This source is the best for comparing and contrasting primary sources that might show conflicting viewpoints in history. I've worked extensively with the ones on Mesoamerican history (Moctezuma, Cortes, La Malinche) and they are so intriguing for students to work with!

I highly recommend using Flipgrid as a tech tool for exploring Social Science standards creatively. Flipgrid allows students to engage in video discussions, analyzing historical events from multiple perspectives. By creating prompts and sharing resources, students can reflect on the causes and impacts of historical events while engaging in respectful dialogue with peers. Flipgrid fosters critical thinking, collaborative learning, and assessment opportunities, making it a valuable tool for Social Science education.

Flip is an excellent tech tool to use in the classroom for almost any subject area, including social science. It allows students to respond to prompts in video form and can be used to help develop communication and collaboration skills. It can be easily set up using a variety of setting options that a teacher may use to control video length, visibility, and viewer ability to like or comment on published videos. The videos can be watched and evaluated whole-class or in pairs, depending on teacher preference.

I am only starting to explore and experiment with AI tools, but 2 tools I think could be fun and useful from Magic School are the song generator and the youtube question generator. You can ask Magic School to create an Epic Rap Battle of History between historical figures being studied and have students analyze the songs and share their thoughts on how well it was done, or what they would change, or come up with their own ideas for who they would like to see included.

I think including videos is really helpful. A lot of people, myself included, really engage more when there are visuals to help understanding. I have used Edpuzzle a lot for warm up assignments and to extend learning beyond the textbook, but I love how I can put in any youtube link in Magic School and create my own Edpuzzle of sorts pretty quickly. You can enter what type of questions you want, the grade level, and how many questions you want. Sometimes I run it through a few times to get more questions to pick and choose from. It will tell you the time stamps for when it is best to enter the question as well. Google Classroom lets you add questions now to youtube videos, and the timestamps from Magic School make it really quick to put out a video with questions. I like it as a warm up because students can watch the videos independently and sometimes it's nice to throw in a multiple choice questions that just gets them to stop and notice important points in the video and process information that will be useful for discussion later. Recently I did this with various videos about different Chinese dynasties, but then the students had to do a project synthesizing that information later.

I have a few students who are recent immigrants and just starting to learn English. Sometimes videos I might want to use from YouTube do not offer Spanish or Chinese subtitles as I need for those students. This tech tool allows you to change that and make the content accessible to students in another language.

Social Science requires a lot of reading and note taking in order to understand and learn. My tech tool is Google Slides:

• An activity to divide and conquer a unit for a test review I will have students create a Google Slide. I have access to the Google Suite and have found it to have a lot of versatility. I divide the Unit into sections and have students work in pairs. I explain they need to create one slide that has a title, one to two images and 2-3 bullet points that summarize their portion of the unit. Then we screen share the slides and students present their findings while the other students take notes. It allows students to collaborate, speak, present and prepare for an entire unit test.

• Another way to use Google Slides is to use it for Hexagonal Thinking activities.

https://www.freewordcloudgenerator.com/generatewordcloud

I made a WordCloud for World War II.

Above is a screenshot of it:

I might use something like this with students to introduce some key terms of an assignment to them, such as these key ideas of World War II.  This demonstrates a use of the social science Writing Standards for Literacy in History/Social Studies, Science, and Technical Subjects 6–12, Production and Distribution of Writing, 6. “Use technology, including the Internet, to produce, publish, and update individual or shared writing products, taking advantage of technology’s capacity to link to other information and to display information flexibly and dynamically.”

When Christopher Columbus came across the sea

He lied to his crew, what a thing to do

When they landed in Hispaniola, the way he treated people was whack

Especially how he greeted the Arawak

I use Flocabulary at the beginning of a lesson to introduce a topic, mid lesson to provide a brain break and different access to instruction, and at the end of a lesson to provide a review and closure. I often catch students, and myself, singing along to the songs. Music is such an important way for students to learn and access information, and it can be a ton of fun. The only note about Flocabulary is that there is a paywall for access. I am in my seventh year of subscribing and think the videos and learning are such highlights for my students that I don't see stopping anytime soon. - Hannah Swernoff

Pixton is a fan favorite among my students. I have them present to finished project and act out the voice bubbles with their friends.

I think it is a creative way to take a different view of history. Students can have conversations with a historical figure, recreate an event, teach a concept, the possibilities are endless. Pixton provides a wide variety of backgrounds, outfits, poses, facial expressions, and items that can be place in the characters hands. You can also add text boxes, thought bubbles, or dialogue bubbles.

The one negative is that the free version is very limited. I get a yearly subscription (I think it was $90). The yearly subscription give you a wide variety of historical clothing and backgrounds that can be blended into just about any period.

Nearpod allows you to add interactive questions to any presentation or video - this is a great way to poll students, gather opinions, and even have them draw something. I found this very helpful if you have a particularly quiet class OR if you have some dominate voices in the room. It ensures that you get feedback from everyone.

Another plus is that students can interact with the presentation live with you or asynchronously on their own time. Either way, you will see their responses. Your absent students don't miss out on the information and you can still gauge their understanding. - Sarah Finn-Barajas

This gave me an idea for my future Social Studies classroom. Wix Classroom would be a great student learning portfolio that they can create either at the beginning of the school year, semester, or the beginning of a new unit. Students can directly type or upload research reports, pictures from a particular time period they’re studying that stood out to them, videos, notes or blog posts of their “take away” from that day’s lesson or reading, vocabulary and their definitions etc. 

They can also create a website based on the specific content being taught. For example, students in the 11th grade are learning about how farmers were affected by industrialization. After the content is taught, student’s can take a side whether they are for or against the Farmers Alliance. If they are for, they can create a website with information, pricing charts, economic data, and pictures persuading others to back their agenda. If they are against it, they can build a website showing their progressive side. 

