My group and I chose to explore the online tool Thinkfinty. There are numerous excellent features available to use for multiple disciplines in education, but this tool would be especially helpful to history/social studies educators. Some noteworthy areas I explored were; In your state, From our Community (discussion forums), Today in History, Blogs, Education News, Lesson Plans, and Interactive Tools. Interactive tools included a letter generator, with which students in grades K - 12 can practice formal and informal letter writing, which I though could be extremely helpful for many teachers. On the bottom of the page there are also a multitude of links, including, National Geographic Expeditions, which had great material for geography as well as social studies lessons, and a link we focused much of our attention on, Smithsonian's History Explorer.
This specific tool was designed and developed by the National Museum of American History, and includes multidisciplinary content for all subjects in grades K - 12. ALthough it has a wealth of material, one of its limitations is that it is geared mostly for history/social studies educators and learners. Along with this, it concerns strictly American History. This tool includes literally hundreds of lesson plans/activities, Interactives/Media, Professional Development, Web Links, and an excellent tool which allows you to view photos and descriptions of hundreds of artifacts in a Virtual Museum. It is also extremely helpful that you can search for resources by grade level, resource type, or historical era. I found this tool very easy to navigate and I believe that both young students as well as High School students would find this tool of immense help when researching topics, or developing a lesson plan.
I explored this tool with a friend of mine who is an American Government teacher at a local high school. He found an excellent lesson plan that coincides with his current topic of the landmark case Brown Vs. the Board of Education of Topeka. With this lesson plan, students would examine both the integrationist and segregationist arguments from Brown vs. the Board of Ed. through role play and explore the impact of the Supreme Courts' decision through a primary source photographic analysis activity. He will be using this lesson this week in his classroom and I am very anxious to see how well it worked out for him. I will certainly update this post at the end of the week as to the results.
This is a great post! I like how you shared what you specifically explored on each site, what was useful and what was not. You clearly approached this with a critical eye. I learned some new things from reading your post. Good job!
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