Adventures in Canadian Post-Secondary Education: Growing up digital

Adventures in Canadian Post-Secondary Education: Growing up digital

Check out this prof's blog about all things educational. This post talks about technology and today's students. Definitely worth a look!

Using Spreadsheets in the Social Studies Classroom

First off, here are the links to some of the resources I used for this blog post:

• http://www.internet4classrooms.com/excel_non-mathematical_uses.htm 
• The Pilgrim Timeline is an excellent example of a clear depiction of history that you can give to your students as a study aide. 

• http://www.angelfire.com/wi2/spreadsheet/SpreadsheetLessons#Equation 

• The "Chart the Population of your State from 1900 to today" activity can be modified for provinces or even communities in the Human Geography unit of Social Studies 11.

• http://www.ncwiseowl.org/kscope/techknowpark/FreeFall/Graphing.html
• This site provides an activity that would serve as a simple yet fun way of introducing spreadsheets to your class. They will learn how to use excel while getting to know their classmates better - maybe a good activity for the first week of class!

• http://www.microsoft.com/education/lessonplans.mspx#History/Social%20Studies
• An extensive list of lessons with Excel. Under "History/Social Studies" there are a number of fully developed lesson plans that would be great to use, such as "Track the life of a legislative bill," "Plan and take a virtual international field trip," "Plan and hold a food and globalization summit," "Making and reading maps in the 21st century," and "Design, administer, and analyze a generation gap survey."

Integration technological skills into your lesson plans is very valuable for your students. In all likelihood, they will need to use Excel at some point in their future lives and careers, so helping them to understand how to use it while not losing valuable time in teaching your actual subject area is great! Excel can be used in the Social Studies classroom in countless ways, including the following:

1.Have students use Excel to create and do a scavenger hunt for historical or geographical items in their community.

2. Have students provide/create data spreadsheets to compare global standards of living.

3. Have students use Excel to develop a timeline, pie chart, bar graph, etc. as part of exam review.

My Son is Gay

This lady's blog is amazing. It is so sad that this 5-year-old boy was faced with such discrimination and prejudice. As teachers we should be making sure these things never happen.

http://nerdyapplebottom.com/2010/11/02/my-son-is-gay/?ref=nf