Citizen Science – involving students in real world activities

Posted on December 12, 2017 by SLAV Connects

Involving students in active projects during the closing weeks of the school year is not only a productive use of the closing weeks, it’s also an opportunity to introduce students to Citizen Science and kindle a fire of enthusiasm they can follow up further over the summer holidays. Citizen science enables members of the public to participate in scientific research in collaboration with scientists and scientific organisations. It’s open to individuals or groups and is easily accessible online.

In August, Kristin Fontichiaro of Michigan University, USA, introduced the concept to SLAV conference delegates in the course of exploring data literacy and the ways in which data permeates every aspect of our lives. A partner in the 2 year project, Creating Data Literate Students, Kristin introduced real world projects that could be brought into the classroom.

Potential Citizen Science projects (scientific and historical) are:

The Zooniverse is the world’s largest and most popular platform for people-powered research. Involving hundreds of thousands of volunteer researchers worldwide, topics range from environmental projects, wildlife observation, climate, history and biology, just to name a few.

Weddell Seal Count (on Zooniverse) involves counting the number of Weddell seals in the Ross Sea area of Antarctica to establish if they are being threatened by fishing practices in the region.

SeaBirdWatch (on Zooniverse) aims to address the worldwide decline of seabirds. Action is dependent on the gathering of huge about of data relating to birds, their location, flying patterns etc. Identify and count birds from your computer at home.

BushBlitz Australia’s largest nature discovery project – a unique multi-million dollar partnership between the Australian Government through Parks Australia and the Australian Biological Resources Study, BHP Billiton Sustainable Communities and Earthwatch Australia to document plants and animals across Australia. It’s in our backyard!

Measuring the ANZACs (on Zooniverse) is a New Zealand project transcribing the personnel files of individuals who served in World War I and the South African Wars.

Operation War Diary is another wartime historical project, this time of the British Army on the Western Front during World War I and involving analysis of 1.5 million pages of unit war diaries.

Atlas of Living Australia is a collaborative, national project that aggregates biodiversity data from multiple sources and makes it freely available and usable online. Students can both contribute and use data on the site to learn about the distribution of Australian flora and fauna.

Citizen science is becoming so popular and participation so easy, new projects are launching regularly. For example the news article ‘Urgent rescue mission’ to save Australia’s frogs using smartphone app. That app is FrogID, the tool being distributed to the public by the the Australian Museum to collect frog calls from across Australia.

As you consider embarking on a Citizen Science project for the classroom, some tips for consideration from Kristin and her colleagues.

How much training of volunteers is offered?
Has this project worked with high school students before?
Are there videos, online tutorials, and other teaching resources available?
What is the role of the lead scientists? Do they have an outreach or instructional team member who is available for questions or assistance?
Can you discern political or social perspectives, and are you comfortable discussing these?
Is there an obvious educational goal, or are objectives primarily related to “doing science” or service learning work?
How social is the team with its citizen scientists? Do they use Twitter, email newsletters, tagging within online platforms etc to communicate?
Are their communications and platforms compatible with your school’s policies?
(Smith, Abilock, and Williams (in press))

As authentic assessment, rather than it being a simple observe and count exercise, Kristin and her team recommend:

Process journals/blogs
Reflective work
Oral presentation

This post has barely touched on the possibilities for involvement in Citizen Science, readers are welcome to share their experiences via Comments. SLAV members check Kristin’s presentation on the SLAV member portal.

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Header adapted from image http://www.greeniacs.com/GreeniacsArticles/Education/Citizen-Science.html

Primary sources and the ANZACS

Posted on April 27, 2015 by SLAV Connects

The commemoration of the centenary of the Gallipoli Landing during World War I has stimulated an explosion in the digital content available online. Photos from family and institution collections contribute to a comprehensive overview of the period from the images on the battlefront through to the homeland and everyday life.

These images make possible a range of rich learning activities that can extend a student’s understanding of the experience of individuals and expose them to resources to explore further in their own time, for example:

Use Ergo, State Library of Victoria – Australia and World War I to study topics such as enlistment, conscription, the homefront and propaganda supported by primary source artefacts including diaries.
Document analysis worksheets designed and developed by the education staff of the [US] National Archives and Records Administration are an excellent resource for use with primary sources. These worksheets are not new and have been refined over time. They’re in a convenient .pdf format for use either online or as printed hardcopies. Worksheets are available for the analysis of a printed document, photograph, cartoon, poster, map, artefact, motion picture and sound recording. Highly recommended.
It’s not news to any teacher to say that students love Google Images. A lesson in the Advanced Search function of Google Images is an opportunity to experiment with various search terms; with learning how to separate World War I from World War II images; how to isolate propaganda images; locate images relating to women; find images of a particular colour or from the region ‘Australia’ only. Use with Google Search Education lesson plans to enhance your own search skills and those of your students.
The number of public institutions uploading resources to Flickr: The Commons has grown steadily over the years. As Creative Commons resources, students have a wealth of resources to work with. Once again, using a range of key terms such as ANZAC, Gallipoli, World War I, WWI, students can become familiar with this constantly developing database of original images.

