The Last Best West

The Last Best West would be useful to all high school grades and the middle years to grade 8. It is interactive, easy to navigate and covers from the 1870's to the end of the roaring '20's.

------------------------------------

It easily fits into any area that discusses the history of the Prairies in Securing the Canadian West: New Canadians and Their Well-being which is found in the History 30 curriculum.

------------------------------------

Because a lot of it deals with Saskatchewan it would be useful as a suplimental website for gathering research on a project. For example, students might be ding a project on the Laurier federal government, of the early 1900s, which adhered to the policy of populating the Prairies with Euro-Canadians and European immigrants.

Web 2.0 - Flickr

Web 2.0 is a trend in the World Wide Web technology of web-based communities and hosted services such as social-networking sites, and blogs, which aim to facilitate creativity, collaboration, and sharing among users.

Flickr is a free picture sharing web site that students could use in a high school social studies classroom. Flickr is an easily navagatable website that students should be able to use quickly and efficiently. The search option makes looking for pictures very simple.

------------------------

In History 20 Core Material for Unit Two, students learn about Adolf Hitler and the Nazi regime. If students had a project on the life of Hitler and the rise of the Nazi's, Flickr would be a useful place to acquire pictures of Hitler and Nazi leaders.

If the project was to be completed in a newspaper format, a teacher could mix some curricular objectives and implement Module 19: Desktop Publishing from the Practical and Applied Arts curriculum. The students would still be able to use Flickr as a resource for looking up pictures of Hitler and the Nazi's and then use the desktop publishing to put it in a newspaper.

Frontline: The Secrect History of the Credit Card

There is no Personal Finance curriculum in Saskatchewan. At all.

One of my assignments last year was to be part of a team that developed a Personal Finance curriculum that would be presentable to Sask Learning. When we looked into what was not covered in the Evergreen curriculum we found many missing elements that would help students achieve some financial security.

A lot of what was missing is basic, but we found that many parents choose not to discuss financial matters with their children and many think that it is inappropriate to discuss finances in school as well. If that is part of the reason there is no Personal Finance element in the Evergreen I do not know, but what I do know is that students are leaving home for jobs or post-secondary education and they have no idea how to handle money.

• There is no place to help students learn about handling money.


• There is no place to help students learn about saving or investing money.


• There is no place to help students learn about budgeting for a week, bi-weekly or month.


• There is no place to help students learn about service charges and bank fees.


• There is no place to help students learn about renting a house vs buying a house.


• There is no place to help students learn about leasing a vehicle vs buying a vehicle.


• There is no place to help students learn about interest rates; And


• There is no place to help students learn about credit cards.
  
  

The link to the video The Secrect History of the Credit Card is a fantastic video that shows the dangers of misusing a credit card. It contains plenty of relevant and interesting facts and will, hopefully, help make the students aware of what could happen.

It gives plenty of facts about credit cards (like they can change the interest rates at any time even AFTER you have used the credit!) along with a history of the credit card and it's influence on society today.

---------------------------------

Because there is no curriculum I cannot link it to anything. However I feel it is a very important, yet missing, element to a young persons life and that is why I have included it here.

National Geographic

National Geographic is known the world over for producing a quality product. The National Geographic website is a fine example of a webpage resource that teachers from any grade can use, especially in science, history or social studies classes.

The website has a huge array of video's, amazing pictures and interesting articles that would be useful to students. There is also a Kids section and an area for educators and a searchable database for past articles, pictures and videos.

Because it is an American publication the information on Canada is not as obvious, so any research involving Canada usually has to be searched out. That being said, as with all National Geograpic material, it's worth the look.

-----------------------------

Because of the wide variety of stuff on the webpage I would use the National Geographic website when teaching a lesson on ancient History. There are plenty of opportunities for learning about past cultures in both the magazine but also the webpage.

When dealing with Unit Two: Measuring Time a fun class project might be a class time capsule like the time capsule from 1791 that was found in Mexico and highlighted on the National Geographic website.

The class would each get to put in an item or two that would stand the test of time, say something about who they are and be able to justify its inclusion.

The article states: "The lead box—filled with religious artifacts, coins, and parchments—was hidden in a hollow stone ball to mark the moment on May 14, 1791, when the building's topmost stone was laid, 218 years after construction had begun on the cathedral."

So I think it would be important to have a good reason for doing this, like a school anniversary or the completion of an addition to the school. Of course if nothing is happening it can still be a fun project for the class to do.

Aboriginal Business Canada

Aboriginal Peoples of Canada have, in many ways, had a tougher time of it than European Canadians. I'm not going to get into the ways they were treated, the genocide, the treaty violations by the Europeans, the residential schools and so on.

