Primary Sources

Are you looking for a way to incorporate primary sources in your classroom in a meaningful way?  Check out the Newseum Digital Classroom, a free resource from Newseum Education.   There's lots to love about Digital Classroom, including three full learning modules:

•      Decision 2012 explores elections and the news media
•      Making a Change examines how the first amendment shaped the civil rights movement
•      Women: Their Rights and Nothing Less investigates the women's suffrage movement 

There are comprehensive lesson plans in each module as well as information related to Historical Connections, Media Literacy, and Civics and Citizenship.  In addition, you can find video lessons on a variety of topics.

My favorite part, though, is the Primary Sources collection.  There are front pages from both northern and southern newspapers in the Civil War era, open letters between President Lincoln and abolitionist Horace Greeley, and an outstanding collection of more than 150 artifacts related to Women's Suffrage, many of which you can download as a PDF.

There are a multitude of ways to use these resources, and the Newseum has already created great lesson plans aligned to NCTE and NCSS standards.  You can use them as-is, or pick and choose the materials that best fit your grade level and curriculum.  I have found the materials to be perfect for my middle school ELA and journalism classes, and I think they would be great in history or humanities classes as well.

How to Use a Tech Coach

Now that you've got a brand-new tech coach, how do you utilize her?

1. Team Teaching/Facilitating: 
     Invite a tech coach into your classroom to team teach a lesson.  Another great use of a tech coach is as a facilitator.  She can roam around the room, helping students who get stuck or lost while you teach the lesson.  This can be especially useful on days that you introduce new apps or websites, or when you are working on a project that makes heavy use of technology.

2. Creating
     Your tech coach can create items for you to use with your classes.  This might be an iBook, a video tutorial, a newsletter, or even a class website.  Maybe you need help setting up a system for sharing documents with your students or creating assessments in Edmodo or Socrative.  Whatever it is, your tech coach is ready to help!

3. Researching
     Have you ever thought, "There should be a way to do X"? Are you overwhelmed by the sheer number of apps and websites that all claim to be the "best"?  Your tech coach can research the options and report back to you, so you get a short list of recommendations rather than sifting through thousands of possibilities.

Take a moment to consider how you might use your tech coach to your best advantage, then contact her by phone, email, or in person.

How To Create a Great Newsletter

Here's how I create my weekly newsletter to parents:

Because I compile information from all the seventh grade teachers, I usually send out an email on Friday asking if anyone has something to contribute.  Then it's just a matter of copy/paste to include all the information our team wants to share.

A simple email to parents works well, and that's what I did for several years.  Last year, I discovered Smore, and I love it because I can include pictures, videos, web links, and forms.

To get started, create an account (there are free, pro, and educator versions) and click the orange "Start a new flyer" button.  You can also duplicate a previous flyer so you can keep the same format all year if you like.

There are some easy templates to follow, or you can choose to start from a blank flyer.  It's very easy to make your newsletter look great, so don't be intimidated by starting from scratch.

You have some options with design, background, colors, and fonts.

Once you've decided on a look, you can start adding material.  It's all very intuitive and easy to change if you decide you don't like it.  Items can be dragged around to change the order they appear in or deleted altogether.

Click Save and Done Editing when you're finished.  Don't worry, you can always go back and edit some more later!

  Sending a Smore flyer is easy: I used copy/paste from Powerschool and created a "Seventh Grade Parents" mailing list.  I can also share my newsletters over social media like my class Facebook page and school Twitter account.  Flyers are also printable.

One of my favorite parts about Smore is the analytics.  I'm not usually too much of a data geek, but I love checking to see how many people read my newsletter (226 last week!).  Analytics will also show you how much time viewers spend on your page and what they do there.

Click here to view last week's flyer.

If you decide to create a newsletter, I'd love to see it!