Calisphere and iPods in the Classroom: New technology brings California history to life

Over four Saturdays in January, February, and March, Bay Area K-12 teachers learned simple and practical ways to team a cutting-edge technology — an iPod touch, PowerPoint, and online tools such as MovieMaker and Garageband — with Calisphere’s thousands of primary source images to bring history to life in the classroom in ways that surprised, delighted, and inspired them.

Given the freedom to join images to sound, they learned to use MovieMaker to create movies based on historic images, complete with soundtracks, and to revitalize PowerPoint image presentations with sound and music.  They also learned how easy it was to use the iPod touch to display PowerPoint images on their classroom TV, eliminating the need for projectors or laptops.  Most of all, they opened up to new ways to incorporate technological solutions into their teaching that will excite and engage their students right away:

1. “I’m going to start using what I learned on Monday! Changing an iMovie project to a simpler PowerPoint with narration, or a Garageband podcast with an image project.”
2. “I can use this for social studies units, to build connection and empathy, and dialogue.  To turn students on to history.”
3. “I can put all of my students’ projects on the iPod touch.  The students will probably like using the iPod to present because it is new technology.”
4. “I will use the iPods for lectures as well as for the display of documents.  I also will teach the students how to use the technology to create their own presentations.”
5. “I will bring these skills and instructions to my colleagues in literacy training and early release professional development days.”
6. “The Calisphere photos are fantastic, and I appreciated the chance to talk about uses of them with colleagues from my district and other schools.”

Watch two short videos showing participants engaged in the process!
[Video] Marin session, January 2008
[Video] Oakland session, Februrary 2008

These powerful days of discovery were the result of a partnership between the California Digital Library (CDL), University of California Irvine History Project (UCIHP), and the California Department of Education California Technology Assistance Project (CTAP  Region IV).  The participants were history/social studies educators (teachers and library media teachers), primarily in grades 4, 8, and 11.
The partners had four goals for the project:

1. Promote awareness and increase usage of Calisphere among California teachers
2. Share best practices for teaching with primary source materials
3. Show teachers how to incorporate technology that will excite and engage their students
4. Disseminate Calisphere training materials to all CTAP regions

The sessions were uniformly praised by participants.  “I am very excited about this wealth of information that was shown to me today!” reported one teacher.  “There were a lot of real tangible skills and information delivered at the training.” Another said, “Having the opportunity to work with people who work on Calisphere and the UCI History Project HOT (Humanities Out There) curriculum was fantastic.  I felt inspired.”
 
The proof of the project’s success lies in the fact that it will be repeated for a new set of teachers and librarians in June, and again in September.  For more information on these sessions, visit CTAP’s iTouch History Calisphere web site.

Calisphere is the University of California’s free web site of primary sources for educators.  Calisphere brings history to life.  Visit www.calisphere.universityofcalifornia.edu today.