The Great Depression Told Digitially

Well here is a digital story my students created on the Great Depression. It traces the event from the "Roaring Twenties" to the crash and the start of the recovery. The soundtrack is rich with music from the era and the narration is excerpted from primary sources such as a radio news account of the stock market crash and President Franklin D. Roosevelt's First Inaugural address. One thing that certainly needs to be modified is the length of the story. We haven't figured out exactly how to edit/end the song and the final selection goes on and on with a blank screen so don't be afraid to watch it as the story does not last for nine full minutes.

Please let me know what you think.








Could you please complete the survey above after viewing the story? Thank you so much.

Playing With Google Docs

I just learned how to create a survey and receive responses using Google Documents. Above is my first effort. If you have a couple of minutes please answer the questions and hit respond. I'm always interested in learning about people's level of political participation.

Thanks!!

Habemus Digitas

Anglonautes.com

Much of the country, as well as the world, has been captivated by the election of the first non-European Pontiff in over 1,200 years. Regardless of one's religious bent (or lack thereof) we can all appreciate the historical significance of this moment. The elevation of the first member of the Jesuits to the Seat of Peter holds special significance for those of us privileged to have been educated in schools run by the order. One of the primary missions of the Jesuits is to educate young people around the world and in this country they run such colleges and universities as Boston College, Fairfield, Holy Cross and Fordham. The Superior General of the Order, Adolfo Nicolas, recently gave a speech on the role of technology in our world today.


"When one can access so much information so quickly and so painlessly; when one can express and publish to the world one’s reactions so immediately and so unthinkingly in one’s blogs or micro-blogs; when the latest opinion column from the New York Times or El Pais, or the newest viral video can be spread so quickly to people half a world away, shaping their perceptions and feelings, then the laborious, painstaking work of serious, critical thinking often gets short-circuited.

[When] one can “cut-and-paste” without the need to think critically or write accurately or come to one’s own careful conclusions. When…the ugly or unpleasant sounds of the world can be shut out by one’s MP3 music player, then one’s vision, one’s perception of reality, one’s desiring can also remain shallow.
When one can become “friends” so quickly and so painlessly with mere acquaintances or total strangers on one’s social networks – and if one can so easily “unfriend” another without the hard work of encounter or, if need be, confrontation and then reconciliation – then relationships can also become superficial."

What do you think?

Diigo Home

As part of this class on Integrating Technology and Literacy I'm taking we are required to used the bookmarking tool Diigo. As with all new things, I was a bit skeptical at first. To me a bookmark is a thin rectangular piece of cardboard one inserts between two pages of a book to mark where they left off reading. I very recently began experimenting with this new tool and have found it to be a valuable way to organize class resources. I'll admit that I have some "go to" resources that I use each year when it's time to discuss certain topics such as the electoral college or political parties and I'll also publicly admit that each year I spend way too much time relocating them online. Now I have begun collecting them in my Diigo Library. This tool allows me to classify each by topic heading and easily retrieve them when the time comes.

If I Ran Things....

As someone who teaches government and Civics, and as a concerned citizen, there isn't a day that goes by in which I have at least one conversation about fixing the budget deficit. One can't open the newspaper, watch the nightly news, or even watch a comedy show without some reference being made to the inability of those in Washington to address the nation's constant budget deficit. A couple of years ago I discovered an invaluable resource for understanding this thorny issue. The New York Times created an interactive budget deficit game which allows the used to decide, by using any combination of tax increases and budget reductions, how to balance the budget. My students love "playing" this game and it is an invaluable educational tool for teaching and learning about the factors driving the budget shortfall.

Separation of Powers

Here's my animoto on separation of powers. I will certainly use this in my Civics class to introduce the concept and as a starting point for discussions. This is a concept that students have trouble with at first and I hope that this little presentation will make them more comfortable with the topic.