Portfolio+for+Christina+Vandenbergh

Christina Vandenbergh Fairfax County PS - High School History AP US History, World History II

Twitter: vandencm

Week 1: Wordles

Ideas: -Compare the Declaration of Independence with the Declaration of the Rights of Man by copying in the full texts and producing a Wordle. Then compare which words appear most often between the two documents and which words are unique. Come up with reasons for each of the words and back up your reasons with historical evidence. Write a paragraph.

Declaration of Independence

Declaration of the Rights of Man

Or...give students multiple documents to choose from to create wordles and compare and contrast. This could work really well for both US and World history!

Week 2: Voice Thread

Assignment 2 http://voicethread.com/share/2150335/ For this assignment, students would complete this the night before to prepare for the day's instruction. They would review the picture and then respond to the 3 questions posed (one per page). I would probably do one voice thread for each class to keep the amount of comments smaller per voice thread, but it also might be beneficial to open one to all classes so that students can learn from others in a different section.

Two other ideas that I had would be to create a larger voice thread with more images and documents from an entire unit and then have students go through and answer questions and make comments to review before an exam. The other ideal would be to have students upload parts of their essays as they work on them to get peer feedback, and each student would have to comment on 3 different essays. However, can you upload that much text into one thing?


 * Week 3: StoryBird**

media type="custom" key="10044737"

This is the StoryBird that I designed. Students would read the beginning of the story and then finish the story of the American Revolution from the British perspective. I can see using it with classes to help them develop their interpretation of history from a certain point of view or to write a "What If Story" but other than that I'm not as convinced this one will work and I'd love to see other's ideas.


 * Week 4: Wetoku (**[])

(Sorry this is late, vacation got in the way!)

I can see this working well in my classroom. I would love to have students do a project at the end of the year where they interview members of their family about where they were during different events, for example finding out more about the 60s and 70s from the perspectives of family members. Students would write a short biography of 3 members of their family and then conduct interviews to find out about their daily lives and their memories of specific events during their lives. This would be especially helpful if family members were far away and unable to be interviewed in person, plus it would create a recording of it.

You could also have students create the history of their town by interviewing local members and by using wetoku, it created a lasting digital edition of the interview that the historical society can use.

I'll create a recording tomorrow when I see my grandparents (they don't have cameras on their computers) and do an interview with them about moving south from NJ into segregated NC.


 * Week 5: Blogs**

I would love to use blogs in my classroom to have students do writing, and have a broader audience because students will focus on their writing more when they do have an audience. It would also be easy to share with parents so they can see what is happening in the classroom. My main question with blogs is how to keep it fun in a high school history classroom. I would love to post a weekly question regarding our current topic of study or a current event and have students answer it with a paragraph, but does that drag all the fun out of it and just make it another assignment? Is it better to have one blog per class (World History II with about 75 students) or one per section (25 students)? Things to think about...