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Cool Search Engine for Guided Search
And, then I find this cool tool I will also use this fall. I'm already thinking of how to have pre-service teachers use this to implement what they should know about web sites on a particular topic/issue/person and how to guide students toward this. I should start with one on Truman.
Scribd - Sharing docs online
One of the things I couldn't seem to find (but I'm sure finding the right terms to search in google would have found it) during our summer institute with teachers was a way to share docs that don't yet fall under the umbrella of Google Docs. Today, a Chronicle of Higher Education article pointed to the list of the Top 100 Technology Tools and I found Scribed. I'll be using this in my fall classes!
Just think of the potential visibility beyond a conference presentation with only a few people in the room.
Here's the entire list - just in time for me to have time to explore (yes, I'm really a history geek and a computer geek).
Assessing Learning in Second Life
I was nosing around the Second Life for the conference schedule (later this month) and found these links about assessing student learning in Second Life. There are also some nearby links for Institutional Review Board issues (which I will be dealing with this fall at my university).
This is yet another example of the evolution of the wiki format into a very usable space - especially for those geographically distant who are doing similar work. The traditional model of historical research in the academy is to build on in person relationships with graduate school mentor(s) and colleagues and then with colleagues where you are teaching. However, those of us at small schools cover centuries (and in the case of world historians, sometimes entire worlds) and don't have other people doing the specialized research it normally requires to be published today.
So, this type of professional social networking as pointed out today and in yesterday's post is extremely useful to the spread of knowledge among those with similar interests who may never ever cross paths in RL (real life).
Historians and Wikipedia
Wikipedia is coming into its own as a more useful sources for historians and the public. The primary concern remains, however, that students do not understand fully how to critically evaluate such sites. The same can be said of printed texts.
This Cliopatria post links to a compendium of sites. One mentioned that relates to what I'm teaching this fall is the examination and ASSESSMENT of Cold War entries. I'll have to think about how to incorporate this into my graduate seminar. It also might be worth having the graduate students who are also classroom teachers evaluate how they would use wikipedia entries on their more specialized topics with students.
