Help Students Pay Attention to the 2009 Inauguration with Engaging Lesson Ideas

It’s only fitting that as students begin to watch the Inauguration of America’s most tech savvy president they are given the opportunity to engage in some technologically innovative lessons. Innovative educators eager to Pay Attention to their student’s desire for a relevant and engaging education, will like these ideas for Inauguration Day lessons and educational experiences. Below are some great sites and technologies with ideas of how to use them to enhance student learning around this important historical event.

Xtranormal

Have your students make their own movies as if they were to give an address as the president of the United States using Xtranormal. Xtranormal’s mission is to bring movie-making to the people. Everyone watches movies and they believe everyone can make movies. Their revolutionary approach to movie-making builds on an almost universally held skill—typing. If your students can type something, they can turn it into a movie.

See how students can explore past inauguration speeches and use what they learn to compose and produce their own inauguration speech which can be made into an Xtranormal movie at Inauguration Speech Lesson.

SMARTBoards

Interactive whiteboards are gaining in popularity in schools. The SMARTBoards in the Classroom blog points us to this Inauguration Day .notebook lesson designed to help students develop an understanding of the US election process and explore the Presidential Inauguration. According to the blog, SMARTBoards are one of the most powerful tools teachers can have in their classrooms as it is a unique device that enables us to reach students who learn through multiple learning styles. It also allows teachers to reach the learner who just can't sit still. Additionally, it helps teachers reach the tactile learner who learns by touch. SMARTBoards thoroughly engage visual and auditory learners and accomplish the first rule of teaching - "First get their attention and then keep them engaged."

The lesson has the following learning objectives:

1) Differentiate Literacy and Social Studies instruction to reach multiple modalities of the diverse learner through the use of Interactive Whteboard Technology and Web 2.0 tools. 2) Discuss the purposes of Primary Day, Election Day and inauguration Day. Note similarities and differences. 3) Discuss the three major events on Inauguration Day. 4) Examine the Presidential and Vice Presidential Oaths of Office, learn new vocabulary and contrast and compare. 5) Research prior Presidential Inaugurations and compare traditions. 6) Share our understanding with our families.

Renzulli Learning – Let's Celebrate Inauguration Day!

Renzulli Learning has created an easy-to-use online assignment template with activities and resources for teachers to supplement classroom activities surrounding this January’s historic Presidential Inauguration! To view one (or more) activities included in the assignment template, simply click on the hyperlink of your choice:

• All about Barack Obama
• Be President for a Day!
• Historic Tour of the White House!
• I Do Solemnly Swear! Inaugural Materials from the Library of Congress
• Inaugural Facts and Firsts
• Inaugural History
• Presidential Inaugural Committee

To use the Renzulli Inauguration template (subscribing schools only):

1. Log into your Renzulli Teacher page.

2. Click the "Lesson Planning and Differentiation" tab.

3. Click the green "Your Assignments" button.

4. Click the orange "Create a New Assignment" button.

5. Click the green "Create a New Assignment from a Template" button.

6. From the drop down menu, click "Celebrate Inauguration Day"

7. Click "Use this Template" button.

The assignment template was designed to address a broad range of grade and ability levels. You may wish to modify the assignment template to meet the specific needs of your students – or group students for differentiated learning according to their Renzulli Learning Profiles!

Teacher Tip! Have students do a basic search of the Renzulli Learning site for additional Presidential Inauguration resources. Use key words such as: Inauguration, Presidential Inauguration, Inaugural Addresses, etc.

VoiceThread

Use VoiceThread to explore the meaning of this year’s presidential inauguration to all Americans, both as individuals, and as a group. VoiceThread's are simple online virtual spaces that provide a commenting environment and can be used as part of an Inauguration Voices Voicethread project. Interested teachers and their students can join the Inauguration Day Voices group which was created to try to capture the voices of individuals exploring and expressing their own perspectives on this historic event by responding to President Obama’s mantra, “Yes We Can…,” and calling on students to share their thoughts on what it is they think we can do.

To participate, visit http://voicethread.com/group/inaugurationdayvoices.com and click “Join Now.” If you are a currently registered user, sign in, or register for an account. Once logged in you'll land on your 'MyVoice' Page and will see a number of VoiceThread tutorials in your default view. Click on the button that says 'Showing All' and select Inauguration Day Voices from the drop down menu, you'll see all of the VoiceThreads being shared by participants.

