I came across Docs That Teach this morning (Thanks to @SuzanneWisler)

Docs That Teach

The site is divided into three parts:

1) Activities

• Find and use Activities created by other educators.
• Create  your own Activities

Each activity-creation tool helps students develop historical thinking skills and gets them thinking like historians. Choose one of the tools below to begin. Then find and insert primary sources and customize the activity to fit your unique students.

www.docsteach.org

2) Documents- Select from 3000+ primary sources for use in classroom activities

Primary Sources

We have selected thousands of primary source documents to bring the past to life as classroom teaching tools from the billions preserved at the National Archives. Use the search field above to find written documents, images, maps, charts, graphs, audio and video in our ever-expanding collection that spans the course of American history.

3) Account- Being logged in allows you to bookmark documents and activities to access, use and create later.

The site was created by the Foundation of National Archives and offers even more  resources for teachers:

A new school year has started for us here in the Northern Hemisphere. We are off to a fantastic start. I am working with our 5th grade teacher and class on their Christopher Columbus Social Studies unit.

Cristobal Colon

We are looking to involve students in researching the historic figure from different perspectives in order to put together a more accurate view of the “hero-fied” persona he has been portrayed as in many textbooks in the USA.

To this end, we would like to skype with “experts” from different countries and backgrounds who could tell us a little bit about what their perception of Christopher Columbus is. What have they been taught in school or at the university about the “Discoverer of the Americas”? Do you celebrate “Columbus Day” , “Dia de la Raza” or “Dia de la Hispanidad” in October? What does your textbook say?

We would be interested in skyping with educators at the elementary school, middle school, high school or university level as well as entire school classes to put together different perspectives.

If you have a different perspective, please contribute to our learning. Leave a comment here on this post, contact me via the form or Tweet me to let me know you would be interested in participating.

The actual Skype call should not last longer than 5 minutes and we would send you specific questions ahead of time.

Students from Jacksonville, Florida/USA and Binyamina, Israel recently celebrated Jerusalem Day together. A true opportunity to share Language, Culture & History via Skype.

A grandfather in Israel shared his memories of the Six Day War (1967) of liberating Jerusalem. The Rabbi from Florida explained what Jerusalem means to Jews outside of Israel. Students sang songs, played instruments and practiced English and Hebrew.

Jerusalem Day- Yom Yerushalaim from langwitches on Vimeo.

Science and history fairs have been held across the United States (and maybe other countries?) for years. Having grown up in Germany and Argentina, the first time I encountered these events was with my oldest daughter at her elementary school in the 1990s.  According to Wikipedia, Science fairs have been held across the USA since the 1920s.

The school I work for alternates every year between a Science Fair and a Jewish History Fair exhibition. Students are to research and create a project for the respective subjects. This year the school prepared for the Jewish History Fair.

The sixth graders wanted to explore the theme “Jewish Communities Around the World. After watching Alan November’s video clip, I wrote about my idea of Information Literacy…Authentic Conversation..Globalize Curriculum…. The idea was born to allow students to “get personal” with and connected to their research, to compliment traditional research media, such as  books and the Internet, with 21st century communication tools, such as skype, twitter, facebook, and texting.

Through personal real life connections, my PLN on Twitter and this blog, I was able to get in contact with volunteers representing every continent. They volunteered to be interviewed by our sixth graders about growing up or living in their country of residence as a Jew. Our students wanted to research similarities and differences of being Jewish around the World.

Coordinating Interviews and Media used

I would like to express a special Thank You to Daniel Needlestone (London, England), one of the first people to respond via Twitter and in return use his network to connect me with more volunteers!

Skyping with Daniel Needlestone from London, England

Daniel blogged about our interview from his perspective in this post: Mentoring, Online Lessons, Virutal Tours and Computing-All in a Days Work.

