Using the Internet to Understand the Civil War: Final Project

                For this project I chose a lesson that was on the Civil War and integrated technology in many ways. The objective of this lesson is to increase student understanding of the views and motives of the two opposing sides (North and South) during the Civil War in America through creation of a Wiki. Students are going to be able to understand a point in history while learning how to make a Wiki and other activities.

                For the first part of the lesson, I used a cross curricular standard from English/History that has to do with primary sources and understanding their main idea. Students will first respond to an activity on the Smart Board. I will have numbered pictures all of people/images from the Civil War. Students will independently jot down ideas that come to mind for each picture. Students will then read primary or secondary sources and write down the main ideas from each. Technologies I will use are basic, a printer and a Smart Board. The NETS-S standard for this is: understanding and using technology systems. I am using the technology just as a quick tool to jump from the Smart Board to a printed activity. This is basically the warm up activity.

                For the second part of the lesson, I used a Social Studies Common Core Standard of analyzing the different factors from the North and South that led to the Civil War. I will show a historical video capturing battles of the Civil War.  After that students will be given a guided outline and documents of the Civil War (i.e. court cases, diaries) and will read their document and fill out the outline. Then they will pair up and share their responses with a partner. The NETS-S standard I used has to do with using technology that supports collaboration, learning and productivity. The Video is helping with learning and the documents I have printed create an environment that fosters group work. The Think-Pair-Share activity will be my first assessment of the students and can be formative, to see how students are doing with the topic. I will show the video on the Smart Board. The outline can be created by me on the computer and there are many databases online that I can use to find documents for my students.

                For the third part of the lesson, I used a Social Studies Common Core Standard that deals with comparing and contrasting roles of African Americans who lived in Union and confederate States during the Civil War. Students will receive a list of sources by me that will have diaries and other sources for them to see how life was for African Americans in the North and South during the Civil War. They will fill out a Web comparing the two experiences. Then we will make a big web on the Smart Board. Students will then blog with the I-PADS, they will each create a diary entry as if they are either an African American in the Confederate or Union. The NETS-T standard is to use curriculum simulations while fostering critical thinking which will be done through primary sources and creating a blog.

For the fourth part of the lesson, I used a Social Studies Common Core Standard of using maps and primary sources to assess the outcome and strategies of the Civil War. As a group we will look at PowerPoint slides of pictures of people, maps, land battles, etc. As a group we will discuss each picture and how it affected the Civil War. The NET-S standards I believe are fulfilled in this are critical thinking, communication, and collaboration. As a whole we will discuss pieces of the Civil War. I will help the discussion while having students bring up important points that each slide invokes.

For the final part of the lesson, I chose a Cross Curricular Standard from English/History that has to do with using multiple sources and information from different media to address a question. This ties together the lesson, each part we have looked at different sources and students have interpreted them. From each of these and more that they will research they will create a Wiki page that describes the Civil War (perspectives, people, battles, key terms, etc.) They will do research individually and they will create a Wiki Page. They will also present their Wiki Page to the class. I will assess them on their historical wiki page and their presentation. They will use the internet and present them on a Smart Board. The NETS-S standard I chose has to mostly do with research and creativity. This assessment ties all the lessons we have done together.

In the end, students use technology to be creative while learning about the Civil War. My spreadsheet really helps me understand how to use technology and relate it to student learning. 

Civil War Spreadsheet