I’m thinking about trying several things in the following year. Apart from using Moodle still more and perhaps getting more of my colleagues hooked up to it I’d like to try some kind of classblogs. I’m still not sure if I do it from within Moodle or get some free blogs from Blogger et.al.

Moodle will offer a protected environment for my students. This should help to limit fears and get them to actually write something.
On the other hand, a blog on the internet definitely increases motivation – especially considering that strangers can post comments.

What to do?

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Here are some interesting links for history teachers:

• The National Archives have complete lesson plans over here. Very nice stuff. I wonder if there are similar sites for German history teachers.
• Similar to the above, but mostly useful if you are teaching history in English is SchoolHistory.co.uk – online history lessons, revision, games, worksheets, quizzes and links. Definitely a fun site to use!
• And last but not least: If Historical Events had Facebook Statuses. I think these would be great lesson starters if I only knew how to adapt them to our curriculum.

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You might already know the famous Horrible Histories by Terry Deary. If you live in the UK and have kids you might even know that there is a Horrible Histories show on CBBC. Here is an example in case you have no idea what I’m talking about:

I want a show like this in German TV (or on DVD or in the Medienzentren) now! No, not now, but yesterday. Why don’t we create such a show or, adapt or dub it? History is full of humour and irony. Time to show that to our students, too!

(via Britische Sitcoms)

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Sollte jemand noch mehr Ideen oder Unterrichtsmaterialien für so ziemlich alle Fächer suchen, wird er/sie/es hier sicherlich fündig werden.

Wolfgang Autenrieth hat dort mehr als 2010 Links zu Arbeitsblättern, Tipps usw zusammengetragen und nach Fächergruppen sortiert! Vielen Dank für diese Wahnsinnsarbeit!

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..that is: I’m ready to test Moodle in up to three of my classes. I’ve taken down my personal website and installed Moodle 1.9.x (weekly whatever) on it.

So far I’ve already started a course for the book I’m reading in an English class. Two history courses (on industrialisation and the First World War) will be added shortly. Tomorrow evening, the first bunch of students is going to get their feet wet with creating accounts in Moodle and giving the system a go.

I plan on using one lesson to get them ready with the system and another two hours of first real work in it. This should give them enough time to try out forum and chat as well as the glossary and whatever nice tasks I can think of.

BTW: as a starting point, this book is a nice introduction to Moodle.

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Have you ever wished you and your students could collaborate online by …

• … sticking notes to fridges?
• … rearranging those notes?
• … commenting on these notes?

I know I have. So I was very excited when Opera Software introduced Unite into their browser.  Unite offers several applications running in your browser. One of them is the Fridge, which let’s you collect notes from other surfers. (These surfers don’t need to surf with Opera, BTW.)

The only remaining problem was that I really don’t like to let my computer running when I’m not at home, so the Fridge would not be available for several hours per day. Add to that the different surfing habits of my students and you realise the problem: When the Fridge was available, no one but me was surfing. When the students were connected to the net, the Fridge was unavailable.

Luckily, there is Wallwisher. Accessible 24/7 and no need to keep my computer turned on. Just how I like it!

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Let’s face it: reading is necessary for learning.

However, reading a text and comprehending or creating meaning from it are two different things.  To help students you can show them various strategies that will help them get along. Quite a number of those strategies have been collected here. Some even with videos!

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This book (Moodle 1.9 for Second Language Teaching) seems to be exactly what I was looking for. Strangely, there are no reviews on Amazon for it yet. The contents are impressive, as is the price tag: a hefty €35-40.
The book is promoted in the Moodle Language teaching community and probably worth the money, so I’ll get it eventually and read it.

Now, is there a similar book for history teaching?

For starters I’ll read the teachers’ manual here (German).

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