web pages each year with new assignments and handouts. They became the vital skeleton of my course that I would fill in each year until I retired.

I recently revisited my old course web pages. I felt a little like a farmer returning to his overgrown field, one that hadn’t been tended to in a couple of years.  There were lots of broken links, some unfinished pages, and a few errors in handouts and slideshows. I hope you’ll forgive me, since I was a busy teacher like you, without an editor. I am not going back to tidy up my field, fix my mistakes as it were. Nevertheless, I’ve decided to share them with you because if you want to rummage among my course web pages, you may find a slideshow that catches your eye, an activity you’d like to try, or an Internet link useful to your class. Happy hunting!


Student Projects

One of the great joys of teaching at the birth of the Information Age was watching my students dig into computer based social science projects. Even before we had the Internet in our classroom,  students created multimedia presentations, combining text and graphics with an early Mac program called HyperCard. The Web quickly expanded the ways students could research and present information. For example, In the World Studies Imperialism and Independence Slideshow project my sophomores picked one country from Asia, Africa, or Latin America that suffered from European or US imperialism. In addition to their textbook, they used an online database Gale for research and Google Slides to make their slideshows. My US History students became historians themselves, through a series of oral history projects published on the Web. In the History Close to Home, Union City’s New Americans, and Journeys projects my students interviewed family and community members, documenting and publishing their stories. The Internet, along with the explosion of digital mediums for photos, video, music, and art, provide students with an array of tools to create exciting social science projects. For example, seniors created a community history website, Union City Turns 50.  It included a variety of digital student entries including video, photos, and photo collage about the local area.  You can read more about these projects and others on the Projects webpage on this site. 


Research and Writing

First, an admission: I like books. I want my students to do research using the volumes in our school library. That said, the Internet provides a huge addition to resources available when my students do research. As I’ve discussed, research on the Internet has its challenges. We must help students learn to search, discerning accurate and reliable resources. We should show them the difference between a website that is a .com versus an .edu. And we need to teach them to look at an author’s credentials on a website or the organization sponsoring the information. With that proviso, the conundrum of evaluating Internet resources is that our students usually do not have a lot of background content knowledge necessary for making the subtler determinations about the point of view of a source or its factual accuracy. Imagine, if you will, trying to evaluate an article in a medical journal, without the benefit of medical or scientific training. In many ways, that is what we are asking our students to do when they cast a wide net on the Internet.  For this reason, I favor a variety of narrower approaches when students do research. 

First, I do have students use the books in our library. I know that our librarian has assembled an excellent collection of books, geared to high school students with a variety of skill levels. Secondly, on any given project, I try to identify high quality, accurate social science Internet sources for students to use. I’ve shared some of these sites above. And third, I am grateful that our school has subscribed to a database, in our case Gale,  which contains thousands of articles that have been vetted by subject area experts and editors. 

The personal computer and the Internet are a deadly combination when it comes to student plagiarism. It has become so easy for students to simply cut and paste information from the Internet when writing for our classes. Sometimes it is easy to spot, but in others we must spend an inordinate amount of time trying to track down the cheating. Sadly, many students see nothing wrong with this type of plagiarism, and they don’t realize that they’ll never improve their writing unless they struggle with expressing their own ideas. Fortunately, there are writing sites, like Turnitin and Easybib, which identifies plagiarism. They have become widely used in our colleges.  I particularly like Turnitin  because high school teachers can set the preferences so that students can check for plagiarism before submitting to the teacher. Turnitin isn’t cheap, but I think it, or sites like it, is an essential tool if a school is serious about helping students become better writers in the age of the Internet.

I’ve shared my main writing strategies for teaching informational and argumentative writing in the Writing section of this website. However, let me give one example of an assignment to illustrate the power of research and writing with the aid of the Internet and the personal computer. In the Life After High School  writing assignment, my English Learners explored various types of colleges using the California Colleges website. They gathered information on junior colleges and four year universities, both private and public. Using the website, they learned about the entrance requirements, the costs of these colleges, and possibilities for student scholarships and aid. In a second website, The California Career Zone,  students researched various careers. They also got practice making a personal budget, learning about the cost of food, shelter, and clothing in the local area. These excellent on-line resources provided the information. Students next step was to use their Chromebooks, with Google Docs, to compose their paper. They sent their first draft to Turnitin to get feedback on grammar, spelling, punctuation, and plagiarism. I circulated around the room, helping them fix their problems.  They submitted their final draft to me through Turnitin, as well. Used thoughtfully by a teacher, the new writing tools can really help all our students, become better writers. 


