Unrest in the Arab World - Map and Timeline

Unrest in the Arab World is an interactive map and timeline from CNN. The timeline begins in December of 2010 and continues through August 2011. Along the timeline are links to various images and stories related to events in the Middle East and North Africa. Clicking on the map will open up summaries of events in each country. The map is color coded according to the level of violence in each country. The four levels are civil war, sustained violence, protests, and post-revolution. An explanation of each level is linked to the map.

Applications for Education
This fall I am again teaching a current global studies course and I plan to include this map on my course blog. Unrest in the Arab World should be a useful source of background information for my students.

CNN Student News - Gas, Cars, and Peanuts

This morning's episode of CNN Student News has a couple of stories that students could find relevant to their lives and enjoy a lively discussion about. The lead story is about US actions in Libya and how those actions could affect gas prices in the US. The closing story this morning is about a Florida school's handling of peanut allergies. The school has put some policies in place that have parents and students complaining that the policies infringe on the freedom of other students. Watch the story in the video below or read the transcript here.

Can Your Classmates Learn from Your Work?

This week the students in my global studies course finished up the short informational videos that they were creating about Egypt and Libya. Overall, they did a bang-up job. (We'll be making some of the videos public later this week). One part of the grades for their videos was "can your classmates learn from your work?" Because these videos were intended to be informational videos, the answer should be yes. Rather than just answering that question hypothetically, I had the students "hit the streets" so to speak to find out if people could learn from their videos.

The Process
Three weeks ago my students put together a seven question survey about current events in Libya and Egypt. They used a Google Form to make it easier to summarize the data they collected. Then I sent them off with their netbooks to survey students and staff throughout the school. They surveyed people in the cafeteria, in study halls, and in the library. When they finished we looked at the data and realized that many of the people in our school were not sure where Libya and Egypt are and what was going on in those countries.

Because we don't have access to iMovie or Windows Movie Maker, my students used JayCut to create their short (3-5 minute) informational videos. The videos had to provide answers to each of the survey questions. When their videos were done we watched them in class before going out to the cafeteria, study halls, and library to show them to other students. After watching the videos my students asked their viewers to take the survey again to see if their viewers actually did learn something from watching the video.

How do you assess student video creation projects? Please leave a comment.

Libyan Civil War - Interactive Map and Videos

Last week the students in my Global Studies course began creating short videos to inform their classmates about current events in Egypt and Libya. Now they have another aspect to add to their videos, the UN no-fly zone over Libya. In our first class this week one of the resources we'll be looking at is this interactive map from CNN. Libyan Civil War and U.N. Intervention includes placemarks representing attack sites, airbases, CNN-produced stories, CNN-produced videos, and CNN iReports from Libya.

I found this map on a list of good resources about Libya that Larry Ferlazzo compiled. If you need some more resources for teaching and learning about Libya, visit Larry's list.

There Must 50 Ways To Spell Gadhafi or Qadhafi or...

Image Credit

Note for first time visitors: this style of post is a bit different than what you will typically find here on Free Technology for Teachers where I generally stick to reviewing free resources for teaching. 

As some readers may remember, about four weeks ago I started teaching a new Global Studies course for 11th and 12th grade students. On the first day of class we started to hear news of protests in Egypt. Not being an expert on Egypt (I knew the basic timeline of 20th century Egypt), I turned the class into a collaborative on-going exploration of Egypt. You can read about how we've shared information using Google Docs here.

Last week my school was on winter break while protests erupted in Libya. Sure enough one of my students emailed me to ask if we would discuss Libya when we got back to school. My response was "of course we are." Today was the first day back and we spent the class meeting discussing and researching together the history of Libya and the current events. Again, I knew the basic timeline of Libya in the 20th Century, but I am not an expert on it so this is again a collaborative learning opportunity for me and my students. One of the fun things that we talked about today was how are we as a class going to spell Gadhafi. As one of my students pointed out, there are more than 50 ways to spell Qaddaffi.

In education reform circles and in educational technology circles (yes, the two often are the same) we often hear teachers say we need to the "guide on the side instead of the sage on a stage." I'm really living that right now in my classroom and I have to say, it is great! Yes, it takes a bit of time to accept that you aren't the "expert" on the content area, but it's such a great feeling to be working with my students for all our benefit. So you might be wondering what is he doing in the classroom if he's not the content expert? My role in the classroom is truly to act as a guide and offer advice. While I'm not an expert on current events in Libya and Egypt (who is? I'd argue that most news anchors aren't), I am well versed in teaching students how to discern good information and how to use that information to create meaning and understanding for themselves. That's my job now and I love it.

Protests Across the Middle East on a Google Map

Through the Google Lat Long blog I discovered a site called Storyful that is producing maps of the protests  in the Middle East and North Africa. While they're producing maps of individual countries, they've also produced a map about protests across the whole of the Middle East and North Africa. Like all good Google Maps, this one includes images, links, text, and video clips. You can view the map below or click here to view the full size map.


View Protests across the Middle East in a larger map

Applications for Education
Keeping up with developments in the Middle East and North Africa is one of the things that the students in my Global Studies course have to do this semester. This map could be very helpful for them in reaching that goal. In general, I like maps like this one because it puts global news into a geographic context that students can see.