Soviet Union Personal Project Highlights

This unit on the Russian Revolution was a great opportunity for me to let go a little and see what my students can do. The assignment was a personal project on anything related to their interest and life in the Soviet Union.

The form below is a copy of what I had students submit. This allowed them to think about their interests in a step-by-step process, which teaches them what it takes to find a topic for term papers, for example.

I was excited with the results because everything I was going to teach in the same old way was addressed through the plurality of the student presentations (see highlights below).

They are not perfect, of course, but it only took a class period (77 minutes) for individuals to work on the presentations and two class periods to present -- time well spent.

Students received grades and actionable feedback via Google Classroom, and I used this highlights slide show (below) to debrief the whole project.

Dialogues From The Trenches

The changing view of war in the modern era of world history was a consequence of new technology, among other things. The letters written from the trenches of WWI were mailed home on a regular basis. With trains and mail service in full swing, the horrors of war and the deterioration of soldiers was apparent to loved ones waiting at home.

The impact of technology on changing views of societies is crucial if students are to empathize with major people events in history. This sort of empathy building also supports critical analysis of new technologies and how to predict the consequences, a skill that has never before been so dire than in the mobile age of the Internet.

The following activity was made with Docs Story Builder and the a WWI exhibit by the Library of Congress. Here are some of the student work samples, preceded by my introduction.

Click or Touch Images

Infographics: Civil War Tech

The Civil War is often referred to as the first modern war. My ninth graders studied new technology during the period to learn what was so modern about the war.

Every student was assigned one of six Civil War technologies. They researched the developments and made an infographic to present their findings. Most students used Google Drawing, while a handful used Piktochart or Canva.

The GIFF below shows the Google Form we used to vote for the infographics used in this post. 

Minnie Ball

Railroads

Telegraph

Photography

Battlefield Medicine

Embalming