When I was twelve, every week was the same.  I would spend Sunday to Friday night looking for quarters.  I had one goal: to spend Saturday morning at the grocery store playing Pac-Man, while my mom got our weeks worth of food.  The game was way up front by the doors and I remember many times as my mom waited for me to finish.   I memorized the pattern of that game and can still clear levels from memory. 

As a parent, I watch my son play hours of PS3 or get online to play games.  I have tried to get into the PS3, but to no avail   However, this weekend I started playing this online game.  I showed my son and saved the site to my diigo bookmarks.  Zach was all over it and to my surprise, I was as well.  The game is called "GoodGame Empire" found at http://empire.goodgamestudios.com/ .    It is free and based on the Middle Ages.   Kinda a SimCity of the Medieval period.  BTW, if you start playing look me up dgholman, my screen name and castle. 

I am teaching about the middle ages right now at school. Mike and I use the Middle Age Webquest (an autonomous mastery learning model--read about it here and see the live version here) 
for student learning.  So, anyways I posted this link to my Diigo and shared with the MrHolman/Pennington group.  I was sure no one would read it on a three day holiday weekend, and a snow day as well.  However, when I went to school today, seven kids came to see me right away (all boys) and had started building their manors and wanted to show me.  They all had stories of battles and what they had built and what they planed to do next.   They were learning economics, military strategy, jobs, following directions and solving problems with a limited number of resources.  Below are a few images of there manors by day three or four.  

I started an alliance to help my son, but now everyone from school is joining so we work together to hold our own or expand our empires with about 70,000 other castles (individual players) in the game: we will work together to achieve some online goals.  I will keep you posted and update our progress and pitfalls, but CLEARLY they read that diigo feed, even on weekends.  That is cool and as Zach says, "Dad, these are not the stupid games you used to play."  He is right:) 

I mentioned the website Digital History from University of Huston before in a blog about content vs. skill. A quote from their site:  “The American Council of Trustees and Alumni, a Washington-based nonprofit group that promotes liberal-arts study, posed 34 high-school level questions randomly to 556 seniors at 55 leading colleges and universities, including Harvard, Princeton and Brown. Only one student answered all the questions correctly, and the average score was 53 percent.” This link will take you to the test.  Give it a shot and let me know how you scored.   But I wanted to encourage more American History teachers to explore this site: See the homepage.  So much digital content to explore and engage your students in active learning: Voices of immigrants telling their story,  online exhibits on a varity of 19-20th century topics, handouts and guides for instruction, not to mention, historical reference room and much, much, more. 

As a matter of fact, I will be using the following link in two weeks with my 7th graders in a discussion of Europeans impact on the Americas.  I will let you know how it goes.

Europeans discover: http://www.digitalhistory.uh.edu/historyonline/us1.cfm

In the mean time, let me know how digital history can impact your classroom.  Cheers, Garth

 

Yesterday I attended a workshop hosted by Teaching America History, Sounds of History grant program (which I have discussed before).  The guest speaker was Marc Selverstone from theMiller Center of Public Affairs.  He works with collecting, digitizing and sorting the secret recordings and other sounds from U.S. Presidents.  Dr. Selverstone took us through the U.S. Civil Rights Movement using sounds from the people that were there; Presidents, generals, governors, senators, etc.

This was an amazing journey through a time in U.S. history that has always fascinated me.  The information and sounds provided by Dr. Selverstone put a new perspective on several key events of the 1950s and 1960s.  Listening to the “backdoor” dealings of important political figures made real the politicking that underlined the events of the Civil Rights Movement.  It was amazing to listen to politicians, sometimes from different parties, talking very candidly about their personal feelings, give-and-take negotiations and how to resolve situations.

I highly recommend looking at the Miller Center for primary source recordings when teaching any American History, foreign and domestic policy.  Not only do the recordings give insight into important events, but these recordings also humanize the Presidents.  Often teachers and students loose sight of the fact that the Presidents are men, with feelings and aspirations.  They have to balance so many variables and they do not get to “go home” after work.  I would definitely pre-listen to all audio; these are adults and their language is not always appropriate for school!
 
-Mike

 WhiteHouse.net Tapes: Over 4700 hours of secret tapes from the White House  

Over the last few years, I have taken part in a grant TAH (Teaching American History) and have had the pleasure to work with Marc Selevrstone, from the Miller Center.  Marc is a major player in the website, White House Tapes. 

This website has thousands of hours of secretly taped conservations between the President and a number of other important government offices.  Each conservation is created with a flash video transcript of the conversation and formal written transcripts.  However, the greatest feature is to hear the individuals talk: the tone, the stutter, the cuts offs, the pauses the small things that explain so much.  It is powerful stuff and sheds light on the true workings of the Office of the Presidency. 

The site has several pages to navigate through for specific recordings, from specific Presidents.  I like to use the classroom/topic option.  This link will take you to the general topics covered in the tapes. From here you can click the live links to hear the conservation. 

A few to get you interested.

President Johnson on Haggar Pants. Some crude language.

President Kennedy discussion with White Birmingham leaders after the church bombing.

President Kennedy “You’re In a Pretty Bad Fix”  Cuban Missile Crisis

President Kennedy: South Vietnamese Coup and Assassination of Diem…John John enters.

FDR and Philip Randolph on African Americans and the U.S. Military early 1940’s

LBJ and Mrs. Nathan Schwerner: Mississippi Burning Case. 

They also have entire teaching units created that tell the stories in chorological order of the conservation with background information. 

The images below give you an example of what you will find.

How could using this site change the teaching of History in your classroom?  I encourage you to explore this resource and comment how you used this site and what your students had to say about what they learned.   I think you will be happy with the results. 
Garth