social studies
Engaging Students with the Values of Democracy
By Cleary Vaughan-Lee. Educators across the country are eager to integrate the values of democracy into the classroom in connection to the current political landscape.
Civic Education: Can Games Make the Grade?
By: Victoria Van Voorhis. Game-based learning invites students to experience subjects such as civics for themselves in new ways, motivating them to learn even more about the content.
Welcome to the Unclassroom
By: Dr. Jan Rashid. Have you heard of unconferences? Here’s how our school district is using flexible learning spaces and 24/7 access to digital content to create unclassrooms--the ever-evolving classrooms of the future.
4 Strategies to Bring History to Life For Students
By: Sophia Sineath. It can be difficult for teachers to find the time to explore inquiry-based learning, but here are four strategies to help unlock the power of history for students by discovering the primary resources found in local archives.
In Defense of Liberal Arts AND Employability
A liberal arts degree can be a great foundation for work and life. Students pursuing a liberal arts degree should build a portfolio of work based learning evidence and have a first job in mind approach graduation. Likewise, students aiming for technical employment shouldn’t be shortchanged when it comes to skills that will power lifelong learning and opportunity.
Getting Smart on Big History Project
A Getting Smart bundle on a free, online, open source curriculum featuring units of study from 13.8 billion years in the past until today that seeks to expand our knowledge of history, the natural sciences, and the impact humans have had on the universe, in partnership with Big History Project.
Blending Middle Grade Humanities
The latest Getting Smart Bundle, sponsored by The Nellie Mae Education Foundation, outlines best practices and importance of blending middle grade humanities.
Infographic: The History of Education
The folks at Boundless who last brought us the EdTech Buzzwords Infographic are back with The History of Education. The graphic takes a look at how formal education began, changes along the way, current day and predictions for the next twenty years. Do you agree with the predictions?
Big History: An Organizing Principle for a Compelling Class, Block or School
After Bill Gates saw a series of lectures by David Christian on big history Gates said, "He really blew me away. Here's a guy who's read across the sciences, humanities, and social sciences and brought it together in a single framework. It made me wish that I could have taken big history when I was young, because it would have given me a way to think about all of the school work and reading that followed. In particular, it really put the sciences in an interesting historical context and explained how they apply to a lot of contemporary concerns."
The Gadgeting of School
Green Dot Public Schools achieves greater API growth; IBM guarantees a job after graduation in NYC; Pearson launches nation's first complete iPad-based social studies program