No sooner had the online lesson finished when I got a skype call from Silvia Rosenthal Tolisano also known as @langwitches . Her 6th grade class interviewed me as part of their project on Jewish communities around the world. I’ve tried to help set them up with different friends of mine on different countries. Apparently Silvia has managed to cover every continent even Antartica! The girl who interviewed me asked great questions and I really enjoyed our 10 minute chat and meeting some of Silvia’s students. I’m very jealous of their project and look forward to seeing the results!

Although we intended to use as many different media as possible for the interviews, reality worked out a little different. Timing issues, as are very common in a tightly packed school day, played a major role. A face to face interview, as well as one of the Skype calls were turned into e-mail interviews in the end due to scheduling issues. Our texting with one of the contacts, who actually was stationed in the Antarctica at the time, had weather problems and no satellite connection available.

In the end we used the following media to conduct research and interviews:

We would like to express gratitude to all of our interviewees whether via e-mail, skype, telephone, face to face or Twitter. Your time and effort was very appreciated:

• Daniel Needlestone (England)
• David Truss (China)
• Mark Lazar (Israel)
• M. Finkel (Russia)
• Ariellah Rosenberg (South Africa)
• Kabren Levinson (USA)
• Ralph Glasgal (Previously stationed in the Antarctica)
• Andrea Uzan (Denmark)
• Gary Sakol (Scotland)
• David Cohen (Australia)
• Elizabeth Davis (USA)
• Noemi & Marvin Szoychen (Mexico & Venezuela)
• Steve Katz (Costa Rica)
• Elena Herz (Argentina)

Students were very excited for the planned interviews. First, we “distributed” the countries among the students. They each received a short bio from the participants and then gathered background research and to generate questions. I sent the questions off to the interviewees who were participating via e-mail and scheduled the skype & twitter conferences with the others. Once the time zone issues were resolved and the day and time was set, students who were not directly interviewing in front of the webcam were taking on the job of note taker or photographer of the sessions.

Taking Notes

Documenting

Costa Rica

USA

South Africa

Canada

Australia

Talking about being Jewish in the Antarctica

Although maybe a bit shy at first, students quickly became more relaxed at interviewing via Skype. All of the students had their questions typed up ahead of time. Their personalities started to shine through though as some added more in depth or follow up questions depending on what turn the conversation took.

David Truss from China

Ariellah Rosenberg from South Africa

One of our participants, Gary Sakol  (originally from Scotland), agreed to conduct the interview via Twitter. We agreed on a Hashtag (#JHFI) and on a day and time to meet on twitter. It was the first time for all the students to see twitter live in action.

Twitter Interview with David Sakol (Scotland)

Screenshot of DVD with Skype Interviews

When we were doing our research, we learned the following things that Jews have in common on every continent.

Jews seem to all celebrate Jewish Holidays similar

Most Jewish boys and girls celebrate Bar & Bat Mitzvah by leading services and having some kind of party

Many Jews attend services

There are different degrees of observance

They have rarely experienced direct anti-semitism

They all take pride in being Jewish

Many have gone to Israel or al least feel connected to it

Most don’t wear kipot in their daily lives

All eat some types of traditional food

They take part in the daily life traditions of their chosen country of residence and usually don’t feel like ‘outsiders”.

This type of learning required many more skills than just the use of technology…

we collaborated in our overall planning

created questions, took notes from oral interviews

asked in oral or written form

good initial and follow up questions, which required us to “think on our feet”

shared orally and in writing what we learned from each interview

synthesized, organized and compiled all our final impressions in writing

We also did some “book research” to locate data, flags, and histories for our countries

The final display of the collaborative 6th grade research project was a combination of a typed up country reports, a three dimensional map with flags of locations of interviewees, a DVD running on television of the recorded interviews on Skype and a display of photographs that students took during the the interviews.

