Padlet Unit Plan

Antebellum Reform is often overlooked in our schools because of its location between the often more important topics of the Revolutionary and Civil Wars. It is imperative for our students to understand these reform movements and the importance they played in later events and political movements. I started the unit with the lesson pertaining to the Allegheny Portage Railroad, and expanded into the entire Antebellum period. While I was initially looking at technological advancements, I found a few lessons that pertained to the importance of these advancements within the overall reform movement. I found a unit (linked in the padlet) that focused on Antebellum Reform, and I used this unit when developing my unit goals and essential questions. Overhead projectors/SmartBoards and Googledocs are both important for this unit because of its focus on primary source materials as well as maps and other documents. In order to interact with the materials effectively, students will need access and sharing services through Googledogs as well as visual representation of sources and spatial understanding of maps through overheads and/or SmartBoards.

Created with Padlet

Compare & Contrast Ideas: This Day in History

This Day in History app for iPad is an interactive calendar that shows historical events for any selected day, best used on the current day, along with related media such as photos, illustrations, music, and speeches. Some examples are listening to the national anthem of countries on the day of their founding, presidential speeches on the anniversary of their inauguration, and sound clips from famous musicians on their birthdays. Furthermore, background text appears for each event to highlight interesting aspects that students may not be aware of and can discuss in class. Best of all, the app is free!

This app would be best used to start each day in the classroom as a way to get the students to start thinking critically and discussing various historical topics. They will be able to compare and contrast ideas relating to the information presented and discuss the importance of each fact. The main downside for this app is that the students will need an iPad in order to keep up on a daily basis, though I may be able to show the app from my own computer or iPad on the overhead each day if necessary. Also, because the facts presented are about certain days and not specific topics, the information is often jumbled across different narratives and not necessarily relevant to the class discussion. That being said, this app would still be good to get to the students thinking at the beginning of class.
http://www.mackiev.com/wb_ipad.html