Catch of the Day - The History Lab - 10 Aug 09

The History Lab™, an inquiry-based approach to teaching history, is the catch of today


The History Lab™ is an interactive site where teachers can build primary-source based lessons and activities for use in their classrooms.

The History Lab™ offers an online lesson template that is based on the belief that the learning of history should focus as much on inquiry, reflection, interpretation and constructing hypotheses as on acquisition of canned knowledge. It provides a framework to help educators teach history using the educational power of primary sources, the raw materials of history, in an effective, pedagogically sound way.


In a History Lab™, as in its equivalent in a science lab, students deal directly with real materials (documents, artifacts and images on one hand; chemicals, plants and bacteria on the other). They invest thought in the dynamics, qualities, quantities and relationships of these materials according to one or another methodology. They interpret or draw historical meaning from them. Whether history or science, students are engaging in doing an activity - not merely reading about it or taking notes on a lecture. In the same way that science labs provide students an opportunity to study a topic in depth, so too history labs balance out the superficiality that often characterizes history courses.

A Sample Lab

The History Lab™ is free for use by all K-12 teachers and university professors. Teachers can store their lessons in the History Lab database and retrieve or modify them at any time.

Thanks to @ShiftParadigm on Twitter

Building a Syllabus

Knowing the basics of how to put together a syllabus for a course of study is an essential teaching skill and can have a profound effect on how well material is applied in the classroom.

I've collected a number of resources to help ease the process of creating a syllabus for each course you teach. In addition to an excellent video, Preparing an Effective Course Syllabus from Northern Illinois University, there are guides to building a good syllabus, some downloadable syllabus templates, and even an interactive online syllabus creation tool.



Guides:

• How to Build a Syllabus - communityhigh.org
• Building a Useful, Complete Syllabus
• Stephen Irwin, Sample Syllabus, Auburn HS

Templates:

• Interactive Online Syllabus Template
• Microsoft® Office Online Word Syllabus Template
• East HS, Salt Lake City,UT Syllabus Template
• Syllabus Templates - englishraven.com
• Syllabus Templates in RTF, Word, and Excel - University of Texas at Dallas
• Syllabus Template - Columbia College Chicago

Catch of the Day - Grammar Ninja - 7 Aug 09

The catch today is Grammar Ninja.

Grammar Ninja is an educational web gamein which you are a grammar ninja who must find parts of speech by throwing ninja stars at words. Correct answers allow you to continue, while wrong answers literally explode. It's great fun!

Grammar Ninja was created by current USC undergraduate Greg Lieberman for a high school independant study in videogame design.

To create your own sentences download the Grammar Ninja Sentence Creator. There is also a Wii-compatible version.

Grammar Ninja could serve as a very nice interactive whiteboard activity.

A Brave New World-Wide-Web: Video

A Brave New World-Wide-Web is a short video by David Truss, an educator in the Lower Mainland of Vancouver, BC, Canada. This nicely done piece clearly contrasts where we have been as educators with where we need to be.



Thanks to web20classrooms on Twitter.

Catch of the Day - HippoCampus - 6 Aug 09

The fresh catch for today is the homework help and study site HippoCampus

HippoCampus provides high-quality, multimedia content on general education subjects free of charge to high school and college students.

Students can browse multimedia lessons or complete courses in ten subject areas such as algebra, biology, calculus, physics, psychology, statistics, and US history.


Teachers can create custom HippoCampus pages for their students. Students can get tips from the HippoCampus blog. HippoCampus also offers content specifically tied to a number of popular textbooks.


The same content offered free to individual students and teachers at HippoCampus is also available for academic institutions through membership at the NROC Network.

HippoCampus is a project of the Monterey Institute for Technology and Education and was designed as part of Open Education Resources, a worldwide effort to improve access to quality education for everyone. HippoCampus content has been developed by some of the finest colleges and universities in the world. HippoCampus is supported by The William and Flora Hewlett Foundation.