Archives: June, 2008

LEARN NC has published a number of lesson plans and learner’s guides designed to help teachers and students interact with historical newspapers in the classroom. Created by historian Kathryn Walbert, these resources model the process of historical inquiry, demonstrating that newspapers can yield fascinating information — far richer than the mere words on the page.

The following lesson plans help students to analyze newspaper articles, editorials, and advertisements, situating them in their historical contexts:

“For What Is a Mother Responsible?” — Idealized motherhood vs. the realities of motherhood in antebellum North Carolina

Teaching About Slavery Through Newspaper Advertisements

“A female raid” in 1863: Using newspaper coverage to learn about North Carolina’s Civil War homefront

A series of learner’s guides introduces students to the use of historical newspapers as primary sources and provides key questions for reading them:

Reading Newspapers: Factual Reporting

Reading Newspapers: Editorial and Opinion Pieces

Reading Newspapers: Reader Contributions

Reading Newspapers: Advertisements

And the following interactive guides step through layers of questions, guiding readers through the process of historical inquiry:

Reading Primary Sources: Newspaper Editorials

Reading Primary Sources: Newspaper Advertisements

How can we best leverage Internet connectivity to the outside world? What does it mean to prepare students for success in a global society? Not just an awareness session of available Internet resources, this session demonstrates how teachers can develop a global vision for preparing their students for their future. Bobby Hobgood of LEARN NC will present Globalizing the Classroom: Simple Strategies Using Free, Web-based Tools and Resources at the Western Region Education Service Alliance Summer Leadership Conference in Asheville, North Carolina on Tuesday, July 1, 2008 at 9:45.

The session will introduce an S.E.A.R.C.H. strategy for differentiating instruction. Participants will leave with instructions for how to integrate web-based resources to make real-world and my-world connections.

LEARN NC is seeking teachers to write a second round of innovative lesson plans that use multimedia to teach world history, culture, literature, and religion. We’ll provide the multimedia; you provide the teaching ideas, and we’ll pay you for your time.

Over the past two years we have built a collection of photographs and audio recordings from various countries in Asia and Latin America, and we’ve built slideshows around some of these photographs, as well, including a retelling of the Ramayana.

To make these resources more useful to teachers, we want to build instructional resources that integrate them into North Carolina’s curriculum. We’re looking for detailed instructional plans that make innovative and meaningful use of the media to promote students’ understanding of other cultures. The plans can address any curriculum area, not just social studies. (Science, anyone?)

If you’re interested, please contact us and tell us your ideas for using our media resources for global education. If we accept your application, we’ll ask you to complete the lesson plan(s) by August 31, and we’ll pay $500 for each completed lesson plan.

Reminder: LEARN NC will officially change its learning management system from Blackboard to Moodle on Monday, June 23. If you taught a LEARN NC course on Blackboard this year and want to teach it again in 2008-2009, you must complete a Moodle training course first.

Free Training
If you’ve already competed Blackboard Training with LEARN NC, you can get trained in Moodle for free. We’re offering free “Moodle Transition Training for Blackboard Instructors “ for everyone who has completed LEARN NC Blackboard Training, whether you took it in-person or on the Web. This training program is self-paced to allow you to quickly move through sections you’ve mastered. However, a LEARN NC facilitator will be available to answer any questions you may have. If you haven’t completed Blackboard Training with LEARN NC, you can sign up for our standard “Moodle Training“ course.

To sign up for “Moodle Tranisition Training for Blackboard Instructors,” please register here.

If you wish to teach courses in Moodle, you must complete the course before December 31, 2008 to take the course for free. After December 31, you must pay the full fee ($150) for “Moodle Training.”

LEARN NC is making some major changes to its website this month! We’ve been working on the new layout and design for several months, and the new site will go live Friday, June 20.

Why are we making the changes?

We’ve been developing a great deal of content lately that simply didn’t fit well into the current site. It’s hard to find, and as a result, teachers aren’t easily able to use it.

How did we decide what changes to make?

A combination of usability tests, website usage data, user feedback, and informal conversations with teachers told us what teachers use and don’t use and what they like and don’t like.

What new features will be added?

The search tool will be streamlined and easier to use, and the navigation has been simplified. We’ve also tried to make our original published content for teachers and students — lesson plans, student activities, best practices, multimedia, even help — more easily accessible and usable. We’re also providing a full catalog of our online courses. Finally, the new site will be easier for us to maintain — which means we can spend more time developing and publishing new resources for North Carolina’s classrooms.

Are any features going away?

“LEARN NC for Students” will no longer exist in its present form. We found that this part of the site didn’t get nearly as much use as other parts, and we want to focus our energies on serving our core audience — teachers. The “Hot Topics” pages for each grade level will still be available, though, and a single section of the new website will house “Learning Materials,” resources you can use with students or that students can use on their own.