For more ideas on using Voicethread in education visit the Classroom 2.0 conversation at Wanted: Voicethread examples for wiki.

FREE Inaugural Video Clips

To ensure your students are prepared for this historic, teachable moment, HotChalk is providing 25 FREE high-quality video clips on U.S. inaugural addresses from content partners PBS, The History Channel, NBC News and more. Check them out here.

Ustream

Have an inaugural speech contest and select contest winners from your school to broadcast their own inaugural speeches live on UStream using a password protected channel accessed by those in your school community. Ustream.TV is the live interactive video broadcast platform that enables anyone with a camera and an Internet connection to quickly and easily broadcast to a global audience for free. In less than two minutes, anyone can become a broadcaster by creating their own channel on Ustream or by broadcasting through their own site, empowering them to engage with their audience. You can click on broadcast now to start a broadcast or learn more about broadcasting.

Depending on how a school would like to implement this idea, the broadcast can be viewed in classrooms with internet access and projector. Viewers can comment and chat on the broadcast with facilitation from their teacher. Parents and other community members can be invited to participate.

Voki

Students can write and deliver a part of the inaugural address or a response to the inaugural address using a personalized Voki. Voki enables students to express themselves on the web using a talking character. Students can customize their Voki to look like and/or take on the identity of lots of other types of human and nonhuman characters. Vokis can speak with the student’s own voice which is added via microphone, upload, or phone. Students can also choose to insert text and have the Voki use a variety of existing voices with more than a dozen different male and female accents to choose from.

Once the student Voki’s are created they can be inserted into a class blog, wiki, website, and more. From there the school community can comment on and discuss one another’s work and keep the conversation going.

Write an essay.

Johnathan Chase and Nancy Bosch shared these ideas for essays on the Instructional Materials for Inauguration Day discussion on Classroom 2.0.

Contributed by Johnathan Chase

Back in November I had my 7th and 8th grade students write an essay about Barack Obama's Election Night speech and the results were very good. The question could be used for his Inauguration speech as well. You can find a link to the assignment and the essays at "Yes We Can" Essay Assignment.

Contributed by Nancy Bosch

I'm going to use Mrs. Chili's essay assignment with my gifted 6th graders. We'll see how they do.

Inauguration Materials

Places to go for inauguration materials courtesy of Gerald McMullin on Classroom 2.0.

• The District of Columbia has its own inauguration web site: http://www.inauguration.dc.gov/index.asp
• The President-elect has created a web site with weekly videos, a blog, and information about the new administration: http://change.gov
• The Presidential Inaugural Committee has a website of its own with photos of the preparations: http://www.pic2009.org/content/home/
• There is a also a schedule of events leading up to the swearing in: http://www.pic2009.org/pages/schedule/
• A slideshow of the building of the inaugural platform: http://inaugural.senate.gov/2009/slideshow-platformconstruction.cfm
• Education World has created a special web site with lesson plans and activities related to the inauguration: http://www.educationworld.com/a_lesson/lesson/lesson219.shtml
• Scholastic has lesson plans and activities for elementary students: http://www2.scholastic.com/browse/teach.jsp
• Biographies of former presidents: http://www.whitehouse.gov/kids/presidents

Additional Resources
Inauguration Resources Searching - From School Library Journal
Inauguration 2009 resources - From the History Tech blog

These are just some ideas to inspire innovative educators in their upcoming work with students during this historical Inauguration year. Please contribute feedback, other ideas, or share your experience implementing one of these ideas.

Webcasts, and Blogs, and Tech Tools…OH MY!

In the age of the 21^st Century data deluge how’s an innovative educator supposed to keep up with all the information out there? If you’re like me every time you turn around, pick up a book, stumble across a website, attend a presentation, etc. etc. etc. you learn about a new tech tool, tip, trick, blog or webcast and more. First there were wikis, blogs, and podcasts, then there were Ning, UStream, and Twitter. While the technologies sound great, it seems nearly impossible to keep up with them all and how do you follow up to see who is using what and how it’s working?

In response to this issue, I have set up The Innovative Educator site where I have shared videos, webcasts, blogs, recommendations for parents, and more that I have found helpful in my work. I have also set up several discussion forums so readers can share their recommendations and comment on using the tools and suggestions posted on the site. It is my hope that this will be a valuable resource for educators.

I invite you to visit The Innovative Educator and if you like it, post a comment to share your feedback with others. If you have any suggestions please post them on the site. If you want to contact me directly about comments, thoughts, or suggestions, email me at theinnovativeeducator@gmail.com.

