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Helping Students Define Primary Source Documents

The primary source document has recently received more and more attention in national and state standards for all education levels.  And for the gifted student, the primary source document can stimulate and challenge a population of students who are sometimes bored by textbooks that regurgitate important sources in pedantic and watered-down language.  Still, incorporating the primary source document into the curriculum can prove to be challenging for teachers charged with this task.  For, you might ask, what “exactly” is a primary...

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Role-Play in the Classroom with Delicious

Delicious (del.icio.us) is an online social bookmarking platform that stores and categorizes photos, videos, and articles that teachers can use to motivate and engage students. It is part of social media because teachers can see each other’s folders called “stacks” of information and share each other’s postings of links on the web. These links are usually of high quality because teachers have invested time in surfing the internet to make meaningful selections.Many teachers have used Delicious  to share great links with...

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Schools Beware: Facebook Owns Your Words

With on-line communication transforming the world, many education departments across the country have banned social media in schools for protective measures. Now, districts are readdressing these bans and seeking more effective guidelines. As an educator for more than 35 years, I believe it is time to ask ourselves the following questions:How can schools: protect their students? monitor the content of hundreds of teachers’ messages? regulate personal versus professional text messaging and/or posts on Facebook/ Twitter/ YouTube, Flickr, etc.? Previously, school systems banned teacher access to...

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How to Address a Political Cartoon for Clearer Interpretation

 A Letter to the Editor: Social Education on Political CartoonsI applaud Ray Heitzmann’s article , which discusses the use of political cartoons in the classroom. I am always in search of good sources and am glad to find a detailed list included in the article.According to Dr. Heitzmann, teachers often find that their students have trouble deciphering political cartoons. In preparation for the new state document-based essay questions, I have devised an easy-to-use format for students to follow:Read the question on...

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