Middle East Project using Pinterest and Blogger

This quarter,  students will work on a MIDDLE EAST - Pinterest and Blogger Project.

Using GRASPS, this project will look like:

GOAL:
The goal is for students to learn to use social media apps and sites such as PINTEREST with an educational purpose.

ROLE:
Students are going to act as political journalists researching about the current situation of the Middle East countries and the terrorist group ISIS or ISIL.

AUDIENCE:
Other students and teachers around the world and immediate community.

SITUATION:
The political journalists will research about ISIS in the M.E and the implications of ISLAM  looking to answer: how it is affecting the world.  Students will use Social Media to track down recent events and statistics to write about it and later, discuss the topic in a Socratic Seminar.

PRODUCT:
Each journalist owns a Pinterest account in which they keep track on ideas, articles and news about ISIS in the M.E. They also own a blog in Blogger in which they will create entries about the units researched. They will draw conclusions and express them during a Socratic Seminar.

STANDARDS:
This will look like individual Pinterest Boards with pins directly linked to their blogs. The blogs will contain articles with facts and statistics about ISIS in the Middle East Countries and the implications of ISLAM.

First:  Create a Pinterest Account.

Second: Create a Blogger Account  (I took this video from YouTube, I do not own its rights)

Third: While researching, pin articles, images, videos, websites and more to your Pinterest Board.

Fourth: Write complete articles about the research topics and pin them to your board.




The rubric Here:

RUBRIC Pinterest- Blogger Assessment

ZAPTION review. - Cool for Social Studies!

Hello everybody

Yesterday I found out a cool site that enables us teachers to check student's comprehension while they are watching a video.

ZAPTION is an online tool that works with videos called "tours" that become alive... yes! ALIVE!
This means that we can upload a video and add MULTIPLE CHOICE QUESTIONS, TEXT, IMAGES, and OPEN RESPONSE BOXES to the video. Students will begin watching a video and suddenly a text box will show up to their left or right part of the screen with questions about the content they are actually watching!!!

How cool is this!!!

I believe this works great as a Flipped Classroom strategy. Not only students come prepare with a background knowledge on a topic or unit, but we as teachers can test to see if they are understanding or not.

ZAPTION also has an ANALYTICS feature that enables users to analyze data from viewers.
We can see questions or sections students struggle with and focus our attention on those.

Truly a great tool for Formative Assessments, differentiation and learning styles.

Here is my recent created ZAPTION TOUR!

http://zapt.io/tm4nc3ps

I shared my tour with students, so they could practice and review for our 1st Semestral Geography Exam.


Later I will let you know what they though about this new tool!



Cheers,

Gina

Study Habits for EXAM WEEK!

Semestral Exam weeks starts soon!!!!

It is  very important that students prepare for this important time of the quarter!

Developing healthy and good study habits help students plan, organize and review academic content better.



This video reminds students about some tips and strategies they could use to prepare for EXAM WEEK!

Piktochart, Canva and Google Docs for a Social Studies Project.

Hi again!

It's been a while since I published my last post.!

During last week and some days from this one, my students were working on a project. The topic was EUROPEAN COUNTRIES. We have been practicing with PURPOSE GAMES their capitals and physical features.  So, as a "wrap up" activity, My students were divided into 5 big groups, randomly chosen.  Each group was assigned a country and researched about it.

I worked with GOOGLE DOCS again, because it is engaging and easier for me to edit and check documents. Besides it's GREEN teaching and learning.

Every team created a folder in which they had to upload every item requested for the project.  The project was called: "Travel Agency" and each team created INFOGRAPHICS, POSTERS AND FLYERS to promote traveling to a European country.

They learned about CULTURE, GASTRONOMY, LANDFORMS, LANDMARKS and applied the 5 THEMES OF GEOGRAPHY too!

At the end, each team brought a typical food recipe from their team's country and the whole class tasted them.

It was a cool activity combined with technology integration!

For the INFOGRAPHIC, the students used 2 tools: "Piktochart and Canva".
I really liked PIKTOCHART because it is easier to use.  The icons and tools the website has makes it friendly for student's and teacher's use. The only "bad" thing I may say, it has is that the FREE version does not allow you to change the font color.

Canva is another site, pretty much the same as Piktochart, but the BIGGEST DIFFERENCE is that you may change the FONT color.
I have read other reviews and teachers prefer CANVA over PIKTOCHART.
I am definitely going to try Canva some more to prove this.

Ciao!

Gina