Exhibition Display

Map Display

Flags displaying location and media used for connection

Interviewee locations

We heard rave reviews from parents and community about the project who visited the Jewish History Fair. The project is an example how to extend learning by using technology tools to reach further and dig deeper with resources. I believe we attained our goal to

allow our students to “get personal” with and connected to their research, to compliment traditional research media, such as  books and the Internet, with 21st century communication tools, such as skype, twitter, facebook, and texting.

Not only did students write their traditional reports, but they practiced 21st century skills of:

• creating (a map)
• collaborating (with their peers to create a snapshot of Jewish communities around the world)
• connecting (with 15 Jews around the world)
• communicating (via different media)

In addition to basic literacy of reading and writing, students were exploring and exposed to

• information literacy
• media literacy
• global & intercultural literacy
• networking literacy

In this video presented by Mobile Learning Institute:

Alan November tours his hometown of Marblehead, MA and comments on the historical global vision of his community. Alan challenges us to think about the emerging role of “student as contributor” and to globalize our curriculum by linking students with authentic audiences from around the world. (For more, read Alan’s article, Students as Contributors: The Digital Learning Farm. http://novemberlearning.com/resources/archive-of-articles/digital-learning-farm/.)

Find more videos like this on NL Connect

This description caught my attention and I started playing the 13 minute video clip. The following thoughts from November resonated with me deeply as I watched and listened:

…[We need to ] convince schools, that we have to globalize the curriculum. We ought to have authentic conversation across the curriculum with people around the world over the Internet. Sadly, most schools use the Internet only to get information. People learn by having conversations and testing each other and trying to figure this out together. We are social beings. Engage kids socially across the web….

Authentic conversation with people from around the world… That is what I keep in my mind as the following project is evolving as a collaboration between myself, sixth grade students, their Social Studies  and Hebrew teachers.

Students are participating in a Jewish History Fair. Their topic is “Jewish Communities Around the World.

In the old days...

http://www.flickr.com/photos/24707395@N02/ / CC BY 2.0

In the old days… students would have been given a specific topic, sent home, to the computer lab or the library to “look up” information. They would then have to write a report, print out images, glue them on a backboard and “present” that to parents and visitors at the History Fair.

In the 21st Century...

http://www.flickr.com/photos/superkimbo/ / CC BY-NC-SA 2.0

In the 21st century, we need to be looking for and addressing something more…

Information Literacy:

• Online sites and books are still valid information sources, but are they enough to engage students and give them “authentic” sources?
• Being able to get, evaluate and work with information from a variety of sources, such as books, almanacs, blogs, wikis, video, audio, interviews, etc.

Networking Literacy:

• Learn about accessing a network of people who can contribute information from their own experiences, on location and customized (personalized) to our own criteria, not the one a publisher or author chose?

Communication skills:

• being able to interview through a variety of media and communication methods and be familiar with their distinct etiquette.
  • face to face
  • e-mail
  • twitter
  • facebook
  • video conferencing (Skype)
  • texting
  • telephone
• being able to present the information obtained through a variety a media (video, images, audio)

The topic is “Jewish Communities Around the World”… what better way to allow authentic research to take place than go directly to those communities around the world…this is when it comes in handy to have a network of willing and able people literally AROUND THE WORLD! I was off to send a twitter alert to my PLN.

Cry for Help to my PLN

I received instantly responses. We will have Jews born or currently residing in different countries/continents being interviewed by our students. At this point we have Jews from 12 countries and seven continents who have agreed to be interviewed (Canada, USA, Costa Rica, Mexico, Argentina, Denmark, England, Scotland, South Africa, Israel, China, Australia) plus two people stationed (currently or in the past) in the Antarctica.

Here is the initial e-mail, describing the project, sent out to these contacts:

The 6th graders at the Martin J Gottlieb Day School in Jacksonville, Florida/USA are starting to research for a Jewish History Fair. They will be looking at different Jewish communities around the world.
Students will research with books and via the internet to develop questions that they want to ask Jews who are living on different countries and continents. We want them to interview with /through different media. Some interviews will be face to face here in town, but we would also like to give them the opportunity to conduct interviews via skype, email and twitter in order to strengthen information and media literacy.
One of our main objectives is for students to see commonalities among different communities.