This centenary year can be a launching point that introduces students to an authentic range of resources they can revisit time and time again……. now they know they exist. Explore!

World War I through other eyes

Posted on August 31, 2014 by SLAV Connects

Set aside some time to explore the European Film Gateway which provides access to hundreds of thousands of historical documents preserved in European film archives ranging from photos, posters, and censorship documents to rare feature and documentary films and newsreels.

The virtual exhibition European Film and the First World War is particularly recommended as representing a unique European view of history through another set of eyes. Organised under the headings:

* At the front
* Film and propaganda
* Science and technical innovation
* Suffering in and after the war
* Beyond the trenches
* Neutral countries
* Commemorating the war

This site is ideally suited to senior students who have an understanding of the complexity of World War I and are seeking to gain an understanding from the Axis point of view in addition to the British Allies.

It explains the purpose of film and propaganda for instance, and provides examples:

To keep spirits and morale high during the hardships of war, film was discovered as an ideal medium to influence the masses. All nations fighting in the war used moving images to influence their own people.

In the video, ‘For the Empire’:

Britannia posed beside the figure of ‘Belgium’ and her dead children. What are others doing for us? A soldier sets out for war leaving his parents in a country cottage. Muddy conditions on the Western Front are shown. A letter from the front pleads for God’s sake don’t let us down.

European Film and the First World War addresses the Australian History curriculum by:

providing opportunities for students to engage in the analysis, interpretation and evaluation of historical sources,
assisting students to progressively engage in higher order tasks, for example, building an historical argument using evidence.

Through exploring and sharing their knowledge, students will expand their understanding of the World War I and view it with a more global perspective. Recommended.

Google Cultural Institute – art, history, geography

Posted on August 25, 2014 by SLAV Connects

If it’s been a while since you last visited the Google Cultural Institute, it’s time to revisit but be sure to leave time for exploration.

The Institute now consists of:

Google Art Project: Containing artworks, sculpture and furniture from large and small galleries across 40 countries. See the art in situ in galleries with a walkthrough using Google Street View. Explore the interiors of landmarks such as the Palace of Versailles or, build and share your own virtual art gallery
Historic Moments: Glimpses of significant moments in history have been created from primary source materials by people who have a story to share. The Solidarity and the Fall of the Iron Curtain: Poland 1980
World Wonders: Bringing modern and ancient world heritage sites to life using Street View and 3D modelling. Explore the natural wonders of Kakadu National Park and the historic archaeological areas of Pompeii.

See Collections:

Commemorating the First World War – background to the war, historic moments, documents and recollections
Stories of the Holocaust – perspectives from those who lived through the experience

An added experience for those who have become, or wish to explore Google+ Hangout is to host your own virtual tour and become a Tour Leader in the great art galleries of the world. Simply go to Google+ (you’ll need to sign in to Google with your account) and ‘start a video Hangout’. You’ll see the invitation to take a tour presented on the screen.

This value of this resource as a learning tool is immense. Whether the activity be historical, artistic or geographical, Google Cultural Institute offers the opportunity for students to interact with the content and to create their own objects by exploring the work of others. It’s highly recommended and supported by lesson plans for a range of year levels. Start exploring today!

History timelines as visual learning

Posted on July 24, 2014 by SLAV Connects

Timeline.tv is a British educational website focussing mostly of the history of Great Britain but also including Seven Journeys in the American West and an extensive coverage of the history of Smallpox Through Time, 1045BC to 2010. The History of Britain section is divided into categories dealing with lives of the people, rulers and government and the Empire.

This is a content-rich site with a mix of short videos (7-12 minutes) with external links to quality related sites. The videos present historical subjects in a variety of ways with associated primary artifacts, such as drawings, documents and artwork along with contemporary footage of the locations, buildings and historical landmarks. The narrator also makes the link between historical and contemporary times in an easy explanatory tone.

Timeline.tv is easy to negotiate and ideally suited to individual or small group student work. The association between events is assisted by their placement in the timeline across the bottom to the screen. So visually supportive! Students could create their own time lines from the content. This educational resource award winner from 2010 is certainly worth revisiting if it has slipped off your radar, or exploring as a new discovery.