Assessment

Technology has transformed assessment in ways big and small. When I started teaching, most multiple choice tests we created were composed primarily of fact recall questions, a few involved critical thinking. Word processing programs had an underappreciated impact on test making. They allowed social studies teachers to insert maps, illustrations, photographs, charts, and primary source materials into our tests, making it much easier for us to test social studies skills, along with our course content. A test, like our sophomore World Studies semester 2 Common Final, could not have been quickly and conveniently created before the introduction of the personal computer. Trust me, it couldn’t.

Soon after I became a teacher, computer based grading programs emerged, helping teachers with grading calculations. More recently, schools have moved beyond individual grading programs to web based assessment tools like Illuminate. These programs allow an individual teacher to give tests with scan sheets or with students taking exams on the computer. Either way, once student results are in the program their real power is that they give a teacher a huge amount of information about their students including class averages, commonly missed questions, and perhaps most importantly, individual student’s skill and content growth over time. In addition, at our high school teams of social studies teachers can now can give common assessments, comparing data and student growth throughout the year, and modifying instruction accordingly. You can read more about this approach in my Assessment page in this website.

In addition, technology has been instrumental in helping prepare students for tests and assessments. Before the computer, many of us made Jeopardy-like review games by placing questions and answers on a large poster board. It was a time-consuming endeavor, but kids loved the competition and I liked being able to give students a chance to review the types of questions before they took my test the next day. When we were working with stand-alone computers, I designed a similar review game made with a HyperCard template. Enter the Internet. Review games are now easy to make on websites like Flippity.net. For example, I used a Flippity.net template to design my Quiz Show Review on Macroeconomics.  Just as before, we’d play the game in class. However, the web-based review had one big advantage, I could put the link for the game on my website and students could play the game as many times as they needed to review on their own time before the test. 


Big Screens and Small Screens

The first iPhone was released over a decade ago.  Since that time, smart phones have become ubiquitous with my students. We’ve used them to for lively test review competitions with websites like Kahoot.com allows students to use their phones to answer review questions that I project in front of the class. It keeps track of right and wrong answers. The kids like the competitive aspect of the game. I like that I can immediately see the questions that kids had a hard time with. It gives me a quick sense of the what students know and what I need to review.   

I have been much more effective using big screens with my students than small ones. The phone seems to have introduced a level of distraction for my students that I didn’t feel in earlier days. In the beginning, there was student enthusiasm over using computers in the classroom. The novelty has since worn off.  Texting, social media, and digital music seem to be more and more where my students live. Wrapped in their digital cocoons, it has been a challenge to get them to concentrate on the difficult work of reading critically and writing carefully in the classroom.

Although the small screens have made me feel old, I found an exciting new instructional use for the smartphone my last year of teaching: Virtual Reality (VR). English Learners from my US History classroom visited an online World War II virtual reality site. Preparation was easy. Since many of my students had smartphones, the investment in a VR lab was relatively cheap. The goggles are inexpensive, about $8 a student. They are made of cardboard and contain two lenses. The Smart phones are placed inside the goggles, allowing students to experience a powerful three-dimensional environment with the inexpensive VR viewers. I received a grant for about $150 and we purchased 17 pairs. The Google Expeditions App is free. I was the Google Expeditions guide, showing my students eight panoramic scenes from World War II. We viewed a 360-degree photo of Pearl Harbor, while I explained the Japanese surprise attack on December 7th. Students entered a museum dedicated to the Tuskegee Airmen, visited the beaches at Normandy for D-Day, and walked among the monuments and statues of the Hiroshima Memorial Peace Park. 

The still images were good, but I found VR video more powerful. I began to explore a number of excellent VR video Apps: NYTimes VR , The Discovery Channel VR, and Within. It was looking through resources in the Within App that I found a poignant VR story of a 12-year-old Syrian Refugee, Sidra, living in a Jordanian refugee camp. In Clouds Over Sidra our young narrator takes us on a tour her world, her tent, classroom, and refugee camp. Most importantly we learn in Sidra’s own voice her hopes and dreams. 

