American Civil War in 4 minutes

May 23, 2007

Citations get lost on the internet. Not only do people send copies of e-mails to everyone on their list, not only is there spam beyond all measure, but good stuff gets stripped of attribution. Someone sends you a good poem, or a genuinely funny story — and if you want more of the same, you’re completely at sea about where to look. Author? That information got stripped away several forwardings earlier.

“Must be Lincoln, Einstein, or Jefferson,” some wag says, and the piece is misattributed ever after.

A fellow posted this interesting film on YouTube — The Civil War in Four Minutes. One second of the film equals one week of the war. It’s a fascinating pictorial map presentation, with a lot of information packed into 240 seconds.

Who did it? Are there others like it? How do we get the rights for classroom use?

YouTube can be likened to grave robbers who invade Egyptian royal tombs — they bring important material to light, but the context is lost, and perhaps the meaning.

Can you help track down the creator of this film? This film was created for the Abraham Lincoln Presidential Library and Museum in Springfield, Illinois. (Now — how can we get legal copies?)

Update, June 15, 2007: Every YouTube version of the video has been pulled — probably a copyright thing. In the interim, I’ve checked with the Abraham Lincoln Presidential Library and Museum to see if it is available. One person said there is discussion for making it available in the next two years. Ain’t that the way? Why not strike while the iron is hot and sell it now? Somebody, please wake me if it’s ever released.

Update, October 4, 2007: ABLPLM explains the creation of the movie. Nice shot of the screen, still not available for classrooms. Alas.

Update December 20, 2007: If that one doesn’t work, try this one for a while:

Vodpod videos no longer available. from www.idkwtf.com posted with vodpod

5 Comments | Abraham Lincoln, Civil War, Geography - Physical, Geography - Political, History, History museums, History video sources, Juneteenth, Presidents, Technology in the classroom, Texas, War | Tagged: , , , | Permalink
Posted by Ed Darrell

Where are your student blogs?

May 19, 2007

While you’re wondering about how to get your podcast going, have given much attention to getting your students blogging?  Student blogging is a great classroom tool, to generate interest, and to help gauge progress.  Here’s one from fifth graders, on science:  Steve Spangler.

Let me also mention this site, The Living Classroom, which shows how blogging can be integrated into a great program for very young students — kindergarten, first grade, etc.

3 Comments | Education, Education blogs, Education reform, Pedagogy, Teaching, Technology, Technology in the classroom | Permalink
Posted by Ed Darrell

Notes from the Sub Terrain: Drafting class

May 18, 2007

[Another in an occasional series of stories from a substitute teacher.]

In the days prior to the Civil Rights Act of 1964 (and for many years after, really), in our district every 7th grade male took wood shop, and every female took home economics.  The wood shop course included a half year of drafting.   Shop courses continued annually after that for anyone so inclined, and a lot of people were. 

In our not-yet-suburban community, the skills of using high power tools were highly prized.  Every male was expected to know how to bend metal, use a torch or electric welder.  Farm kids were expected to know how to castrate sheep, turn a calf that started down the birth canal the wrong way, put crude shoe on a horse in an emergency when the farrier was too far away. 

Houses came with as few as two bedrooms.  Every man was expected to be able to plan out the additions as the babies came, and build the things – laying out the plans, getting the permits, calculating the lumber required, laying the foundation, wiring and plumbing as necessary, putting up the lath and plaster, or later, dry wall, making the trim, laying carpet or tile, painting and finishing.

Kids in Texas can take a shop course or two in high school, but especially under the scheme of the No Child Left Behind Act, the skills of drawing up plans for a room or a chest of drawers, and executing the plans, are skills of little regard. 

Drafting was always fun, though.  The architect’s rule, protractor and S-curve were exotic tools, and we took great pride in mastering their use.  Shop instructors usually had  story or two about George Washington as a surveyor, and Thomas Jefferson as inventor. 

Drafting is still fun, but it’s a different course completely.  The course is all electronic.  The drafting room is cool to keep the computers cool, and the software is fantastic.  Drawings are printed out on 3-foot-wide sheets of paper by large ink-jet printers that make a graphic display-oriented teacher salivate.  When I lamented the lack of the tools we had used, the kids said that they had spent several weeks using them at the start of the year – and then they switched to computers.  They said it was the difference between horse and buggy and jet airplanes. 

About half-way through the first block, a student came in with a note from another class.  His teacher said he’d finished his work there, and he was free to do drafting.  He booted up a machine, spent about 20 minutes in furious action completing a blueprint for a building.  With about 15 minutes left in the class, he hollered to another student across the room that the student had pulled a dirty move.  Immediately five or six others commented on it – and it became clear they were deep into a group role play game.  Hard work, then hard play.