There are many timeline tools. A couple of my favourites are: Time Rime | Timetoast
See also tools mentioned in the previous post Timeline Generators

ANZAC commemoration – family stories

Posted on June 10, 2014 by SLAV Connects

Over the past week we have witnessed news reports of Australian Prime Minister, Tony Abbott, and war service veterans attending the 70th anniversary of the D-Day landing in Normandy. The largest seaborne invasion in history. Our attention has been drawn to the veterans as they relive and recount the impact of the war years on their lives. Over the next year, as we commemorate the 100th anniversary of Anzac, we will be encouraged to reflect on the efforts of all Australians during wartime. We are fortunate to have access to a growing range of quality online resources that document the people and events involved in defending Australia. This commemoration is an opportunity to harness the creativity of our students and involve them in revisiting, and perhaps even discovering, their own family history. These World War I sites are some that will adapt well to the classroom.

100 Years of Anzac is the official website of the Australian Anzac Centenary commemorations. The Centenary is planned to be a time remember not only the original Anzacs who served at Gallipoli and the Western Front, but commemorate more than a century of service by all Australian servicemen and women. It encompasses all wars, conflicts and peacekeeping operations in which Australians have been involved. This site includes links to many relevant resources.

Gallipoli and the Anzacs Created by the Australian Government, Department of Veterans’ Affairs, this site contains a wealth of information about Gallipoli, the landing, individual accounts, photographs, diaries and the Gallipoli Peninsula today. Ideas and resources available support the study of Gallipoli for many different approaches.

World War I Diaries – Our Stories, Your Stories is a commemorative project of State Library of NSW. Through 2014 to 2019 the Library will take its collections on site, on tour and online to tell our stories, and to listen to your stories. At the heart of the commemorations is the collection which includes some 1140 volumes of diaries written by over 500 servicemen and women, supported by newspapers, photographs, maps and ephemera. Diaries will be completely digitised, transcribed and available on line. The library is inviting the public to contribute their own stories. See also World War I and Australia Research Guide

Researching Australians in World War I Research Guide developed by staff of the State Library of Victoria focuses on Australians serving in World War 1. It also includes some information relevant to Great Britain, Commonwealth nations and other combatant nations. Included is a section on nurses and women’s war occupations. This guide is a digital roadmap for any war service researcher old or young. It provides links into library records and collections with tips on how to construct a successful search and where to look for particular information.

Mapping our ANZACs by the National Archives of Australia has been available for a number of years and continues to grow in richness as people build their own scrapbooks and add family photographs. It provides an accessible interface for searching veteran war records. The interactivity of this site is an ideal teaching opportunity as students trace their own family members and then potentially, contribute to the collection. It’s a site that can stimulate family conversations and potentially lead to the revealing of family stories. A reminder about War & Identity- Education, a website of the Anzac Day Commemoration Committee. This site has also been available for some time but the interactive resources are well worth a reminder as schools introduce 1:1 computing devices.

Finally, Lives of the First World War – is a UK First World War Centenary project. Presently in its infancy, the Imperial War Museum is creating this project to bring material from museums, libraries, archives and family collections from across the world together in one place. They hope to inspire people of all ages to explore, reveal and share the life stories of those who served in uniform and worked on the home front. Australians are invited to contribute their family stories to help build this Commonwealth resource.

This is not an exhaustive list of Australian World War I resources. It is a sample of the material available for students to develop their own content, contribute their own stories and develop a greater understanding of their place in history.

Do you have a resource to recommend? Please share your knowledge via the comments option.

What was there – historical photos and Google Maps

Posted on June 5, 2014 by Linda Angeloni

What was there uses historical images and Google Maps to look at how places have changed overtime. You can add photos to specific locations and then using Google Street View, overlay images from the past and present.

A particularly nice feature of the interface is the option to fade between photographs and the street view image. Anyone over 13 can register with the service and add images, tag by location and year, save locations, and position images to overlay with street view.

There are some great examples of cities that have thousands of photographs pinned to different locations, including New York which has around 2000 images. Closer to home, the Victorian regional town of Bairnsdale has around 60 historical images pinned to shops and community buildings.

With so many cultural institutions digitising collections and making images freely available online, tools like What Was There give students and teachers the opportunity to connect to local history in new ways. The State Library of Victoria has thousands of out of copyright images of regional towns around Victoria that can be used freely for educational purposes.

Imagine students finding images of their town or suburb’s main street a hundred years ago and comparing it to today? Or even their own house or school? Try searching for your town or suburb name in the SLV catalogue and see what you can find.

World War I centenary resources

Posted on April 1, 2014 by Linda Angeloni

With the centenary of the First World War set to begin in July this year, many institutions will be launching new sites, programs and resources for schools. But there’s already a lot out there to explore.

Locally, the Australian War Memorial is a key institution when looking at the Great War and the history of ANZAC. They also have an education blog which includes mystery objects, details of new resources, acquisitions and personal stories from the collection. The ANZAC Centenary website from the Victorian Government and the existing ANZAC website from the Department of Veteran Affairs are also great resources looking at the Australian experience of WWI.

