PKhistorywebsite

For your comments, identify the name of the website and insert a hyperlink if possible. Then explain how you might use this interactive resource to (a) __activate__, (b) __assess__, and/or (c) __build__ **students' prerequisite knowledge for your lesson/unit.**

EXAMPLE from last semester: >
 * Amanda Kedra**
 * [|Pathways to Freedom] - This website allows students to look closely at Maryland's people, stories, and events surrounding the efforts of the Underground Railroad. One of the pages on this website, titled 'Mapping Maryland's Freedom Trail,' offers an interactive map for students to explore locations in Maryland that are linked to the people and places of the Underground Railroad. For example, the map shows historic sites from the nineteenth century that exist today, designates which states allowed slavery and which states prohibited it, and illustrates three routes which Maryland slaves followed to freedom. The website poses many questions which can be useful to **activate** students' prior knowledge. Also, in the process of answering these questions, students can **build** upon their initial answers by using the website's map and other visual resources to examine these questions more completely and from a new perspective. The website also displays many vivid primary source documents, including eyewitness accounts, which can **activate** relevant knowledge as well as supplement textbook information. Additionally, several of the readings on the website are titled with questions, helping students see the focus of each reading. For example, one question asks: 'What was the Underground Railroad? Why was it called that?' Questions like these can be used to **assess** students' prerequisite knowledge. This can be done first by having students attempt to answer the questions on their own and later asking students to answer the same questions once they have completed research. The variety of questions requires students to engage in both lower-level thinking as well as higher-level thinking. Overall, the website promotes students to develop fundamental academic skills by encouraging them to think like historians.
 * [|Eternal Egypt] - This website is visually appealing and consists of many resources to provide background knowledge on Ancient Egyptian civilization. It is highly interactive and user-friendly. In particular, the 'Connections' page is helpful for showing how Egyptian artifacts, characters, and places are connected to each other. These concept maps can be used to **activate** students' knowledge as they make connections between pieces of historical evidence. This process can also be tailored to **assess** students, in the sense that they can first make connections and then explain the reasons behind the connections they made, i.e. why they are logical and justified. The website is organized into several topics which can **build** on students' knowledge by grouping particular subtopics together. For the most part, resources are grouped conceptually. For example, there are categories which cover Agriculture, Arts and Crafts, Commerce and Trade, Government, Science, and Society and Culture. These are further divided into more specific topics which are explained in great detail on the website. To **build** upon existing knowledge, students can identify connections between these larger topics and analyze how they influenced one another in Ancient Egypt.

Tiffany McClay [|Pathways to Freedom] is a site that walks users through the paths the slaves in the American south took trying to gain their freedom. It is visually appealing and authentic. The site seems easy to navigate and learn from. One feature of the site is "Following the footsteps" which puts students into a slaves shoes and gives them choices that would need to be made in hopes of gaining freedom. The story on this tab is read orally and is in writing so students can see and hear the words to help with comprehension and understanding. This would be good for **building** students' knowledge. The site could be used as a way to introduce the freedom trail to students. It provides background knowledge as to the conditions of slavery and the paths to freedom. While navigating through the interactive story the reader has to make the major decisions for the characters. These represent the decisions runaway slaves made in real life. It is a good way to provide students with a realistic background and idea of life as a slave. It can also help **activate** students' knowledge. That same feature may help students tap into what they already know while they make the decisions for the runaway slave. It is a good interactive refresher for students who may already have background knowledge on slavery.

Ashley Ravo [|BBC History Interactives] is a great interactive website that features content for many areas of history. There are games, interactive timelines and maps, videos, and picture galleries that could be used at different points within lessons. The gallery and/or timeline features could be used to help **activate** student knowledge. Viewing images related to a topic could help students connect to the image and help them generate questions to answer throughout the unit. The timelines could help students orient themselves in respect to what they have learned and what they are about to learn. This also works to **build** on student knowledge. I personally found the timeline and map features to be helpful in visualizing events taking place, especially in areas that I am not geographically familiar with. The games feature could be used to informally **assess** students in a way that is fun for them. Some of the games quiz content, and others require students to use their knowledge of content to make connections to larger themes. [|American Memory Photo Collections] is another great website that I personally use as a resource for a history class I am currently taking. I use this site as a way to connect images to historical themes I read about. This is a great way to **build** student knowledge. Being able to associate an image with a theme could help students better remember what they learn. Images can also work to **activate** student knowledge. For example, showing images of monuments, technology, or important figures can help students recall what they may know about the featured image, or allow them to connect it to something in their personal lives and experiences. This website does not really have any **assessment** tools, but the images featured on the website are considered primary sources which could be helpful to students looking for sources to use in papers and projects. If students were required to use images in their projects or papers, teachers would be able to assess how well students can use the images on this site to connect to major themes as well as how well they can complete the proper citations for images.

