Bringing History to Life

Everyone has a story to tell.  Our students need to tell their stories.  Every time I teach a storytelling class, particularly when I play The Apple Tree Game (students tell a short story, others try to guess if it's real or not; As I climbed the apple tree, all the apples fell on me, apple pudding, apple pie, is this story a truth or a lie?--courtesy of storyteller Doug Lipman), I am astounded by the range of experiences these young people have encountered.

Keeping this in mind I tend to be drawn to websites offering some form of digital storytelling.  Ever since I read Kelly Tenkley's post on iLearn Technology October 23, 2012 describing myHistro, I have wanted to try the site.  Creating visual histories using maps and timelines offers countless possibilities in the classroom as well as for personal documentation.

Use of this application is free.  Users can sign in with their Facebook, Geni, Foursquare or Linkedin accounts or register with a first and last name, email address and password.  You must be thirteen years old or above to use this site.

Other features of the site are:

• can include photographs, videos and narrative
• unlimited space, unlimited photographs and as many histories as you like
• easy to create, add and edit
• drag and drop tool for placing a single event in more than one story
• three viewing options
• simple organizational tools
• import information from other sites
• six languages represented
• can embed in website or blog
• collaboration tools
• stories can be public or private

Upon logging in the first time you have several options.  You can toggle between the pages labeled Home, Me, Friends and Explore. On the home page you can access your Dashboard (first page), Profile, Events, Stories, Collections, Gallery, Smart-add for creating events from photos and quick add of event.  The me page is a simple list of your events and stories.  Friends is self-explanatory; they may be added from Facebook.  You can search for people or stories, popular tags and popular stories on the explore page.

Your profile page gives you access to your events and stories as well as updating profile information (photograph, as much personal as you want to include) and password change. The events and stories pages are lists of each of those items.  On the collections page are groups of stories with the same tag.  All your created stories are grouped in the gallery page.

Before beginning I scanned through the help section to get a feel for how to use this application.  I decided to create a story revolving around the historical fiction title The Water Seeker by Kimberly Willis Holt.  The story chronicles the life of Amos Kincaid, a dowser's son from 1833 to 1859 complete with a trip on the Oregon Trail.  

To begin I selected the Events page and clicked on the green Create new event button.  A new window pops up as an overlay on the page.  It asks you to name the event, give a specific date (year, month, day)(an end date can also be selected), add a narrative in bold, italics, underline, inserting a link or bulleted list, add a picture and search for a place on the map.  

After the event is created that window is closed taking you back to the original page.  When you mouse over the created events you have the option to edit, view or delete them.  Above your listed events you can search for other events or filter them by various categories.

To create a story go to that page.  When you initially register a story with your name is automatically created.  I changed my title to The Water Seeker adding a short description and image.  At this point you can add collaborators, tags, select a privacy option and comment features.  To add events to your story go to number 2.

You simply drag events from the list on the left to the story space on the right.  At this point generating a new event is also available.  You can search for events, jump to a specific date, or list your events by date or when they were created.  Mousing over individual events allows the user to edit, view or move them to the story.

When the events are added to the story they become darker and clearer on the right while appearing more faded on the left.  Click the green Save story button when you are done.  The next page is the viewing page for your story.

You can zoom in and out, play the story, see a thumbnail map of the entire storyline, view a larger map front and center which highlights single events, edit, delete or add another event to your completed story, post the story on Facebook, export it, view your tags, view a story summary and copy the embed code.  A story summary looks like this image.  When you are playing through the events in your story and wish to make use of hyperlinks, you must click on the read more button to make them active.

Your story can be shared on more than 330 social networks, emailed or printed.  There are two available embed codes; one as shown below and one where the story plays automatically.  Here is the short story I generated at this site.

While this web 2.0 application focuses on history, it could also be used to plan events in the future; similar to Tripline (reviewed here).  To tell you the truth, after I had this post finished, I could hardly get to sleep thinking about all the different stories which could be created using this website (there is an app for your iPhone also).  myHistro will definitely find a place in my virtual toolbox.