As with the basketball class, discipline was no problem.  The students, with savvy that  made it look easy, took care of the class details.  Their own discipline got them through work they claimed to be fun, and then they moved on to what would be distracting frivolity, had they not completed everything else first. 

A lesson in motivation is buried there, somewhere.

Leave a Comment » | Education, Education reform, Teaching, Technology, Technology in the classroom | Permalink
Posted by Ed Darrell

Where is your podcast?

May 11, 2007

Kids in schools have things in their ears. Between classes it’s earphones for iPods, MP3 players, CD players, cell phones that play music an video — and of course they try to stretch it into class, too. “If I can listen to my music in class, I won’t make trouble,” they say.

To which I respond, “I don’t deal with terrorists.”

The students are telling teachers something, and most of us are missing the message: We need to get education into their iPods and MP3 players.

For example, Nora’s itec 845 blog wonders about converting podcasts to print, for hearing-impaired students. Do you even have podcasts for classroom use or augmentation? (I wager this blog is a classroom assignment — students are working in areas their teachers don’t know anything about?)

Check out the Education Podcast Network. If your students told you they were getting information from this site, would you know whether it was quality information? Would you even know how to check?

Teachers should be using podcasts to deliver lectures, deliver supplementary material, to discuss homework, and to inform parents about homework and other activities.  Are you using podcasts for any of that?

If you don’t think you’re missing the podcast boat, go here and see what some of the possibilities you’re missing really are:  Around the Corner.   Or, go there just to get ideas.

Hey, what are you waiting for?

4 Comments | Pedagogy, Teaching, Technology, Technology in the classroom | Permalink
Posted by Ed Darrell

Inherent evils of public education

May 11, 2007

Public schools have serious problems.  Regular readers here should know me as a defender of public education, especially in the Thomas Jefferson/James Madison model of a foundation stone for a free people and essential tool for good government in a democratic republic.

Can you take another view?  Here’s one that should offer serious material for thought:  How the Public School System Crushes Souls.

Tip of the old scrub brush to Pick the Brain.

2 Comments | Adequate Yearly Progress (AYP), Classroom size, Education, Education reform, No Child Left Behind Act, Pedagogy, Public education, School discipline, Teaching, Technology in the classroom | Permalink
Posted by Ed Darrell

Radio history, historic radio

May 7, 2007

Internet connections can really boost history with sound and film presentations. History is really still in infancy stages, but some sites flash through with brilliant views of what can be done.

Old Time Radio posts a wealth of sound clips from throughout radio history, coupled with essays detailing much of the history that isn’t in the soundclips. The site seems to have almost all the episodes from Captain Midnight, for example. You can also hear Terry and the Pirates, or Fred Allen or Jack Benny.

The real gems, to me, are the newscasts and the stories of the newscasters. The 1937 broadcast of the Hindenberg Disaster is available, but so are some of the later and more important, and more rare, broadcasts of World War II: the Austrian Crisis, Neville Chamberlain with Britain’s declaration of war, news bulletins of the Pearl Harbor attack, on-the-scene accounts of the D-Day invasion of Normandy (with more accounts here), the battle for Iwo Jima now famous from two Clint Eastwood films, and V-J Day (“Victory-Japan”).

Later clips make this a standout site, and tantalize us with possibilities.  Ernest Hemingway’s suicide report, the 6-Day War between Israel and Egypt and Syria in 1967, and a report on the funeral of Robert F. Kennedy in 1968 flesh out events that the high school history texts tend to stroll quickly over, and offer possibilities of classroom enrichment beyond the texts.

Surely more radio broadcasts exist that could be used in history classrooms.  Radio and broadcast history sites like The Broadcast Archive have the history of broadcast, but few actual broadcasts.   Other sites carry a few important broadcasts, but like this one, come weighted with polemics (the politics and religion on this site make it questionable for school use, though students may not think to look at the home site from the broadcast links — where did this guy get these broadcasts, and does he have the rights correctly listed?).

Some research suggests that students learn history partially through repetition, as with any other topic.  The old “repeat it four times” rule gets boring in class, but can be kept alive by repetition in other media.  Teachers who use the actual broadcasts of news of what are now historic events can make history speak to students.  Can.

More radio broadcast history:

— BBC News historic broadcast archives  (This site has broadcasts through current times, including, for example, broadcasts of Nelson Mandela’s rise to the presidency of South Africa, a much-ignored era in too many classrooms.)