In total, using WIX classroom is a great way to get students involved in their social studies learning experience. Not only are they showing proof and taking ownership of their learning, but they are also integrating digital literacy with subject-specific knowledge to better prepare them for the 21st century workforce.

The team that I will be working with advises me to use SeeSaw as a way to (1) allow students to complete work with some choices as to how they complete it (for example, it’s possible to allow written responses as well as recorded responses), (2) to sort all activities easily by standard (to be sure that I have evidence of each standard that is organized in such a way that it is easy to see if any student is missing work), and (3) to have a system that discourages cheating (as the teachers I will be working with claim that loading a PDF that students type on top of is a way to discourage sharing information -- because the format does not allow for an easy copy and paste).

The downside to this system is that the free version is limited, but teachers say it is still very valuable even within those limits.

For example, this tool can be ideal for reviewing historical events and their contexts every two weeks.

https://www.gimkit.com/

This Tech Tool would work well in a social science classroom because it couls be used to check for understanding at the end of a unit before a unit exam. For example, I could use this with 11th grade US History students near the end of their 1920s unit when we are reviewing the key questions of the unit. I could ask students a series of questions about the political, social, and economic extremes we covered in class about this decade. Rather than having them work on a study guide, this would give the students a better understanding of what they have a good grasp about and what they still need to study.

I most frequently use the "Printable Doc" feature and often modify questions or instructions. For example, I might blank out certain words in the summary and ask students to fill in the blanks. Another example is this worksheet created for a news clip about Indigenous youth making the first descent of the undammed Klamath river in 300 years.

--Rebecca Longworth

Dollar Street is a powerful visual resource that lets students explore how families around the world live and is organized by income level rather than country. Teachers can use it to introduce or reflect on units related to global inequality, economic systems, culture, geography, or human development. Students can compare real homes, possessions, and daily routines across income brackets, helping them challenge stereotypes and connect data to real-life experiences. It’s perfect for sparking critical thinking, empathy, and global awareness.

-Jacob

For example, to introduce a unit on the Fall of Rome.  I can program the chatbot to simulate conversations with historical figures or citizens from late Rome, helping students explore perspectives.

For this lesson, I will program the chatbot to be a citizen of the Roman Empire.  Ideally, I would have students come up with 1-2 questions to ask the chatbot.  I would give them certain topics to help them narrow down their questions such as:  government, economy, military and security, and social and cultural life.  The chatbot’s responses should spark the interest of the students to help kick off the unit.  This lesson provides an opportunity for inquiry.

• Megan Rowerdink

I will add a new one to the list. ReadWorks is a digital library of literature and informational texts for various grade levels. Students can read independently or teachers can assign specific texts (online or in print). In a social studies setting, the teacher can assign a specific article for students, many have multiple choice or extended questions if desired. There are multiple reading levels available to best suit the individual needs of the student/class.

ReadWorks articles are a great way to introduce a subject matter. To catch a student's interest a personal story is often a way to connect the student to the material, this goes to our cultural relevant pedagogy mentioned in our readings/video this week. In ReadWorks there are many short biographies of various figures, many of which are from underrepresented viewpoints. For example, for a unit on the American Revolution there is a biography about Deborah Squash (only 756 words, so very "chunkable"); she was a slave owned by George Washington, escaped during the Revolution, and remained free after the war in Nova Scotia. This is an opportunity to connect students with various viewpoints and the complexities of the past, and capture their interest in hopes of inspiring critical thinking and deep conversations within the classroom.

-Ronnie Tait

Mentimeter - This tool can be used for a variety of different purposes but my favorite are word clouds. I love asking a question, having it on the screen as kids come in so that they can answer anonymously and I can get an idea of what they’re thinking. I have used it to ask them what they think we’re learning today while I have certain music on, or a theme in the class to get them excited. I have also asked them what they think about a certain word to get them curious about what we’re learning but also to see how they are conceptualizing an idea I will introduce later. Mentimeter is great at setting you up with a hook but it is also wonderful for surveys and participation with anonymity if the class is particularly quiet.

Genially - This tool is fantastic for creating virtual escape rooms. Students love gamified learning and a virtual escape room is a great way to help students study for a final. I love having students complete this in pairs or trios so that they are also building community as they work and learn together. With Genially, all you need to do is pick a template and insert your questions and answers, you can change as much or as little as you like and the best part about it is that the templates come with their own story line so it is easy to follow along. If for some reason, you don’t like the story line and are short on time you can always use AI as a thought partner to help develop a story line that is in accordance with your topic. 

https://edpuzzle.com

-Bo Kim

(Whitney Rowan)

THAT SAID, I have been a fan of a Kahoot game for review purposes. Often it is a good way to spend a Tuesday (professional development day so periods are shorter as the kids go home early) and gamifying students' recall of things like character beats and plot events as we head into the final paper or project.

If this was for the purpose of teaching history as I aspire to do, I imagine it helps with things like recall for a quiz or test. The teacher becomes the flashcards for the day. Remembering things like dates is important for history, but it's also important to not have this be the end-all-be-all in students' learning.

Also this is for a bit of fun, but I love to slyly log in and trounce my students, "Wow, this kcavon26475 is kicking our butts!" Some kids figure it out, some don't. It's all in good fun!

Since Kahoot has been so often discussed, I wanted to mention this cool Napkin AI that I found in the 6 Tech Tools article. You can make very cool visuals in seconds and use them on slides, handouts, etc. Like many tech tools, sometimes the amount of choice and options can be a bit distracting, but I wanted to mention this one because it is very interesting.