Students wearing the goggles were transfixed by this video. The VR experience brought them into Sidra’s world in a way that other mediums could not. After they watched the VR video, students discussed the experience with a partner, answering questions from the Clouds Over Sidra discussion guide. After partners talked, we had a class wide discussion with questions I projected from the Clouds Over Sidra slideshow. I also had my students read a 2015 Associated Press article, Refugee Tent Camp for Syrians Grows into a  Busy Jordanian City. 

This experience convinced me of the power of VR in a classroom setting. I asked students to find a short VR video with an educational purpose and to design a discussion guide. Students found an array of VR videos from exploring coral reefs to learning Cuban dance. As students shared their discoveries, I felt their excitement and enthusiasm. It reminded me of the early days of using computers with students. It was a a nice note to end my career on. I made a short video of our classroom experience,  Take a Virtual Field Trip.  

Indispensable Tools or the Great Distraction

So, we’ve come a long way since the days when I was typing on messy blue and white ditto masters and photographing library books for classroom slides.  During the arc of my career I have witnessed a dazzling array of information technologies, from the personal computer to the Virtual Reality Apps on SmartPhones. It makes me tempted to say, as we old folks often do, "Teachers and students today have no idea how good they have it.” 

But I won’t say that and here is why.  Although the Internet opened up many educational opportunities, ones which I have enjoyed as a teacher, it has also created many new challenges. The headlines are replete with them: kids addicted to cell phones and social media, cyber bullying, and teachers frustrated with the decline of classroom concentration due to these new technologies. 

What have been indispensable tools for teachers and students, are in danger of becoming the great distraction in the classroom. The new generation of teachers will have to navigate these difficult waters. I believe that an accomplished teacher, thoughtfully guiding his or her students is more essential now than ever. I’ve shared my journey and I wish you much success on yours. 


Educational Technology Lessons and Resources

World Studies - World War 1 Trench Warfare Lesson 

  •  iWonder WW 1 search sheet Forrest handout.pdf
  • Snow, Dan. “How Did so Many Soldiers Survive the Trenches?” BBC, BBC, www.bbc.co.uk/guides/z3kgjxs#z2ftb9q.


US History Web Resources

  • “Home | Library of Congress.” Planning D-Day (April 2003) - Library of Congress Information Bulletin, Victor, www.loc.gov/.
  • “Educator Resources.” National Archives and Records Administration, National Archives and Records Administration, www.archives.gov/education.
  • “Teaching with Documents: Photographs of Lewis Hine: Documentation of Child Labor.” National Archives and Records Administration, National Archives and Records Administration, 14 Feb. 2017, www.archives.gov/education/lessons/hine-photos.
  • Juneteenth.com - The Middle Passage - Tom Feelings, www.juneteenth.com/middlep.htm.
  • “Abolition Images.” Images from the Abolitionist and Anti-Abolitionist Movements, utc.iath.virginia.edu/abolitn/abgall.html.
  • “The Underground Railroad: Escape From Slavery Student Activity | Scholastic.com.” How the Brain Learns Best, teacher.scholastic.com/activities/bhistory/underground_railroad/.
  • “Ellis Island Interactive Tour With Facts, Pictures, Video | Scholastic.com.” How the Brain Learns Best, teacher.scholastic.com/activities/immigration/tour/.
  • MaggieFick. “Japanese American Internment (U.S. Govt Propaganda).” YouTube, YouTube, 22 Jan. 2007, www.youtube.com/watch?v=_OiPldKsM5w.
  • “Civil Wrongs & Rights: The Fred Korematsu Story.” Vimeo, 22 Sept. 2018, vimeo.com/118490262.
  • SmithsonianMagazine. “The Freedom Riders History.” YouTube, YouTube, 23 Feb. 2010, www.youtube.com/watch?v=1zBY6gkpbTg.
  • RobertHJacksonCenter. “Selma to Montgomery March.” YouTube, YouTube, 9 Mar. 2013, www.youtube.com/watch?v=gM-tfj6lp6w.