Historical events were located from the website HistoryOrb.

Keeping Track of Time

Heather Moorefield, Education Librarian at Virginia Tech and former chair of the American Association of School Librarians Best Websites for Teaching and Learning frequently tweets about websites and apps she feels might be of interest to the educational community.  Recently she mentioned a web 2.0 application capable of creating simple timelines.  As far as I can tell this service has been up and running since 2009.

TimeToast is free to use with no age limitations that I could find in the Terms of Service or Privacy Policy but I always tend to be cautious, keeping parents and my administration advised about applications students are using.  I'm noting this because there is a Browse feature on the site allowing for the viewing of other created timelines.  It is necessary to have an email address to register.

The Browse button is located in the upper-right hand corner of the home page.  Included are these main categories:

• music
• politics
• film
• biography
• science and technology
• art and culture
• business
• personal
• history

At the bottom of the home page is another way to search under the heading of Explore.  Users can search by popular timelines, updated timelines or latest timelines.

To register click the bright red Sign Up! button on the home page.  Registration requires a username, email address and password plus agreeing to follow the terms and conditions.  An email will be sent to activate your account.  You can also sign up using your Facebook account.

When you have signed in a new window appears asking if you want to create a new timeline, view your previously created timelines, browse the latest timelines, browse categories or view your profile.  Your profile is accessed along with editing or closing your account by clicking on the account button in the upper-right hand corner of the page.  Your profile can include a link to your website or blog.

When you click on create a new timeline a screen pops up asking you to give your timeline a title, select a category and insert an image. Click Go. You can now add an event, a timespan or edit the title and picture.  When you click Add event, new options are shown.

You must include a title and a date.  You can choose to add a description, a link and an image.  When using this with students, the  adding of images is always a good time to talk about copyright and appropriate sources to use.

At any time by clicking on an individual event you can edit or delete it.  After completing your work, beneath the timeline on the left side is a button to click, View this timeline.  This takes you to more options.

You can edit the timeline, change it from draft (draft timelines can't be viewed) to public, add tags and view it in text format.  Once you have made the timeline public it can be embedded or shared via Facebook or Twitter.  TimeToast creates a direct link, provides an HTML code or users can create their own code and color for the background.

A timeline status can be changed from public back to draft.  A box is provided for viewer comments.  

For generating a simple, interactive historical perspective with descriptions, images and links TimeToast is a great choice.  Students can work individually or together researching a series of events with different dates on a specific topic or a single date across the years. This could be used to plan a project with specific goals to be met in a given time period.  I can see using this with nonfiction titles as well as fiction titles or a combination of the two to design a visual representation.

I decided to do a little research about events that have happened on October 31 over the years.

History Detective 101

This week I'm visiting another site selected by the American Association of School Librarians from their Top 25 Best Websites for Teaching and Learning (2012).  Under the category of Content Resources in the Standards for the 21st-Century Learner, DocsTeach addresses:

• 2.1.4 Use technology and other information tools to analyze and organize information.
• 2.4.4 Develop directions for further investigations
• 3.1.2 Participate and collaborate as members of a social and intellectual network of learners

DocsTeach is hosted by The Foundation for the National Archives.

After browsing the site it became apparent that more access is granted to registered users.  To register select a username, a password and give your email address.  Immediately a link will be sent to your email.  Follow the link to activate your free account.  By registering you have access to more activities, can save documents to use later and create specific activities in sets to use with different groups of students.

Arriving at the home page, users are greeted with several choices.  Near the top of the right-hand corner are two buttons, Activities and Documents.  Activities presents two selections, ready-to-use or create your own incorporating primary sources.  Documents provides the ability to search for items, primary sources, numbering in the thousands from the National Archives.