For a different perspective, the BBC’s Schools WWI site is a wonderful resource to explore Britain’s involvement and includes relevant media from their archive. The British Library’s WWI site has over 500 primary sources and articles from experts and academics looking at what life was like at the time. The British Library is also a contributor to the Eurpeana 1914-1918 site which provides collection materials, commentary and perspectives from different collections all over Europe. The National Archives UK WWI website is also a beautiful resource including personal diaries and an extensive collection of digitised material.

The American broadcaster PBS also has an interesting website from their documentary series The Great War and the Shaping of the 20th Century.

These resources are just a taste of what is currently available and many more resources, digitising projects, programs and events are likely to begin mid 2014.

History resources from Sovereign Hill

Posted on March 7, 2013 by slvadmin

In this guest post Peter Hoban, Education Officer at Ballarat’s Sovereign Hill, introduces the comprehensive range of online resources and events produced by the Sovereign Hill education team.

Sovereign Hill Education is using online tools to make AusVELS history accessible to teachers and students.

Our free webinar series for teaching History will kick off this year with a presentation from the staff of Canadian Lead PS. This innovative school trialled AusVELS History across the whole school in 2012 culminating in a wonderful school community history night called “Back to the Future Fair”. The night featured student work amidst community group presentations and created a real sense of excitement and a real audience for their students. Teachers will discuss their experiences in a one-hour after school webinar on 20th of March.

This program inspired us to develop a teaching kit for Level 5 History. Called The Settlement of Victoria, the kit provides links to online collection items from some of Australia’s most reputable institutions so students can study the fascinating story of the settlement of our state. The kit culminates in students using the skills they have learned to complete a research project about a famous Victorian and a Diigo bookmarking group has been developed to share useful research websites for this project. It is hoped that teachers and students will share good websites they have found to help other students from across Victoria. The free online kit is being supported by web conferences to explore it. The first is on the 14th of March.

The second webinar features two authors. Peter FitzSimons has recently published “Eureka: The Unfinished Revolution” and has a string of other titles to his credit. Many teachers will also be familiar with Doug Bradby, author of the “Seriously Weird History Series” that kids love. Both will be online to discuss the importance of story-telling in engaging audiences from 4.30pm on 2 May.

Lastly, Sovereign Hill Education has been working with local secondary History teachers to provide good ideas and resources. An AusVELS History Diigo group presents links tagged according to AusVELS but at present has a strong focus on Years 7 and 9. An Edmodo group called History Teachers PLN has also been created so teachers can ask questions of each other and seek advice. All history teachers are invited to sign up to Edmodo and join this group. You can use the group code i4pz2q or join using this link.

To book for any of these sessions or to find out more call (03) 5337 1188.

Thanks to Peter and the rest of the team for putting together such fabulous resources. We look forward to attending the upcoming webinars.

Google Cultural Institute

Posted on October 22, 2012 by Cam Hocking

With History Week kicking off in Victoria today seems like the perfect time to take a look at the new Google Cultural Institute. The project brings together a number of historical and cultural resources from cultural institutions around the world. The site features a range of digitised items, curated timelines and a number of interesting digital projects.

The Cultural Institute features resources from institutions such as the Nelson Mandela Centre of Memory and Anne Frank House, along with photographic archives from organisations like Life and Getty Images. You can select the institution or decade you are interested in by clicking on the Explore button. Context is provided to many of the digitised items in the form of curated timelines produced by the relevant institutions. A great example of this is the Imperial War Museum’s D-Day timeline.

Curated timelines provide context to the items displayed

The site also brings together a number of digital projects that you may already seen, such as the Google Art Project or World Wonders (with streetview images of the Great Barrier Reef and Scott’s Hut). A particular favourite with library staff has been the Versailles 3D project, where you can help Louis XIV build his palace.

While the curated timelines and digital projects offer a great deal of value, you can also browse archives using a general search term. Items can be narrowed down with a date slider and modified by topics such as place, event or object type. It’s a similar process to a standard Google search and may suggest that soon the Cultural Institute will be a standard Google search option in the same way News, Images and Video are now.

It’s clear that Google aims for the Cultural Institute to become a repository for a range of artefacts from across the world, moving items from individual websites to a single archive. It is an interesting move to try and create a place where all cultural material can be stored and seems to continue Google’s attempts to position themselves as the holders of culture and knowledge (as they are also doing with their book scanning project). Whether their lofty ambitions are successful remains to be seen, while some may again call into question the true motivations of the company. But for the moment there is no doubt that the Cultural Institute is a useful site and well worth exploring.

School Library Association of Victoria

Tag Archives: History