US History Lesson - Race the Power of Illusion


Economics Web Resources

  • Next 10, Federal Budget Challenge, www.federalbudgetchallenge.org/pages/overview.
  • “National Priorities Project.” National Priorities Project, www.nationalpriorities.org/.
  • “Budget Puzzle: You Fix the Budget.” The New York Times, The New York Times, 13 Nov. 2010, archive.nytimes.com/www.nytimes.com/interactive/2010/11/13/weekinreview/deficits-graphic.html?_r=1.
  • “Chair the Fed: A Monetary Policy Game.” FRB SF | 2014 Annual Report | Does College Matter?, sffed-education.org/chairthefed/default.html?startover=1.


Economics Lesson - Charting GDP

  • GDP Growth - Forrest handout pdf
  • “U.S. Bureau of Economic Analysis (BEA).” U.S. Bureau of Economic Analysis (BEA), www.bea.gov/.


Economics Lesson - Unemployment: Then and Now

  • Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) - Forrest handout pdf
  • “U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics.” U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, www.bls.gov/.


Economics Lesson - The Costs and Benefits of College


Economics Lesson - Doing Federal Taxes


Economics Lesson - Buying a Good Used Car


Economics Lesson - Basics of Credit Cards


US Government Web Resources

  • Mitchell, Travis. “What Do You Know about the U.S. Government?” Pew Research Center for the People and the Press, Pew Research Center for the People and the Press, 26 Apr. 2018, www.people-press.org/quiz/what-do-you-know-about-the-u-s-government/.
  • Suh, Michael. “Political Typology Quiz.” Pew Research Center for the People and the Press, Pew Research Center for the People and the Press, 2 Dec. 2017, www.people-press.org/quiz/political-typology/.
  • Mitchell, Travis. “Nonpartisan, Non-Advocacy Public Opinion Polling and Demographic Research.” Pew Research Center, Pew Research Center, 20 Sept. 2018, www.pewresearch.org/.
  • “America's Most Popular Voting Guide for Elections, Political Issues, Candidates, and Poll Data.” ISideWith, www.isidewith.com/.
  • Hunt, Albert, et al. “RealClearPolitics - Opinion, News, Analysis, Video and Polls.” Video | RealClearPolitics, www.realclearpolitics.com/.
  • Jr., Perry Bacon, et al. “FiveThirtyEight.” FiveThirtyEight, FiveThirtyEight, fivethirtyeight.com/.
  • “2020 Presidential Election Interactive Map.” Split Electoral Votes in Maine and Nebraska, www.270towin.com/.
  • Forrest, David A. A Trip to the Mall, daveforrest.net/Mall/.


Dave’s Course Web Pages


World Studies Slideshow Lesson - Imperialism and Independence

Imperialism and Independence Slideshow Project -  Forrest handout pdf 


US History Oral History Project Website - Immigration


Community History Project Website - Union City


Database - Gale

  • Gale Subscription Database, Cenegage Company, https://www.gale.com/


Plagiarism Tools

  • “Home.” Home | Turnitin, www.turnitin.com/.
  • Staff, EasyBib. “The Free Automatic Bibliography Composer.” EasyBib, Chegg, 1 Jan. 2018, www.easybib.com/.


Life After High School Writing Assignment

  • Life After High School  Forrest handout pdf
  • CaliforniaColleges.edu, www.californiacolleges.edu/#/.
  • “California CareerZone California CareerZone.” Announcements RSS, www.cacareerzone.org/.


World Studies Skill Based Assessment


Web based Review Games 

  • “Easily Turn a Google™ Spreadsheet into a Set of Online Flashcards and Other Cool Stuff.” Flippity.net: Easily Turn Google Spreadsheets into Flashcards and Other Cool Stuff, www.flippity.net/.
  • Quiz Show Review on Macroeconomics Forrest -Flippity Net Review Game 
  • “Learning Games | Make Learning Awesome!” Kahoot!, 21 Sept. 2018, kahoot.com/.


VR Websites Useful for the Classroom

  • Google Expeditions, Google, edu.google.com/expeditions/#about.
  • “The New York Times VR.” The New York Times, The New York Times, www.nytimes.com/marketing/nytvr/.
  • “Discovery VR.” Discovery VR | Introducing Discovery TRVLR, www.discoveryvr.com/get-the-app.html.
  • “WITHIN.” WITHIN, www.with.in/.


World Studies and US History VR Lesson on Syrian Refugees


Video on Taking A Virtual Field Trip

 Take a Virtual Field Trip Forrest  video

© Dave Forrest- 2018