10/12 & 10/15 Class Update

On Friday, we were all given a document for either the Olive Branch Petition, Common Sense, or Plain Truth. In groups determined by which document we had, we found the main ideas of each document and important facts. We were then split into another set of groups where we taught each other about the document we had. I'm sure there were inconsistencies with the information from group to group, like what one person found to be important and another didn't think it was important so they didn't share it, but we all got the main ideas for each document.

Today, we presented our Revolutionary Replica "guests." For the record- never ever use orange (or yellow, for that matter) markers for skin. It may work out well for colored pencil, but marker makes your person look like they belong on some form of Jersey Shore in the 1760's. It's not pretty and now my guy looks like he belongs in the back of someone's closet or the trash can. Anyways, I had John Singleton Copley, which I pronounced wrong every time I said his name in my VoiceThread (which is in the previous post). Apparently 'Copley' doesn't have the 'oh' sound, it's more of an 'ahh.' He was an artist in the New England colonies before the American Revolution.

Lesson learned- I know about the Olive Branch Petition, Common Sense, and Plain Truth. And not to use orange markers for skin. Unless I'm drawing Snooki. That's the only case where it's acceptable.

Revolutionary Replica VoiceThread

(If my voice sounds weird, it's because I'm getting sick)

Edit: Also, ignore the fact that I pronounced Copley's name wrong. Whoops.

Civic Value VoiceThread

Search Stories- Battles of Lexington and Concord

I don't think the embed code is working for whatever reason, so this can also be found here.

10/9 - 10/10 Class Update

Yesterday, in attempt to determine who fired the "shot heard 'round the world" in the Battle of Lexington and Concord, we looked at six different sources from different people who recorded the event. First, we watched a TedTalk on how reliable an eyewitness source really is. It was determined that your mind fills in a lot of information or groups it together. The speaker identified this with September 11th, 2001. He said that he, along with many others, could swear that the second Twin Tower fell within an hour or two of the first, but this isn't true- it fell almost a day later. This related to the documents that we looked at by helping us determine if they were reliable or not. All of which were decidedly not reliable, mostly due to being written up to a week later, being biased, and/or not actually seeing the event occur.

Today, we looked at both this and this animation to learn about the more about the Battles of Lexington and Concord and the Battles of Bunker/Breed's Hills. After this, we created search stories on the two battles (which will be posted once it finally loads!). 

10/4 - 10/5 Class Update

Yesterday, we did an EdCafé on the events before the American Revolution that paved the road to the colonists' independence. This one wasn't as successful as the previous EdCafé we did. No one really knew enough about each event to discuss their opinions- instead, we all worked on just getting the facts. I think it would've been more successful if we had been taught the information as a class, even if it's just the bare minimum to be able to form an opinion on the event, and then the leaders of the EdCafé received additional information to discuss. I had the Boston Massacre/Townshend Acts. In my discussion, I was only able to ask a few questions that didn't relate to the information I gave to the rest of the group, like, "Based on the word 'massacre' in the name of the Boston Massacre, how many people do you think were killed?" I asked if anyone thought they would've had the same reaction as various people involved, but I didn't get any conclusive answers because no one knew the information well enough to form an opinion.

Today, we got more information on the events from the EdCafés we did yesterday. We also read the poem Paul Revere's Ride by Henry Wadsworth Longfellow. In pairs, we wrote our own poem in a similar style but using historically accurate information. With most of the information we received on Paul Revere and the real story, I found that I remembered a lot of information from 5th grade, but not well enough that I could randomly spurt out facts about it without prompting it.

10/2 - 10/3 Class Update

Yesterday in history, we read about George Washington and the French and Indian War. My group never actually got past the first page... (we liked Governor Robert Dinwiddie's name too much). However, from what Mr. Boyle told us, we found out that the British ultimately won but King George III made some decisions that the colonists didn't like too much and made them angry about being ruled from 3000 miles away.

Today, we worked on our Google Presentations on our EdCafe topics. My group started getting frustrated at how many times we had to refresh the page- automatic saving isn't a good thing as far as working on school computers goes. We each worked on two of the six sections from our event profiles. I liked how we worked on a group presentation, but I don't think Google Drive is the best choice for doing it at school. It took us a long time to type one word, and we ultimately ended up writing everything in Microsoft Word and copy and pasting it into the presentation, which still took a long time but slightly less.