Social Studies Resource: Beyond the Bubble

The Standford History Education Group used the Library of Congress to create over 80 HATs (History Assessments of Thinking) as part of the Library of Congress’s Teaching with Primary Sources (TPS) Educational Consortium.

Their list of HATs are organized by the following eras:

• 12th-14th Centuries
• 15th-17th Centuries
• 18th Century
• 1800-1864
• 1865-1897
• 1898-1929
• 1930-1945
• 1946-2000

How it works:

Sign up for a free account, they will send you a link to create your password and get started. While  you don't need an account to initially see the assessments. You do need the account to see the benchmarks and the assessment tools. While they share these as PDFs it would be easy to make it into a Google Form (fill out a Mojo to get trainer/coaching help if you aren't sure how to do this)

Best yet, this is just one part of the website. There are 2 additional areas: "Reading Like a Historian" and "Civic Online Reasoning" at a glance these two areas also had some amazing resources on how to use Primary Sources.

As we are modifying our curriculum for the Trimester/6 period day model. This is a great resource that I think anyone teaching primary sources or social studies could benefit from.

Google AI Projects

One thing that I have been super amazed by are Google's AI projects. You can find all of the experiments here. Honestly, I love all things Google. I adore their 80/20 philosophy where you spend 80% of your time on your work and 20% on a passion project. Kind of like when  you give yourself a "cheat" day, you have put in all of this work, now explore something that invigorates you.

There are a ton of resources for those that want to learn how to do it themselves but also you get to see the playground of what has been created.

Here are some of my favorite projects:

1)AutoDraw
How it works: All you have to do is start drawing and it will give you suggestions for what it thinks you want to draw.
Why I like it: I'm no Picasso, but this allows me to quickly draw something other than a stick person.
Why to use it with kids: At any age they can create their own drawing using their device.

The fish to the right is the one that I drew originally, the left is the one suggested.

2)Talk to Books
How it works: Type in any question, then the code will look through Google Books and find quotes that relate to/answer your question.
Why I like it: It allows you to find interesting quotes to jazz up your lessons or writing. From there it may also inspire you to read more of the book.
Why to use it with kids: Since this pulls information from various books, I would really only suggest having students use it if you feel they are mature enough to handle it.

I tried the question "Why is school fun?"

3)QuickDraw
How it works:This one is a game built with machine learning. It will tell you what to draw and then will guess what you are drawing. As stated in it's description, it doesn't always work, but the more you play the better it will get.
Why I like it: It's a quick filler. The kids are amazed, you will be amazed. It makes you think about what you are drawing so that it guesses it quickly.
Why to use it with kids: Some of the things it asks for may be in that grey area of appropriateness. For instance, I've had it ask for a wine bottle before.

AI predicted this to be a TV.

Have you checked this out? What were some of your favorites?

HyperDocs

I learned about HyperDocs at a  TEACH Grant conference called: Developing a Future Ready Classroom. I chose this Web 2.0 tool because I was very impressed with how visually appealing they were and how many HyperDocs were already out there to use. 

I have only used HyperDocs as an instructional tool at this point. I have used a HyperDoc for multiplication facts as a minilesson visual with the students. It was very successful and kids were interested and engaged. 

I would like to further explore HyperDocs and organize them for instructional use by skill, and student use in Google Classroom.