Beneath those two buttons are three squares with buttons offering the same choices, get started (creating your own), find activities and find documents. Further down this first screen a new page dedicated to the 2013 National History Day has been added.  I decided to click on the Find Activities button first.

This screen offers activities designed by educators using primary resources housed in the National Archives.  Using the National History Standards these activities are placed in categories.  Across the top-left you can browse by historical era (those are also shown below in more visual boxes), by historical thinking skill or tool.  When you search (typing in a keyword), those same categories are present but instead of only being able to select one, you can refine your search by checking boxes in all three columns. Personally I would recommend browsing by historical era first.

I chose to browse in the historical era titled The Great Depression and World War II (1929-1945).
From those pages I selected Student Activity; using Primary Sources with The Diary of Anne Frank.  When you click on your selection, the next screen provides you with (top to bottom, left to right):

• the title
• a link
• a start activity button
• author's name
• the tool provided on site to create this activity
• the historical era
• primary historical thinking skill reflected in this activity
• place on Bloom's Taxonomy
• a small screen view of the activity
• synopsis
• teacher's instructions
• list of documents used in the activity

Once a student has completed an activity they will click I'm Done.  A window pops up with spaces for email addresses and responses plus further instructions from the teacher.  As a user you can print an activity or star it for storage in a folder in your account.

Moving to the Documents portion you can again browse or search.  At this page browsing is done by historical era, type of item (audio/video, chart/graphs/data, image, map, written document), featured documents or starred documents.  As with searching in the Activities section multiple boxes can be checked in the three columns with respect to the search term.

Hoping to find some documentation regarding the 1925 Serum Run to Nome, Alaska I went to the search box.  After typing in Alaska and clicking the appropriate era, a screen appears with thumbnails of all the items.  When you click on one, you can go back to the thumbnails or arrow though the resources like a slide show.  This is one of the items which appeared.  Who knew?


The final field to investigate is Create your own interactive learning activity.  The tools used to generate your instruction are:

• finding a sequence
• focusing on details
• interpreting data
• making connections
• mapping history
• seeing the big picture and
• weighing the evidence.

A small helpful widget on the right side will highlight the tools which best adhere to a particular historical thinking skill, dimming the others.  Those historical thinking skills are:

• chronological thinking
• historical comprehension
• historical analysis and interpretation
• historical research capabilities and
• historical issues-analysis and decision making.

Before beginning you can click on any of the tools' titles at the top for a detailed explanation of how each works; a visual slide show numbering all the steps, learning objectives and historical thinking skills met, teaching tips and examples of activities made with this tool.  Mapping History was my tool of choice for my first created activity.  As soon as you select any of the tools a small window pops up informing you that your activity will be saved to your account.

First documents needed to be selected for my topic taking me back to that section. Once I had a group of items I returned to the activity maker.  By looking at this image you can better visualize the work area.

I am now on step two (notice the top of the dashboard).  On the bottom are my selected documents.  At any time I can add or delete.

I chose an image to be placed in the center. The area can be sized.  Next drag the documents from the tray to a position on the list.  Text can be added.  If you so choose, all the items can remain in the tray so students can place them on the map.

This above screen illustrates the placing (or not) of the items on the map.  There are tools along the right side to enhance the documents.  Once you have filled in your introductory and concluding statements you proceed to the final screen.  From there you can view your work or publish it for all logged in users to see.

This site, DocsTeach, hosted by The Foundation for the National Archives is one-stop shopping for bringing history into the classroom in the best possible way.  Not only does it have all the areas I've noted above but at the bottom of each screen there are links to Document Analysis, Why Teach With Documents, Bloom's Taxonomy, National History Standards, Teaching With Documents and NCSS, Sharing Activities and Additional Links.  For history, this site ranks high above all the rest.  It's amazing.

This is my finished activity showing six primary sources relative to the Lewis & Clark Expedition.  The text box holds questions that can be answered by viewing the documents.  The only way to see this is to register but it's free...and fun.