Would you be interested in participating and willing to be interviewed? We would send questions ahead of time, if the interview is conducted via Skype or twitter? This won’t happen until close to the beginning of December.
Please get in contact with me, so I can answer any questions that you might have.

Thank you so much in advance!

After I received confirmation of their willingness to participate as an interviewee, they were then asked to send us a short biography:

We are continuing to work and prepare with our students for the Jewish History Fair: Jewish Communities Around the World. Thank you for agreeing to participate as an Interviewee.
As students are formulating interview questions, they would benefit from having a short biography from you, describing your background and involvement as a Jew in the country you were born in or are currently residing.
The bio only has to be a few short sentence to give our students just a little background.

Our projected time line to work with the students is as follows:

1. Introduction to project
2. Introduction to different media, students will be interviewing. Talk about required etiquette of different media…differences…similarities…
3. Student introduced to biographies of interviewees
4. Assign Students an interviewee/country/continent
5. Students will research background information that will help them form an notion of the community interviewee has grown up/is residing
6. Students will develop questions for the interviewees that will be send ahead of time
7. Setting up up date and medium of interview to be conducted
8. Students will interview
9. Students will connect the information gathered to create their own understanding of Jewish communities, especially commonalities, around the world.
10. Students decide in what shape and form their will demonstrate what they learned.
11. Students will produce final product to be displayed with globe and History Fair.

I am getting very excited to observe students and their research outcome as the actual interviews are being conducted. I wonder what media students will prefer and get the most out of? I wonder if certain student personalities/learning styles will naturally gravitate towards one or another media?

My grandfather, Siegfried Rosenthal, never spoke to me about his experiences the night of November 9th, 1938, Kristallnacht. The night that the SS came to his door and arrested him in front of his seven year old son and pregnant wife for simply being a Jew and taken to a Concentration camp. He did write his thoughts down at one point. I am glad he did, otherwise his story, his voice would have been lost to me, my daughters and their future children.

That brings up the question of each of our own responsibility of telling our stories, so they will not forget. My grandfather wrote his story on a typewriter. That piece of paper was passed down to my father and then to me. How long, how many generations will it take before that paper gets lost ,destroyed or vanishes forever?I

I offered to give a presentation to students, when each of my children were in 6th grade, which is traditionally (here in the US) the time that they get an introduction to the Holocaust in Social Studies. I created a PowerPoint, the tool I had available at that time.

As I continue to think about the importance of storytelling, media literacy and teaching students with “their” media in order to reach theme, to make a connection.  I feel it is time to re-tell my grandfather and our family’s story. Trying to make the words jump off that paper, that my grandfather wrote so many years ago. I am sad, that the technology was not as readily available before 1993, when he passed away. Today I could have filmed and recorded him easily across the distance between Germany and the US.

Today is 9-11, yes, the 9th of November, as the date is written in German (first the day, then the month).

Today, 70 years ago, is remembered as the Kristallnacht, or the night of the broken glass. It is the day  the Nazis orchestrated open attacks on Jewish individuals, property, and businesses. It was the night they destroyed synagogues and started burning books of Jewish authors. The night Hitler showed the world what he was planning to do with Jews and the night Germany demonstrated their reaction about standing up or defending their fellow citizens and neighbors of Jewish faith. The reaction was to let it happen…

It was also the night that thousands of Jews were arrested and taken to concentration camps. My grandfather Siegfried Rosenthal was one of them.