IStream, UStream! We ALLScream for UStream!

One of my favorite memories from my childhood in L.A. was escaping with friends to my bedroom transformed into a studio to produce a radio show. We broadcast news of the day, gave weather reports, sang, conducted interviews and taped it on our tape recorder. While it was fantastically fun to produce our broadcasts to nowhere I can’t help but wish I was a kid today with technologies that provide them with instant ability to broadcast themselves to an audience far beyond their bedroom recording studios and connect with others around the world. One such technology I’m excited about is UStream which in just minutes allows users to broadcast and interact with a global audience of thousands with just a camera and an internet connection.

Today innovative educators can use UStream to develop live broadcasts or help students find their own voice, passion, and learning to develop and broadcast shows to an audience they connect with about a subject of true personal interest. There are already some innovative educators experimenting with these technologies. Drape’s Takes blog has a Ustream Post about a teacher who’s doing some great things with his students broadcasting book reviews and inviting parents to watch the broadcast. Remote Access blog has a Ustreaming PD post telling of

The Learning Technologies group at Manitoba Education Citizenship and Youth which is Ustreaming a professional development session on using epearl an online portfolio/reflection system that allows you to upload work samples, audio samples, etc.

Ustream proclaims they are Changing The Face Of Education in collaboration with the History Channel by broadcasting a Pulitzer Prize Winning Author to speak about George Washington in an interactive broadcast with a live chat room where students around the world could converse and ask questions about the broadcast. Will Richardson shared at a recent conference that a teenager invited him to join his broadcast where he was watching the presidential debates and providing teenage commentary to other kids around the globe in an interactive forum and doing a more interesting job then most of the networks and providing his audience with a meaningful opportunity to have a conversation about what they were seeing.

Ustream explains that its interactive broadcast functionality allows viewers to personally interact directly with whoever is broadcasting -- including personalities like their favorite author, musician, expert, or politician. Ustream opens up a new world of possibilities and experiences to broadcasters and viewers alike, which the pre-recorded static video that's predominated the Internet to date just can't provide. Today, people are Ustreaming everything including:

• Major political events such as debates, speeches, rallies
• Talk shows
• Entertainment events such as premieres and 'red carpet events'
• Showcase your original music, your band's performances, jam sessions with other musicians, and more (when you have the music rights to broadcast the music)
• Conference sessions
• School and business events and training
• Sporting events at college and high school level
• Personal milestones such as holiday gatherings, weddings, grade school events, parties, even births
• Interactive games for viewers to watch or join

I encourage Innovative Educators to visit http://www.ustream.tv/ and start broadcasting now. I’m excited to see all the new ways innovative educators tap into this resource to bring teaching and learning to life in new ways in their classrooms. Please comment here to contribute how you have used or plan to use this resource to enhance teaching and learning. To learn about other great tools to enhance teaching and learning visit The Innovative Educator.

Educating Innovatively

When I began teaching in 1997 I was shocked when I was approached to provide professional development for my district on using computers in the classroom. I was surprised because I was a first-year teacher and couldn’t imagine that I was the person the school district would select as best suited to teach other teachers how to use effectively use technology in the classroom. Paul Reese was the technology coordinator for the district at that time and informed me that I was one of the few teachers he knew of that was putting technology tools to use in the classroom and he promised me I had a lot to offer. I realize now the importance of a leader and mentor to see more in you then you see in yourself and am happy that I took him up on the challenge. That year I taught teachers how to create class websites, publish historical newspapers and travel brochures to support social studies instruction, actively watch video to support content area instruction, use excel to support math and more.

I realized that what made me the right person for the job was that I was always interested in trying out new technologies and learning new things to make teaching and learning more exciting. In a “World is Flat,” “Whole New Mind,” “Change or Die,” climate that we are teaching in, I’ve found my ability to Adapt or Become Irrelevant not only useful, but necessary. If you're reading this, I imagine you either are or are open to being the same way. As such, I am anxious to share the technology tools that I love and use with others.

These are the my current can't-live without tools.
1) Wikispaces
2) Google Docs
3) Skype

These are three tools in which I use as more of a consumer than a producer and want to begin using more actively.
1) NING
2) Twitter
3) UStream

You can learn more about these tools at The Innovative Educator wiki where you’ll find the url, description, tips, and information on learning to use each tool. I know there are many other innovative educators out there. I invite you to share your favorite tools and those you want to begin using more actively.