Andre Guilbert [|BBC History Interactives]is an awesome resource for history teachers. It offers a series of interactive animations that guide students through significant events in history. A great example of this is the animation on the Battle of Somme in World War I. The animation graphically displays all of the key strategic points of the battlefield, sites of major defeats and victories for both sides, and really helps students **build** background knowledge to fully understand the concepts at work. The animation also outlines how mistakes made during the Battle of Somme helped the allies achieve victory in 1918 which assists students in **activating** their knowledge by drawing connections between the Battle of Somme and the end of the war.

Jacob Ricci The use of such interactive websites has great potential for a variety of uses in the history classroom due in no small part to the nature of studying history. Many students find the subject boring or uninteresting as they are not actively engaged in the learning. This is exacerbated by the overuse of textbooks and a heavy emphasis on knowing the name, date, and place associated with event. This particular interactive site, [], is a great tool to change that. Through the use of photographs, maps and documents in an interactive way, the students have the ability to guide their learning, to focus on what interests them and to notice things from a human perspective often left out of a textbook. Combined with a book, the resources provide an excellent springboard for class discussions as well as hide-and-seek type activities to encourage students to think critically, draw conclusions, and see the relationships between events and ideas. If a teacher were to go through some part of a photograph collection with students before reading, asking students what they thought of the images and other related questions, the class could together develop a focus question for their reading. This is only one of the multitude of methods of utilizing the resource for frontloading information and guiding student reading. Through that same activity, a measurement of student knowledge on the subject will also be gleaned from the questions asked and the answers supplied by other students. Worksheets could also be utilized to guide students through a map or photograph collection, asking them to comment on what they are seeing and questioning why they would be shown the images. The list of possibilities is nearly endless, with each possibility providing a new way to gauge, activate, and build student knowledge by encouraging them to think critically, evaluate, and then respond.

Yvette Littmann
 * I was first drawn to the ** BBC History Interactives ** by the title as I have found great teaching plans through the BBC before. This site **activates** student knowledge very well because it includes videos and games that students will likely have fun watching and/or playing. By making historical concepts fun, students will be more likely to associate history with positive thoughts and as a result will have a better chance of remembering everything that they learn. Such games can also be used to **assess** student knowledge since many of the games require the player to match concepts, recall information from the included videos and worksheets, and so on. Lastly, this site definitely **builds** students' background knowledge. Examples include the site's videos and animations which help students grasp a better understanding of the basic historical concepts before moving on to interrelated, yet more difficult, information in other parts of the site, like the provided worksheets.
 * The **Pathways to Freedom** site is also really neat and is just as interactive for students who are motivated by visual aids. Students' prior knowledge is **activated** when noticing familiar names (like Harriet Tubman and Frederick Douglas) and by the ability to imagine themselves as a slave. Imagination forces students to connect personal feeling and knowledge to historical facts and can also lead to further analysis. Students will have a better understanding of why slaves used the Freedom Trail if they understand why slaves felt imprisoned. This kind of analysis leads directly into the site's ability to **build** student knowledge. With prior knowledge in hand, students can look at the primary sources and maps included to access higher level thinking. These tools force students to remember basic information in order to understand new and more complex information. This site **assesses** students by asking lots of questions that can be answered by both lower- level and higher- level learners. Easier questions can be found in the "About the Underground Railroad" section and more difficult questions can be found through the included sources in the "Eyewitnesses to History" section.
 * Overall, I think both websites are pretty neat and can easily be used during class time and by students at home.