— Earthstation 1 CDs and DVDs for purchase

— Timeline of radio, from the California Historical Radio Society

— Radio broadcasts 1939-1943 from the University of San Diego’s history server

— Ken Burns’ “Empire of the Air” companion site

— First commercial broadcast in the U.S., KDKA-AM, Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, with results of the Cox-Harding presidential election, November 2, 1920

1 Comment | 1968, Disasters, History, History audio sources, Radio, Technology, Technology in the classroom, World War II | Permalink
Posted by Ed Darrell

Carnival catch-up

April 16, 2007

Uh-oh. Running behind.

One of the reasons I list various carnivals is to make sure I have a note of the good ones somewhere easy to find. Busy-ness in the last week just kept me away from the keyboard.

Carnivals you ought to check out:

Oekologie 4.1: Over at Behavioral Ecology. Lots on climate change, of course, and some very nice bird photos.

Carnival of the Godless at Neural Gourmet has a good run down of the Blog Against Theocracy, and complaints about it, too.

Carnival of the Liberals #36 is up at Truth in Politics. Well, that’s an obvious pairing. Free speech, the president and the Constitution, tyranny in the Middle East, and quite a bit more.

Carnival of Education #114 is back at The Education Wonks.  State legislatures may be wrapping up their sessions, but education issues are heating up.

Skeptics’ Circle #58 finds a hangout at Geek Counterpoint, with several posts that get at how we know what is true — good stuff for historians and economists to ponder.

This is as good a time as any to remind you that that Fiesta de Tejas! #2 is coming up on May 2 — deadline for  post nominations April 30.  You may e-mail entries to me (edarrellATsbcglobalDOTnet), or submit them at the Blog Carnival portal to the Fiesta.

Leave a Comment » | Curricula, Economics, Education, Education blogs, Education reform, Education spending, Fiesta de Tejas!, Free market economics, Free speech, Freedom - Economic, Freedom - Political, History, History blogs, History video sources, Religious Freedom, School discipline, Science, Science and faith, Teaching, Technology in the classroom, Testing, Texas, Texas Lege, Weblogs | Permalink
Posted by Ed Darrell

Interactive disaster maps for geography

April 15, 2007

Would tracking disasters add more than a little interest to your geography units?

Cliotech, a blog by a Pennsylvania social studies teacher, gives pointers to Alertmap, a group based in Budapest (hey, that’s a geography lesson right there!). Alertmap charts disasters — fires, floods, earthquakes, etc. — and what student is not interested in disaster?

Be careful not to unnecessarily scare students — but do point out that the world is full of danger, and natural and man-made disasters continue to plague mankind the world over.

2 Comments | Classroom technology, Current History, Disasters, Economics, Environmental protection, Geography - Physical, Geography - Political, History, Lesson plans, Maps, Public health, Technology, Technology in the classroom, Travel, War | Permalink
Posted by Ed Darrell

Geography learning, on-line

March 22, 2007

Do your students have access to computers?

Test Your Geography Knowledge may seem a little elementary; alas — or maybe “hooray!” — it goes over exactly the sort of simple stuff I find too many high school students don’t have:  Basic political geography.   It beats Microsoft’s solitaire for in-class timewasting.  (This is a show-off site for a programmer and company, Lizard Point; look at other stuff at the site, and think of what you can do with it.)

That site has a link to Quiz School.  On-line quizzes, that you invent, that you can put into your classroom weblog — wonderful idea.  What can you do with this tool?  (It wouldn’t hurt you at all to post links to your quizzes here, would it?)

Back to geography:  You’ll also want to check out Sheppard Software, and the collection of geography games there.  The variety of games is quite outstanding — I even found one related to forestry.

Tip of the old scrub brush to SSBG’s blogroll.

1 Comment | Education, Education blogs, Geography - Political, On-line education, On-line learning, Teaching, Technology, Technology in the classroom | Permalink
Posted by Ed Darrell

Teacher and student history resources, from the Feds

March 13, 2007

Federal Resources for Educational Excellence (FREE) is a great idea. Federal agencies are loaded with information useful to teachers and students, formerly available in print if one could find the appropriate phone number or get lucky with a mail sweepstakes. Now a lot of the information is compiled specifically for education, and the U.S. Department of Education has compiled a user-congenial site to help educators find the stuff.

