Doing Social Studies: One more blog about what we love

Do we need another blog about social studies? I mean, there’s got to be hundreds, maybe thousands of blogs that talk about social studies. And almost all of them are very good.

I’m a little biased, of course. I like this one. It’s been around since January 2008 and so I’m kind of invested. But I do think there is room for another social studies blog – the more conversations we have about what we do and how we do it the better.

So.

A new blog.

Titled Doing Social Studies and maintained by the Kansas Council for the Social Studies, the site is a place

Tools for Analyzing Primary Sources and Close Reading

I love EDSITEment! If you haven’t been there, you really need to head over and check it out.

Joe Phelan, an educational liasion, describes EDSITEment as:

the K-12 digital outreach program from the National Endowment for the Humanities. We are especially strong in US History, government, American and British literature as well as art and culture. Our online lesson plans are built around guided reading of  primary sources which are carefully contextualized and  stress critical thinking and other 21st century skills.

There are tons of lesson plans and other handy resources. One of their sweet pages highlights a variety of tools for analyzing primary sources and close reading. These links direct you to other websites and references to resources available through government, nonprofit, and commercial entities.

• Using Primary Sources in the Classroom (American Memory Project, Library of Congress)
• History in the Raw (National Archives)
• Document Analysis Worksheets (National Archives)

Close Reading Guides

• How to Do a Close Reading (Harvard University Library)
• Reading Critically (Harvard University Library)
• How To Read a Poem by Edward Hirsch
• Poetry: Close Reading (Purdue OWL)

Close Reading Webinars

• Teaching Through Close Reading: Historical and Informational Texts (National Humanities Center archived webinar)
• Teaching Through Close Reading: Poetry and Fiction (National Humanities Center archived webinar)

Sat photos, change over time, and a sweet teaching tool

Four things:

• Google Earth.
• Landsat images.
• Change over time.
• Cool tools for instruction.

What do they all have in common?

Psst. I’ll give you a hint. They were approved last month.

That’s right! The new Kansas social studies standards and even some of the Common Core literacy pieces are asking kids to analyze change over time and to evaluate relationships between people and place. And it’s a good thing.

But are there tools floating around that I can use to help kids do that?

Tweet the Debates: Using Twitter to recreate history

Twitter is a pretty amazing tool. Think about it. With Twitter, I can get constant updates from my friends, family, and colleagues on what they had for breakfast, how their drive to work went, and truly important stuff like how hot they think it will be this afternoon.

Seriously. How did we live without Twitter?

I kid because I love.

Twitter really is a pretty amazing tool. Revolutions in Egypt. Live updates on natural disasters. Connections with loved ones thousands of miles away. Not to mention a decent instructional strategy.

We’ve talked about using Twitter in the social studies before. And so when I came across Tweet the Debates, I was more than just a little curious. Created by artist and lawyer Toby Grytafey, Tweet the Debates is his attempt to recreate the summer of 1787 as if those attending the Constitutional Convention had access to social media.

It’s an interesting concept that has worked for other historical events. And it sounds pretty cool. Toby started a Kickstarter project that was hoping to raise funds for a mobile app and other goodies. Even if the fundraising idea fell through, the actual Tweet the Debates idea is awesome.

Toby uses a quote from James Madison, apparently written in the spring of 1835, as inspiration for the project:

Smithsonian Quests – Badges? We don’t need no stinking badges

The 1948 movie The Treasure of the Sierra Madre worded it a bit differently but I’m sticking with Mel Brooks and the classic Blazing Saddles:

“Badges? We don’t need no stinking badges!

It’s a great line.

But in 2013, it would be wrong. In 2013, badges are a big deal. And used appropriately, badges can help us do our jobs better.