The Running Historian

Sarah is working hard on powerpoints for middle school.  You can link them from here. 

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I hope that things went smoothly and everyone had a good first day of school!  I’ll be out visiting you guys soon!

We are almost finished with New Teacher Orientation!  I’ve had a great time meeting all of our new teachers the past few days, and am looking forward to working with you this year.  I know you guys are anxious and have a ton of questions.  Most of those will be answered next week when we see you at our district wide in-services. 

I hope you picked up your curriculum guide from either Sarah or myself.  If not, we’ll get it to you next week don’t worry. 

Enjoy your last weekend before the school year really starts! 

Thank you to those that showed up for my in-service today!  I appreciate you taking the time out of your summer to come in and see what I’d put together.

I covered three new technology components today.  First I went over the elementary portaportal, which is a collection of links organized by SOL for grades 3, 4, and 6.  The address is www.portaportal.com.  The guest access is PPS-ELEM-SS.  Your students and parents may access this as well.  

 Then I covered Historyspace, which is similar to Myspace.  Since so many students spend so much time on Myspace, I set up a template to resemble the Myspace profile pages.  It’s set up in a word document, so everything is very easy to type, cut, and paste.  I designed this with the intention of students setting up their own “Myspace” pages for the various historical figures you cover throughout the year.  It has a webpage feel and should be very familiar to most students, so it is my hope that they take interest in designing their own pages for historical figures.

Finally I covered blogs.  I know blogs are becoming more and more popular in the classroom, and I would like the Social Studies Department to be on the cutting edge.   It is very easy to set up an edublog for your classroom.  You can add various categories for homework assingments, class news, discussion boards, parent news, etc.  You can also organize links to other webpages on your blog.  If you need to check out an example, I have one set up.  Check out http://pennington.edublogs.org.  Of course the example isn’t perfect and if I were to use it in an actual classroom I would have much more up there.  I just wanted to give you and idea of how it could be used.

If you have any questions or problems, please e-mail me or leave me a comment here and I’ll do my best to answer it.   Thanks again to those that showed up! 

The Social Studies Department is having it’s August in-service next Tuesday, August 14th, from 1pm-3pm.  It will be in Conference Room 1 at IRC. 

In preparation for the coming school year, I’m working on several ideas that involve computer technology.  Like it or not, computers aren’t going away.  I know technology can be scary, but I’ve made these activities as straightforward and easy to use as possible. 

First, I’m working on organizing all the links Sarah and I have found that pertain to Social Studies.  This is an on-going project, it will change throughout the year.  But you will have access to a Portaportal webpage where all the Social Studies links are organized with a brief description, and by SOL. 

 Next, I’m working on a Historyspace project.  It will be easier to show you rather than try to explain it.  But I am very excited about this project idea. 

And lastly, I will introduce you to blogs.  Whether you use only the blogs Sarah and I have set up, or choose to set up a blog for your classroom, I hope you will find they are easy to use and manage, and are a great means of communication. 

I know I’ll see some of you in a couple of weeks, and most of you in a month.  But I’m looking forward to introducing these ideas to you. 

I am your new friendly neighborhood Social Studies Specialist.  I’ve set up this blog for you to experiment with so that you’ll hopefully become comfortable with it and use blogs in your own classroom.  I’m working closesly with your other friendly neighborhood Social Studies Specialist, Sarah Duncan, who I’m sure you are all familiar with and we have lots of great ideas for next year.   If you’d like to create your own blog, it’s easy.  Just go to edublogs.org and click on “Start here.”  You don’t have to create a blog though, to make comments on my blog.  Feel free to leave me comments, ideas, suggestions, etc., I’d love to hear from you!