We can never forget… the story has to be told… My grandfather never spoke to us about what he experienced…but he did take the time to write it down… I translated it into English so my children (who speak German) and their future families (who will most likely not speak German anymore) will never forget…

I’d like to answer your question about my past and about my life.
When 1933 the hunt against us German Jews started, which sounded absurd and unthinkable for us, since 12000 Jews died on the field of honor during the War from 1914-1918.
The thought, that someone could lead an annihilation  process against us Jews would have never occurred to me. A cousin of mine, who served in the marines from 1912-1918 and was decorated with the Iron Cross I and II, told me during that time: „..But we are Germans, fought for Germany and were honored and decorated officers. They would never do anything to us.
That’s what all Jews believed, since we believed ourselves good Germans.
I overheard a conversation between a husband and a  wife, friends of mine, who were from Poland, but have been settled in Germany for many years. The wife told her husband, that he was mistaken, that never anything what happened to the Jews in Russia would happen here, since the Germans were civilized people and would never allow such an atrocity.“

She was wrong, it got much worse than Russia.

I was in Germany during 1933 – June 1939.
I must mention that my father, who was an old men, was living with me when I tried to emigrate. He did not want to leave , since in his words „ you don´t transplant an old tree“.

I experienced bitter times during that period in Germany.
People who knew me were not allowed to greet me when they saw me, since it was forbidden to greet someone Jewish. We were outlawed.

As the older generation knows well,  „Der Stürmer“, distributed sickening, humiliating and untruthful things about us. I ripped this paper in front of a Nazis  and threw it in his face, when he showed it to me during 1935. I can thank my father that nothing happened to me. He was well known and respected in the German-National circles, since he was a co-founder of the German Red Cross in Wattenscheid and had received numerous high decoration during the First World War.

On November 9th, the so called Kristallnacht, a police officer , who came to our front door, asked me politely to come with him to the police station in regards to an investigation. When I arrived there, I saw that already several other people had been arrested. They had to stand with their faces against the wall. I was yelled at and had to face the wall too.

Later we were herded under floods of insults, into a huge truck and taken to a prison in Herne.
From there we were loaded into a train. We did not know where to.
I must admit that the police, who guarded us, behaved very correctly towards us.
The train stopped at night in the middle of nowhere. . They opened the doors of the train and the SS hit us with the back of their riffles out of the wagons. Weather young or old, we were herded across the fields to the concentration camp Oranienburg. An old teacher of mine, way over 60 years old, fell and I took him on my shoulders and carried him to the KZ. When I took him off my shoulders an SS officer hit me in my neck, because I had helped him. There we stood , around 800 “prisoners” for 12 hours against a wire fence. No one was allowed to move until we were taken to the barracks.

I don’t want to talk about the details of the camp and the life there. My father died while I was in the camp. A short while later I was released. I received a letter from the camp officials that I had to leave Germany within 3 weeks. I had to sell my properties for pennies. I tried to receive Asylum for my family and me in Bolivia, where in the end emigrated too. We stayed there until 1946, when we went to Buenos Aires, Argentina. I followed my sons back to Germany in 1970 and live since then in Walldorf.

You ask me if I still feel German? I want to answer this question honestly. Us, German Jews, were better and more enthusiastic Jews, than many others, who called themselves German.
Prrof is that 12000 Jews died for Germany during WWI. Many highly decorated officers of the first World War were transported to Poland and shot or gassed.

Can I still feel as German as I used to?
I DO have the German citizenship…….

I just wanted to share a great lesson from our Kindergarten teachers.  In preparation of the Presidential elections in the USA, they used an interactive Electoral College map from Yahoo on the SmartBoard. The map allowed them to pick a map of neutral states, ready to be changed into a Republican or Democratic one.

One click turned the state red, a second click turned the state blue.

Here you see the predictions of one of our Kindergarten class (We live in a very conservative area):

The day after the elections, the class returned to TechConnect to use the SmartBoard to turn the states the color they were voted in the election.

What an amazing lesson the teachers prepared for their 5 year old students!Talk about cross subject integration: Geography, History, Math, Language, Social Studies …

Students especially learned from the interactive bar on the bottom that moved as they added a red or a blue state.