I started the day with a free raspberry mocha; the car ahead of me paid for my drink, a phenomenon that, according to my wife, occurs kind of often at the Jackson Coffee Company. I also found yet a fourth route into Ann Arbor to reach my destination. Today's path proved to be the fastest of the four days.
Our conference started with a discussion by Bob Bain about how we could incorporate what we had learned so far into our actual teaching practices. Two ideas presented, both similar in nature, struck me as particularly relevant to my own classes. One was to create a large poster that show various levels in scale for world history (i.e. human, family, neighborhood, city, nation, region, continent, and globe) to which I can refer during the entire course. This tool is made to help students better understand how large movements in history affect and are affected by smaller movements. For example, how one man like Napoleon affected his nation, the neighboring nations, and even places around the world which he never personally visited. Conversely, we can look at how an event like the plague of the 14th century affected Europe differently than the Middle East or even Paris differently than Medina. The second tool is to do the same thing with time. In my mind, I would put the dates of the various time divisions (for AP and for the Michigan curriculum) as well as at least one major date in each era as reference points for where the event we were discussing fits in connection to other events around the world.
The second presentation, by Alice Isabelle Sullivan, focused on how church design and construction in Hungary, Moldovia, and Russia were influenced by the fall of Constantinople in 1453. She did an amazing job with historical scale, starting each section by putting it in its geographical context, narrowing to the overall plans of the churches, focusing on the particular rooms in the church, and even narrowing down to specific details in the art on the church walls. It was a fascinating presentation on areas that I really did know much about before. Her last couple of minutes gave us two tools that blew me away: virtual tours on 360cities.net and an animated map of 1000 years of European change.
The last half of today's conference was spent divided in two groups to discuss who we might personally implement want we had learned. Bob joined our group which immediately changed the dynamic. Our group followed a guided discussion led by him (which I think I preferred) rather than a discussion among equals. Much of our discussion then focused on why and how we choose the parts of history that we decide to cover in our classes. We ended the session with one of our members showing one of his series of videos that he uses to sum up chapters and sections (in the same book we use in our world history classes!) that I plan on making available to my students next year.
It was a great three days with many excellent ideas that I know I will largely forget over the next couple of months. I will at least use the posters of scale, the big idea problem spaces, the virtual tours, and the videos on my book.
On the way home, I picked up Chinese food from Chelsea. The perfect end to the week.
Our conference started with a discussion by Bob Bain about how we could incorporate what we had learned so far into our actual teaching practices. Two ideas presented, both similar in nature, struck me as particularly relevant to my own classes. One was to create a large poster that show various levels in scale for world history (i.e. human, family, neighborhood, city, nation, region, continent, and globe) to which I can refer during the entire course. This tool is made to help students better understand how large movements in history affect and are affected by smaller movements. For example, how one man like Napoleon affected his nation, the neighboring nations, and even places around the world which he never personally visited. Conversely, we can look at how an event like the plague of the 14th century affected Europe differently than the Middle East or even Paris differently than Medina. The second tool is to do the same thing with time. In my mind, I would put the dates of the various time divisions (for AP and for the Michigan curriculum) as well as at least one major date in each era as reference points for where the event we were discussing fits in connection to other events around the world.
The second presentation, by Alice Isabelle Sullivan, focused on how church design and construction in Hungary, Moldovia, and Russia were influenced by the fall of Constantinople in 1453. She did an amazing job with historical scale, starting each section by putting it in its geographical context, narrowing to the overall plans of the churches, focusing on the particular rooms in the church, and even narrowing down to specific details in the art on the church walls. It was a fascinating presentation on areas that I really did know much about before. Her last couple of minutes gave us two tools that blew me away: virtual tours on 360cities.net and an animated map of 1000 years of European change.
The last half of today's conference was spent divided in two groups to discuss who we might personally implement want we had learned. Bob joined our group which immediately changed the dynamic. Our group followed a guided discussion led by him (which I think I preferred) rather than a discussion among equals. Much of our discussion then focused on why and how we choose the parts of history that we decide to cover in our classes. We ended the session with one of our members showing one of his series of videos that he uses to sum up chapters and sections (in the same book we use in our world history classes!) that I plan on making available to my students next year.
It was a great three days with many excellent ideas that I know I will largely forget over the next couple of months. I will at least use the posters of scale, the big idea problem spaces, the virtual tours, and the videos on my book.
On the way home, I picked up Chinese food from Chelsea. The perfect end to the week.
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