Personal Project Proposal

For my personal project I would like to use the technology of google earth. I have heard how cool of a tool it can be but have never actually used it myself. Standard 1 for the first half of US history is to understand how geography helped in shaping US history. A project I think that would help students learn how geography influenced the creation of the United States would be to use google earth to locate several colonies and look at their geography and how it influenced that colonies development. For example first we could look at the islands in the Caribbean which were among the first settled. By using google earth students could see how the tropical weather, easy coastal access, small indigenous population etc led to the possibility of opening sugar plantations. Further north we can then look at North American colonies. Viewing the more temperate climate here it became necessary that colonizers choose a new cash crop such as tobacco. Further north still with cold weather the settlers had to rely on pelts since they could not produce cash crops. These are just a few quick example of how history was affected by geography. With the use of google earth I can show the students a few of these initial colonies and then after they have identified what geographic features led to different types of colonies I can have a game in which I choose random places and based on the geography they see on google earth they will have to determine what type of colony they would build there. I think this standard is important because so much of history has been determined by geography. In one popular book guns, germs, and steel the author explains that geography was the key determinant in which nation would rise to power and dominate all others. Similarly geography could make or break a settlement in early times. It took a smart captain to survey what resources he had and then determine what type of settlement he would develop and this is something google earth can help teach the students.

Discussion blog

After doing the first half of this assignment I discussed what I learned with my wife. She agreed that the internet has so much to offer but we need to be careful in our home to make sure that it does not bring in unwanted material to be viewed by us or our children. As far as giving out personal information we decided that it would be best if from now on we do not give out our address, and social security unless it is with a trusted site like a job application we have checked up on to make sure we are not being scammed. We also discussed how we would help our little girl when she gets older and explain the positives and negatives with social networking and how she can be protected from internet predators. One article that we read is from the church website entitled Deny yourselves of all ungodliness by Elder Maxwell. In this talk he mentions that as members of Christ's church it is important that we stay away from all forms of ungodliness. He said that while boulders prevent the passage of any servant long trails of gravel can be equally discouraging. We discussed how the internet offers lots of good things like instant access to important information and a communication system to keep in contact with family. However there are also imposing boulders that could disrupt our life such as pornography and gravel pits such as its addictive nature that can deter us from doing what is important with our time. Unfortunately it is all to easy now a days to run across a pornographic image by accident. We placed a filtering system on our computer and have our computer placed in a high traffic area. If one of us is at home alone on the computer we keep it near the window with the blinds open. This way if we do accidentally run into something inappropriate we will be encouraged to click away as fast as possible. The gravel path that Maxwell mentions we see as the addictive nature of surfing the web. As I mentioned earlier in my first blog on internet safety I have been sucked into checking up on baseball stats. To prevent this from becoming an addiction we decided on restrictions of how much time we should be able to spend on the internet without working specifically on a school assignment. These restrictions keep me from surfing aimlessly on the internet where it would be easy to stumble upon bad material or just to stay away from idleness. I think this was helpful for our marriage and personal development.

Internet Safety

I read several articles and watched a few videos. One that stuck our for me was a youtube video about a mother that lost her daughter to sexting. Unfortunately some teenagers have begun sending explicit material via texts to boy/girlfriends or even strangers they have met online. In this particular video the girl sent an image of herself to her boyfriend who then passed the photo around. Soon the scanty photo got sent all over the school and the poor girl was harassed and made fun of where ever she went. Eventually it got bad enough that she took her own life. This is a sad example of what can happen to teenagers when they are not careful with media. In another video I watched I thought it interesting that one company discovered that one of the ways teenagers can get duped into giving out personal information is for false online job applications. Many teenagers may not trust giving out personal information to a stranger normally but if they think they are applying for a legitimate job they could easily be fooled. Since I have a little girl I want to make sure that when she gets older she understands that while social networking can be good she needs to be aware that some people that visit these sites are malicious and plan on ruining those they meet. She as well as students I may teach one day should understand that personal information such as social security numbers, addresses, phone numbers, birth dates should not be shared on the web. The risk is just too high that someone can take advantage of you. Another article that I thought was interesting about getting sucked into the web is by Elder Ballard. He said gives a few suggestions of questions we should ask ourselves from time to time to see if we are addicted to the web. He asks do we sacrifice real world things for online things. I thought that was really profound. I love to watch baseball. Even though the white sox are not even in season I find myself wanting to check blogs like mlbtradrumors.com to see what is happening to the team in the offseason like trades etc. My wife one day asked me if I would stop checking up on the team every day and even told me that I was addicted and could not go three days without checking out what is going on with the white sox. I thought that was ridiculous but when I tried to give it up it really was hard to just let it go. I decided then to limit myself. Not only can students be taken advantage of with the internet or media like cell phones and texting but they can simply get sucked into wasting time surfing the net. Giving up our precious time for that which is not profitable. These are just a few things I learned while studying internet safety. Tomorrow morning I will discus this with my wife and let you know what we think about internet safety and how to avoid the problems associated with poor internet usage.

Video Project

This week in our class we finished up our video presentations. Mine is on Genghis Khan and is an example for what I would expect students to make as an end of the year project. I think that with a video presentation students are more involved with their material and therefore internalize the content better. This kind of video project also helps students be creative and choose a particular character in world history they felt was most influential. This process of evaluation is highest on Blooms Taxonomy of higher order thinking. This particular project covers the UEN standard 3 objective 1 in the core curriculum for the Utah world history core. I thought the project was challenging but fun to do. Now that I have done it once and learned the skills necessary to make a basic video I will be able to apply this to other classes and projects in the future. This is also beneficial for students who would similarly complete this assignment. Bellow is my video and you can also find it by going to this address! Here is a lower resolution form of the same video. Both should work

World History Podcasts

Last week I shared a collections of American History pod casts. This week I feel it is appropriate to also offer a series of world history pod casts that are also free to access and great to show to a class. Since world history and American history are the two most common history classes taught in our public schools I feel it would be a good idea to represent both on this blog. One website called learn out loud offers scores of pod casts that cover the classical times all the way to modern world history and anything in between. I listened to a few of the pod casts on this site that dealt with Greek Mythology since it is an interest of mine and I thought they were very well done. You don't have to pay for anything and there is a lot of great stuff and most of the pod casts are short so they would work in a high school class if you wanted to show one. Rather than showing a podcast in class they could assign a podcast for homework and have students write a reflection on it. Enjoy

BackStory with the American History Guys

On our voicethread this week I commented about a podcast group that I once followed after having to listen to several during a history class at BYU. The group is called BackStory with the American History Guys. It is a group of professors who all specialize in a different century and address several different important themes in history and how they have changed America. They are witty and the podcasts are very well done. I think that it would be a great way to introduce podcasts to a history class and it also teaches a lot of really great insights into american history. Hope you enjoy.