Digital Materials and Sources
On the Digital Components
Developing the digital strategies has been a challenging and rewarding process. As I discussed in my essay detailing the construction of the unit, I have used digital comments, especially Padlet and Google Documents to facilitate large and small group discussions. Yet, students need to practice digital literacy beyond this. Today, more and more of what historians do is done online. Because of this, we spend time as a class locating and evaluating primary sources through databases and websites. Additionally, we use YouTube and online images as multimedia tools to explore and spark discussions. As I mentioned in my teaching philosophy, I do not want to be a digital technology “avoider.” I can certainly see the many promises and benefits of learning and teaching digital literacy. This is as much a learning process for me as it is a teaching one. I aim to grow and incorporate greater multimedia and digital technological components as I learn more.
A quick note on my growth with digital components: I researched and found Magic School AI, a tool that helped me to distill my ideas and generate a table for the unit’s rubrics. After generation, I made edits, added information, and altered the specifications to shape the rubrics to my specifications.