Monday, August 17, 2009

Starting Your Social Studies PLN

What is a PLN? A PLN is your professional learning network. It is a group of people online that you learn from/interact with. Beth Stills recently described PLNs -- http://bit.ly/7zMZ8


I've been using delicious bookmaking for several years. Several history teachers in our district use/add to my delicious bookmarks http://delicious.com/paleckson. We have 2,199 bookmarks. Delicious has been very helpful for our teachers. Most recently I started on Twitter and immediately realized the strong impact it can have on teachers. There are so many people sharing outstanding ideas and resources. Of course Twitter quickly leads one to the blogs of some great educators. I've listed a few excellent blogs and one or two websites. Please let me know about other outstanding social studies blogs that I have failed to include here. These social studies bloggers are a great place to start developing your Professional Learning Network (PLN). Another way to learn about PLN oppurtunites is to view Jennifer Carrier Dorman's slideshare. http://bit.ly/1458rK


Social Studies Central- Tons of resources for social studies teachers

Freetech4teachers - technology ideas galore!

Copy/Paste : Dedicated to Relinquishing Responsibility for Learning to the Students

Psychology Teachers Blog

Speaking of History- Langhorst has many podcasts, and other technology tools!

History is Elementary- Great site for elementary teachers.

Blogush- great site of an 8th grade U.S. History Teacher.

World History Teachers Blog
http://worldhistoryeducatorsblog.blogspot.com

U.S. Government Teachers Blog - good stuff on government here
http://usgovteducatorsblog....

U.S. History Teachers Blog- under the August Archive a blog about WatchKnow which has short videos to put on a blog
The Henricus - Includes some good posts on assessment
HistoryTeacher.net - Excellent site for AP U.S. History and Europoean AP teachers - it has lots of quizzes and DBQs

4 comments:

Peter Pappas said...

Hi Paul,

You are so right about Twitter - I've been on for 8 months and now consider it my #1 learning tool. Follow interesting people and the good ideas flow to your computer.

Glad to see my blog made your social studies PLN. Your readers might like my website "Teaching With Documents" at www.edteck.com.dbq They can also find me at Twitter as edteck I frequently post about social studies and technology.

PS - I checked out your oral history project and it's impressive. Keep up great work - you are developing our next generation of historians.

Paul Aleckson said...

Dear Peter, First of all, your site has been inspiring. Your DBQ blog has been especially helpful. As far as our oral history project goes, our club is now working on the topic Wisconsin Women and we are also interviewing Desert Storm and Iraq War veterans. We run the project through the 8th and 10 grade U.S. History classes, but the Oral History Club actually produces the publications.

Jim Beeghley said...

Hi,

Please check out my Teaching the Civil War with Technology blog and wiki: http://www.teachthecivilwar.com

You can also view my daughter's follow me project Civil War Sallie at http://www.civilwarsallie.com

Thanks,
Jim

Unknown said...

Thanks for listing so many interesting sites and resources, it was very helpful!!!