US History and Oral History Projects 2018

For the last several years I have worked with History teachers to create student oral history projects.
Here is my post from last year. I will be working with a few classes tomorrow on setting up their project portfolio. 

This year I am thinking more about this project due to a conference I attended, where John Spencer @spencerideas discussed his book Launch and specifically called out a project and teacher that encouraged his self-directed/ (genius hour, although not a term then) "History Day Project". John discusses his teachers Mr. Darrow and Mrs. Smoot, her quote resonated with him, "when you hide your voice, you rob the world of your creativity? John cared about social justice, history and baseball.  His project (PBL) was on Jackie Robinson. Here is a link to his reflection on the importance of that project and how it shaped his voice and belief in himself. 

So this year, as I work with teachers and students, around the role of technology in the project I hope to look for ways to inspire students to select a topic they are interested or passionate about and just maybe this might be a defining point for some students.

For the past several yeas,  we have been using Google Sites for the project and I was surprised to learn you can not transfer ownership of the new Google sites with another account. I may recommend to students they use their personal gmail accounts, particularly if the project has a personal connection to their family.  I want to make sure if this story is important to students they can take the project with them or even share as part of a portfolio. Another option to share the story could be creating the story in Adobe Spark Page, however, not all students have used a Google Site to create a portfolio.  I will be checking with the teacher to review options.
Link to the presentation here http://goo.gl/i5MmLt

A few things I plan to stress this week is the sharing of the project (after graduation) filming tips now that most students use their phone and any updates to youtube.


Watch: Five tips for shooting high-quality video on your iPhone *also added to slide 9 or the presentation.  Article here - HOLD your phone in LANDSCAPE mote

A reflection and examples of the project will be posted here when completed.