The Veteran’s Day Experience

Submitted by: Social Studies Dept. (John Marshall, Ryan Conway, Kris Reece, Schuyler VanValkenburg, J. Harvey Stone, Chip Boone, & Anthony Elliot)
School: Glen Allen High School

Summary

Throughout the school, all students enrolled in Social Studies (93% of the school) formed collaborative groups to create products that display different aspects of a Veterans’ Day Experience “Museum” held at school as a part of the November Veteran’s Day Assembly. Each group created technology-based exhibits that display specific aspects of a soldier’s experience over the last century based on their research and self-taught technology skills. Students from the same History classes completed the work during Directed Study, an instructional resource period for all students throughout the first marking period. Students were not be in the same physical classroom as their group members while completing research, learning about technology display tools and constructing their exhibit, so collaboration required the use of SchoolSpace discussion boards and chat rooms as well as planning ahead and forward thinking. All students and community members were invited to tour these “exhibits” on Veteran’s Day. Based on their online research and even some interviews with community veterans, the students chose to display their findings using either web-based software, such as Capzles, Voicethread or Glogster, or computer-based programs such as Active Inspire, Movie-maker and Audacity. All students had the chance to tour these exhibits and learn from their classmate’s completed projects while simultaneously teaching others by displaying their projects.

TIPC Ratings

This project is Ideal/Target in Research & Information Fluency. Students were able to choose which technological tools would best showcase their research-based information after they had completed that research and after they had completed self-paced tutorials on several communication tools. They were graded on whether their resource (movie, flipchart, podcast, etc.) was appropriate for communicating their research.
Furthermore, students were free to find their own research, but then required to evaluate that research for accuracy, relevance and reliability before using the information in their project. Students were also required to use primary resource and given opportunities to communicate with veterans in the community who had first-hand knowledge of the topics being researched.

This project falls in the Ideal/Target range for Communication & Collaboration. The Students were required to communicate with group members who were not in the same physical classroom. To accomplish this, students had to plan ahead and assign tasks within their groups to be completed, and use online communication means, such as SchoolSpace Wiki page, SchoolSpace Live Chat, and most often, SchoolSpace Discussion boards which were set up for each group to share files and discuss their projects. Many students also met outside of school hours to create their museum exhibits.

This project falls in teh Ideal/Target category for Critical THinking & Problem Solving. Students were required to use multiple primary sources and internet-based resources to develop conclusions to assigned topics or questions. Students were encouraged to interview community veterans as an additional source of information, and many did so, recording those conversations. Because of the nature of the project, student had to solve problems as they composed their museum exhibits because they were completing the work outside of their history class and had no direct access to their teachers, but did have electronic access to each other to figure out how to use the technology tools.

This project is Ideal/Target in the Creativity & Innovation category. The students were presented with the problem that America’s veterans are not often celebrated enough in our communities, so they solved this by creating original museum exhibits that taught each other and the community about the real-world historical significance of America’s soldiers. All students toured these exhibits on Veterans Day and learned from each other about how veterans have impacted our lives. The exhibits varied from interactive flipcharts, to paintings, to mock news reports from the front lines, to original songs or movie re-enactments recorded, the best of which were compiled and displayed for all students by the school’s ITRT as a part of a culminating Veteran’s Day Assembly.