What I am going to focus on is the opportunity Aboriginal men and women have at Entrepreneurship.

Aboriginal Business Canada is an Industry Canada program that promotes the growth of commerce as one means towards economic self-sufficiency for all Aboriginal people.

It has a section for young entrepreneurs ages 18-35 that help guide them through the steps of starting and running a business. The site offers help in writing a business plan, getting the business going and financial help.

-----------------------------------

The site promises to:

• assist you in identifying small problems before they develop into big ones,
• ensure you are maintaining financial records needed for effective management and for adhering to the requirements of other lending institutions,
• review your progress,
• identify potential new opportunities arising from our knowledge of the Aboriginal marketplace in Canada and around the world, and
• measure the overall success of ABC financing activities and ensure we continue to provide effective services to clients.

-----------------------------------

This website is designed with a specific module in mind.

Module 17: Entrepreneurship for Aboriginal Peoples is an optional module in the curriculum, but if you were at a school with a high Aboriginal population like Scott Collegiate or even Robert Usher, it would be a good way to get the Aboriginal students involved.

The site is also useful for many other modules as well including: Initiating a venture, Planning and financing a venture and several more.

----------------------------------

One assignment that would be possible is to have students should explore and investigate the unique opportunities that present themselves to Aboriginal people because of their traditions, culture, and value of community decision making and co-operation. They could interview Aboriginal entrepreneurs for an assignment or look at a business venture that is based on their unique culture.

Gamequarium - Keying games

Let's be honest, sometimes keyboarding is boring.

In Business Ed we are taught to go through the keys with the students and we often dictate the keys as they type them.

"AAA...SSS...DDD...FFF" is the first half of home row. That is a good way to help the kids improve and you know what they (should) type but it can sometimes lose the kids. "It's BORING Mr. Burt" they've said.

So in an attempt to help reduce the students being bored, there are several online typing games that can be used to help them improve and some of them can be found at the Gamequarium.

Most of the games are free and all similar in that they range from easy to hard for students of varying skill levels. Alphattack is one such game where the students have to hit the key for the corresponding letter shown on a falling bomb to prevent it from exploding.

------------------------------

There is no specific curriculum like per se, but it is still a highly useful tool for keeping students engaged in the work.

For use in a classroom, this is a fun way to warm the students up, reward them for positive behaviour or just as an exercise if the students have completed an assignment and are sitting around.

If you wanted to get a link to the Evergreen curriculum you could use a keyboarding game once the all the alpha keys have been covered in Module 2: Learning to Keyboard to Touch.

Rome Reborn & Digital Roman Forum

Save Now
Ancient Rome was vividly brought to life in 2000's Oscar winning movie Gladiator starring Russell Crowe. As the movie nears its climax Crowe's character, Maximus, is brought to Rome to fight in the gladiatorial games occurring inside the roman colosseum. What we see of the roman colosseum, and all the ancient ruins in and around the city, is the result of 2000 years of mistreatment, pollution and disrepair.

While still an impressive monument (recently named one of the NEW 7 Wonders of the World) it looks old. The movie Gladiator brought the splendor of the colosseum and much of ancient Rome to vivid life. Now Rome Reborn and Digital Roman Forum have done it online.

--------------------------------

Rome Reborn offers students several digital Quicktime movies of what it would have been like for a Roman citizen to walk down the various streets. The animation is well done but the movies are small-ish in size. It does offer some amazing high resolution still images of places like the colosseum, the Forum of Julius Caesar and various shots of the city of Rome itself.

The Digital Roman Forum is another site similar to Rome Reborn in that it allows the viewer to take a digital tour of Rome. It is laid out somewhat differently and has some options Rome Reborn does not. One example is the ability to control the view of a building you want to look at (When you move your mouse the view of the building changes). It also offers Quicktime movies, and digital photos.

It offers a good browse function that allows you to find what you want faster as well. For example if a student wanted to know all the Religions structures it would allow that student to find and view the quickly.

--------------------------------

These sites would be great when teaching the Grade 9 Social Studies Time Unit.

For this type of website I would suggest a student use it when doing a project on Ancient Rome. What was the city like? Well, this site would show the class exactly what the city was like (to our best estimations anyway).

The students could also use the site to compare and contrast various aspects or characteristics of the ancient civilizations of Israel and Greece with Rome. Or, have them compare Ancient Rome with Canadian society today.

Students could also investigate some of the links between Canadian culture and Ancient Rome because many of these characteristics have come down to us through time from ancient European cultures, specifically ancient Rome.