FREE image from home page

Under “U.S. History and Topics” you may find a good deal of support for most social studies disciplines. The Women’s History Month focus highlights two topics from the Library of Congress and two from the National Endowment for the Humanities.   Read the rest of this entry »

1 Comment | Classroom technology, Curricula, Economics, Education, Freedom of Information, Geography - Physical, Government, History, History video sources, Justice, Law, Lesson plans, Presidents, Public education, Teaching, Technology in the classroom | Permalink
Posted by Ed Darrell

Quarter past a generation gap

March 8, 2007

I left the building by a side door. 30 minutes after the final bell, the rules are that students are to be off campus. Two students were sitting on the retaining wall at the end of the walk, near the parking lot. “Hey, mister – you got a cell phone?” Was this the classic ‘may-I-borrow-your-cell-phone scam?

“Tell me why you want to know.”

“Oh, I just wondered what time it is,” he said, quite as if it was the normal way of the world.

“I have a watch; it’s 4:15.”

“A watch! Cool!”

Another generation gap: Many kids don’t wear watches. They carry cell phones that have the time accurate to within a few seconds – most of them. A few waiting for rides didn’t have a phone, and so they had no way to know the time.

How much longer will Rolex be able to hold on?

(Where were their parents or other rides?)

1 Comment | History, Humor, Technology, Technology in the classroom | Permalink
Posted by Ed Darrell

108th Carnival of Education

February 28, 2007

Aristotle instructing Alexander, image from British Museum

 

Aristotle teaching Alexander.

Dr. Homeslice hosts the midway this week, the 108th run for the mortar boards.

Rich stuff. Good teachers in need of a union. Bad teachers. Flights of fancy. Coming down to Earth.

Is your contribution there?

Leave a Comment » | Economics, Education, Education blogs, Education reform, Teacher Pay, Technology, Technology in the classroom | Permalink
Posted by Ed Darrell

Utah’s legislature boosts education across the board

February 27, 2007

Gifted with a surplus of funds due to a good economy, the Utah legislature hiked education spending in almost every category, providing pay increases for teachers, more teachers, more schools, more books, more computers — adding more than $450 million, raising the total state education check to $2.6 billion for elementary and secondary schools.

Much of the increases will be consumed by rising enrollments.

Through much of the 20th century Utah led the nation in educational attainment, but fell in state rankings as population growth accelerated especially through the 1980s and 1990s. The Salt Lake Tribune’s story sardonically noted:

The budget package increases per-pupil spending by more than 8 percent. But because other states may also boost school funds this year, fiscal analysts can’t yet say whether the new money will move Utah out of last place in the nation in money spent per student.

Classroom size reduction is excluded from the increases, because the legislature thinks earlier appropriations for that purpose were misused, according to the Associated Press story in the Casper (Wyoming) Star-Tribune:

The extra $450 million will have little effect on reducing classroom size, however, because even as Utah hires more teachers, every year brings more students.

Lawmakers said they were withholding money for reducing classroom sizes until legislative auditors can investigate reports that districts misappropriated some of the $800 million dedicated for that purpose since 1992.

Every teacher and librarian should get a $2,500 pay raise and a $1,000, one-time “thank-you” bonus. Starting pay for teachers in Utah averages barely over $26,000 now.

Read the rest of this entry »

3 Comments | Adequate Yearly Progress (AYP), Charter schools, Classroom size, Classroom technology, Economics, Education, Education reform, Education spending, Libraries, Public education, School vouchers, Teacher Pay, Technology in the classroom | Permalink
Posted by Ed Darrell

107th Carnival of Education

February 23, 2007

More than 50 entries, at History is Elementary. If you’re not reading that blog anyway, you ought to. Go see.

St. John of Kenty, or St. John Cantius, patron saint of teachers

St. John of Kenty, or St. John Cantius

Patron saint of teachers

Leave a Comment » | Education, Education blogs, Education reform, History blogs, Teaching, Technology, Technology in the classroom | Permalink
Posted by Ed Darrell

Seymour Papert recuperating at home

February 2, 2007

MIT’s Media Lab last updated Seymour Papert’s condition on January 10 — it said he’d been moved to a rehabilitation facility closer to his home, in Bangor, Maine. Vietnamese publications, including VietnamNet Bridge, report he’s home now (Vietnam was where he was struck by a motorbike in early December).

Prof Papert’s family said that he had been discharged from the hospital in Boston in the U.S. He is now still undergoing treatment at home. Luckily enough, he will not have any after-effects after the head trauma and now he can speak.

The $100 laptop idea, the XO Computer, steams on.

Leave a Comment » | Classroom technology, Education, Pedagogy, Technology, Technology in the classroom, XO laptops | Permalink
Posted by Ed Darrell

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