Looking at World War II - Text and Media

Looking at World War II - Text and Meida

Quick Lesson Information

Grade Level: 7th Grade - Middle School

Subject: History

Sub-Subject: United States History

Length/Duration: 45 min

Technologies Used: Computer to do a web-based search engine to find images and view World War II videos

Introduction

Through technology and the Internet we have a great opportunity to enhance learning through different mediums. We are able to review text and media from the past to help develop a better understanding of the time period. In this lesson plan you will have students look at World War II videos from the American, French, German, Japanese perspectives and summarize what they saw from the perspective of the video the video they watched. They will then tie their response to a "Dr. Seuss Goes To War" political cartoon and explain the significance of their cartoon choice to their video. Students will then respond to another students' post from the perspective of the video they watched and wrote a summary about.

Things to Think About Before Developing a Lesson

What concept are your students not grasping about World War II?

Are your students "tech savvy" and mature enough to be introduced to a new kind of digital learning?

Does your class set-up lend itself to having students on computers during class?

Do you know of any other school sites or people who can comment on the student responses?

Do your students have a Google account or are they able to create a Google account?

This lesson is meant to meet California State Standard 11.7 11.7 Students analyze America's participation in World War II (Klingensmith & Geeting, 2009)

Quick Benefits

Listed here are some quick benefits of this lesson plan

Provides students the opportunity to look at different perspectives of World War II

Keeps students engaged in an online activity

Promote deeper discussion about World War II

Introduce a learning environment that can be accessed outside of a classroom setting

Looking at World War II from a Different Perspective

Watch Videos From the American, French, German, Japanese Perspective

Break the class up into 4 groups (or the students can do this individually) and have them watch the 10 min. videos about World War II.

German Group Video: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Q4q7SdVvWpk

French Group Video: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vWLFWO4Aatk

Japanese Group Video: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FSzioWiAj0U

American Group Video: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hL5EwB4Ie2U

Summarize Videos From The Perspective of The Video

Have students log-in to the Google group and summarize the video that they saw from that perspective. Have the students find a "Dr. Seuss Goes To War" image and explain in their summary why they chose the image they did and the significance of it.

For the first time the students are logging into Google Groups please make time for students to create an account through the Google website. This will probably take 10-15 min for a class of 20 students.

You can create your Google Group here: http://groups.google.com/

You can create Google accounts here: https://www.google.com/accounts/NewAccount?continue=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.google.com%2F&hl=en

"Dr. Seuss Goes To War" Images: http://www.google.com/images?hl=en&q=dr.+seuss+goes+to+war&um=1&ie=UTF-8&source=og&sa=N&tab=wi&start=0&uss=1

Responding to Other Group Postings

Have your students, either individually or as a group, respond to another group's Google Group posting and the Dr. Seuss political cartoon from the perspective of the video they watched and wrote a summary about.

Hopefully, the Google Group postings will help promote deeper discussions, questions and curiosities about World War II.

Create Google Group and Gather Accounts Before Hand

To avoid any major concerns, it is a good idea to create a Google account and the Group before starting the lesson. Also, you may want to collect the or have students create a Google account before the lesson starts. This is so there will not be any confusion or down time when it is time for students to respond to their videos.

Assessing the Google Group Entries and Responses

Although it is up to the teacher how they want to grade the Google group entries and responses, here are some ideas for assessing the assignment.

Group Grading - Have the students in each group grade each other on their contributions to the postings and responses.
Individual Grading - Grading the individual student on their contributions to the postings and responses.

Promoting A Digital Learning Environment

Promoting a digital learning environment will give the students a different perspective on the curriculum that can help in a students understanding (Son, 2009). With this activity teachers have to opportunity to be deliberate in what they are teaching students. In Philosophy and Teaching by John Dewey he tells us to make students aware of what they are doing and their purpose of an activity (Dewey, 1916). Having the students participate in new activities can be refreshing for students as well as instructors. These new activities can create involved discourse that might lead to some teaching moments for the instructor that might not have otherwise happened. Some activates and discourse that happens in a classroom becomes routine and can become predictable for both the students and the instructor (Stigler & Hiebert, 1999). An online environment can help provide educators with unique teaching and learning strategies that can assist in meeting the educational and lifestyle needs of today’s students (Rogers, 2009). Learning though an online forum, hopefully, will help students as well as instructors further understand the notion that intentional learning can happen outside of a classroom and outside of traditional learning environments (Brown, 2008).

Incorporation pictures may serve to help (a) establish the setting, (b) define/develop the characters, (c) extend/develop the plot, (d) provide a different viewpoint, (e) contribute to the text’s coherence, and (f) reinforce the text (Carney & Levin, 2002). In an experiment (Taylor & Chi, 2006) done with a simulation, student achieved higher when they were able to imagine that they acted in the place of a project manager. Hopefully, by creating a summary and responding from a different perspective students will be able to think critically about World War II. The purpose of using the web browser is to deliver content and resource information, as well as provide the means by which students submit work and receive feedback about their assignment (Dickey, 2005).

References

Dewey, J. (1916). Democracy and education: An introduction to the philosophy of education (pp. 340-357). New York, NY: The Macmillan Company.

Carney, R. N., & Levin, J. R. (2002). Pictorial illustrations still improve students' learning from text. Educational Psychology Review, 14(1), 5-26.

Taylor, R., & Chi, M. (2006). Simulation versus text: Acquisition of implicit and explicit information. Journal of Educational Computing Research, 35(3), 289-313.

Dewey, J. (1916). Democracy and education: An introduction to the philosophy of education (pp. 28-48). New York, NY: The Macmillan Company.

Stigler, J. W., & Hiebert, J. (2009). The teaching gap: Best ideas from the world's teachers for improving education in the classroom (pp. 15-23). New York, NY: Free Press.

Son, J. Y., & Goldstone, R. L. (2009). Contextualization in perspective. Cognition and Instruction, 27(1), 51-89.

Brown, J. (2008). Teaching 2.0: Doing more with less. Retrieved from http://vimeo.com/7650988

Dickey, M. D. (2005). Three-dimensional virtual worlds and distance learning: Two case studies of Active Worlds as a medium for distance education. British Journal of Educational Technology, 36(3), 439-451.

Rogers, L. (2009, December 6-9). Simulating clinical experience: Exploring second life as a learning tool for nurse education. Paper presented at the Same places, different spaces (ascilite), Auckland, New Zealand.

Klingensmith, B. & Greeting, G. Eds. (2009). History–Social Science Content Standards for California Public Schools, Kindergarten Through Grade Twelve. California Department of Education.