Alternatives to Book Reports - A Post Inspired By My Daughter

My five-year-old daughter has a healthy obsession with the According to Humphrey the Hamster series of books. She got one of the books for Christmas and we've been reading through the entire series since then. Last week I came home from a bike ride and she couldn't wait to show me her latest art project! It was a paper replica of how she pictured Humphrey's cage. She had even used some paper and tape to create a little hamster wheel to put in his cage. On a scale of 1-10 I was at about 15 for how impressed I was that she came up with that idea on her own. 

Inspired by my daughter's creation of a replica of Humphrey the Hamster's cage, here are some other ideas for alternatives to traditional book report assignments.

• Create a book trailer video. This is a short video intended to get people excited to read a book. Students can summarize key points in the book and try to entice viewers to read the book. Canva's video editor and Adobe Creative Cloud Express are great tools for making book trailer videos.
  
  
• Have students design and publish their own online games based on the plot and characters of a book. Flippity offers great templates that students can modify to create their own online games.
  
  
• Students can use Google Earth to create virtual tour based on locations featured in a book. Students using the web browser version of Google Earth can include videos in the placemarks in their tours. Students who use Google Earth Pro can record audio narration for their entire tours.
  
  
• Consider using the choose-your-own-adventure model and have students write some alternate endings to a story. They can do this in Google Slides. Here's a video about the process.

By the way, the picture I took of my daughter and her art project is a lot cuter than the cropped one in this blog post. Unfortunately, due to the plethora of shady sites that steal my work every day, I don't include pictures of my kids' faces in my posts anymore. 

Teaching History With Technology - Online Course Starting in June

This summer I'm not hosting the Practical Ed Tech Summer Camp. I am, however, hosting a some online courses for those who are interested. The first one that I'm hosting starts in June. That course is Teaching History With Technology.

Teaching History With Technology is a five-part course that will meet via Zoom at 4pm ET every Thursday in June. It has been a year since I last taught this course so I've updated it with some new resources and new strategies for 2022. 

In Teaching History With Technology you will learn how to help students conduct better online research, how to make history videos, how to create online primary source-based activities, how to develop virtual tours, and more. You'll even learn how to make your own history app even if you don't have any computer science experience!

The course consists of five live meetings. Every meeting will be recorded for those who register but cannot attend all of the sessions. Handouts will be provided for every session. 

Save 10% if you register online by midnight (ET) Friday. Register here!

A note about cost:

I am able to keep Free Technology for Teachers running through the support of people who register to attend my webinars, courses, and workshops. While the tools that I feature in my courses are free, my time for teaching and hosting is not. 

The Homestead Act and a Research Prompt

Last Friday the document of the day on the Today's Document from the National Archives blog was a copy of the Homestead Act passed on May 20, 1862. Seeing the document reminded me of a prompt that I used in a workshop about teaching search strategies that I hosted last summer. If you teach U.S. History, you might want to try the prompt with your own students. Here it is: 

The Homestead Act was signed into law 1862 and the first claims were made under it shortly after. Your challenge is to find out when the last claim was granted under the Homestead Act. Who was granted the last claim? 

Depending on where you live, you might want to modify the challenge to finding out when the last claim was made in your state or county. 

DocsTeach also has some activities built around Homestead Act. You might use those activities as is or modify them to meet your needs. Here's my overview of how to use DocsTeach. 

Classroom Posters - The Rules of Civil Conversation

When I taught civics learning to create sound, well-reasoned arguments and present them in a calm manner was a significant goal in every course. I always tried to remind them that they can disagree with another person's opinion without attacking the person. This was particularly tricky when my high school students hit upon issues that they had deeply held opinions about. It always helped to have some ground rules laid out before discussions began. To that end, the folks at School of Thought have recently released a new project called The Rules of Civil Conversation.

The Rules of Civil Conversation is a website designed to help visitors better understand how to hold a civil conversation in the face of differing opinions. One of the resources on the site is a set of posters outlining eight rules of civil conversation. These posters can be downloaded for free and printed for display in your classroom. (There is also an option to buy printed versions). 

School of Thought also created the sites Your Logical Fallacy Is and Your Bias Is. I've previously featured those sites in my larger collection of resources to help students recognize logical fallacies and cognitive biases. 

Menus, Maps, and Broadcasts - The Week in Review

Good morning from western Maine where the warm weather is supposed to returned after a couple of cold and rainy days. We're planning to have fun enjoying the warm weather with a trip to Storyland! My kids love going there because of all of the kid-friendly rides. I love going there because it reminds me of happy childhood memories and I love watching my kids have fun making memories of their own. How much fun do we have there? My five-year-old yelled, "I'm living my best life!" while riding a rollercoaster at Storyland last summer. I hope that you have something as equally fun to do this weekend. 

These were the week's most popular posts:
1. Add Dropdown Menus Into Sentences In Google Docs
2. New Google Docs Features You Might Have Missed
3. An Interactive Map of the Roman Empire
4. A Cool Lesson for a Hot Spring Day - How the Popsicle Was Invented
5. The National Archives to Host Online Professional Development This Summer
6. TARA - A Planning Tool for New and Veteran Teachers
7. Broadcast Google Slides Directly to Your Students' Computers

Webinars for Your School
I conduct professional development webinars throughout the year. I'll host a free one-hour webinar for any school or group that purchases ten or more copies of 50 Tech Tuesday Tips.

Other Places to Follow Me:

• The Practical Ed Tech Newsletter comes out every Sunday evening/ Monday morning. It features my favorite tip of the week and the week's most popular posts from Free Technology for Teachers.
• My YouTube channel has more than 41,000 subscribers watching my short tutorial videos on a wide array of educational technology tools. 
• I've been Tweeting as @rmbyrne for fifteen years. 
• The Free Technology for Teachers Facebook page features new and old posts from this blog throughout the week. 
• If you're curious about my life outside of education, you can follow me on Instagram or Strava.

This post originally appeared on FreeTech4Teachers.com. If you see it elsewhere, it has been used without permission. Sites that steal my (Richard Byrne's) work include Icons Daily and Daily Dose. Featured image captured by Richard Byrne.