5 New Year’s resolutions every social studies teacher should make

Yes. I am aware that most New Year’s resolutions are made a bit closer to New Year’s Day. But it’s still January, so I figure I’m good.

The good news is that a 2009 study found that 46% of participants who made New Year’s resolutions were likely to succeed – over ten times as much as those who decided to make similar decisions during other times of the year.

So . . . it’s not too late to make a few 2018 social studies resolutions. And I’m a big believer in constant self-evaluation. As in asking myself questions about my current practice: What’s working? What’s not? What should I change? What do my students need? What resource needs to be phased out? The middle of the school is a perfect time for those sorts of questions.

In that spirit, here are five New Year’s resolutions every social studies teacher should make:

History Nerdfest 2017 Day Three: #sschat unconference conversation made me smarter

If you’re not using Twitter to access the #sschat hashtag throughout the year, I will politely suggest that you need start doing that.

Seriously. And if me being polite doesn’t work, you should do because I said so.

Using Twitter and the #sschat hashtag connects you with hundreds of super smart people who can make you smarter. It also connects you with people who need to know what you know so that they can get smarter. Win win.

And this morning at #ncss17, several of the organizers of #sschat put together a three hour unconference session where people could meet face to face. Many of us only know each other via Twitter and so it’s great putting faces with Twitter handles. The cool thing is that the learning is the same. We asked questions. We shared resources. We brainstormed ideas.

And we all walked away smarter.

The cool thing about #sschat is that

Historical social media creation tool

Imagine a social media campaign during the 1860 election.

What would Twitter posts from the Lincoln campaign look like? How might Stephen Douglas have used Facebook? Breckinridge and Instagram? Would Bell have posted video?

One of the conversations we had today in our spring social studies PLC was the use of social media tools both with current and historical events. Is it productive to encourage the use of social media and smart devices in the classroom? We didn’t really solve anything.

But we had fun discussing it.

We did chat about some instructional possibilities. One of those involved having kids develop a social media campaign for past elections. If current social media tools were available to historical figures, what would the branding look like? What platform would people of the past have used? What would they say? Could kids take speeches, letters, photos, from past elections and create messages for social media?

I think the answer is

Tip of the Week: 5 things every social studies teacher needs to know about Twitter

I joined Twitter about nine years ago in late 2007. As a social studies guy trying to learn more about how tech could be used in instruction and learning tool, I was a bit underwhelmed during my first few months with the tool.

Most posts fit the stereotypical – I learned a lot about what people did the night before, what they ate the night before, and how disappointed they were about the third Pirates of the Caribbean movie. But it got better. And I am becoming more and more convinced that Twitter is now one of the those non-negotiable things that we all should have in our tool belts.

It’s not the silver bullet that will solve all of your problems (And I will admit it may create some.) But it does do some pretty handy things – we can connect with experts, connect our students with experts, connect with each other, find and share content, ask questions, help others, and apparently save the world at the international, national, state, and local levels.

So today five things I think all of us need to know about Twitter. (New to Twitter? Get set up here. And remember that you can have multiple Twitter accounts – so think about creating both personal and professional versions.)

National Archives Education Updates & 58 other NARA social media links

The National Archives has billions of documents, artifacts, and historical resources. And I’m beginning to think that it has almost that many blogs, social media accounts, and RSS feeds.

This morning, I got dragged into the NARA world of social media after discovering the very cool Education Updates blog.

I ran across the Updates blog through one of my Flipboard feeds and started browsing. NARA staffers use the site to share resources for teachers and learners. You’ll find new teaching tools, lesson plans, learning activities, student field trips, professional development opportunities, newly available primary sources, and multimedia and web content.

The National Archives holds all kinds of valuable documents – written documents, images, maps, audio, video, charts, and more – from all three branches of our government. Educational liaisons at the National Archives in Washington, DC, around the country, and in Presidential Libraries work together to share how they use all of these different types of sources in teaching activities.

And just when I thought I was out, they sucked me back in.

I was done. I had gotten my weekly primary sources fix. But

Social media is a hook. And a tool.

In an essay titled From Connected Educator to Connected Classroom, Brianna Crowley describes her journey using social media tools at a personal level to using them in her classroom. It’s a good read with practical suggestions and links to a variety of social media tools and strategies. Brianna also makes a statement that I like: