| Overview of Lessons | |||||||||
| Intro: Egypt Studies ,Art & Interaction | |||||||||
| Instructional objectives- Students will demonstrate learning about an ancient civilization (Egypt) through online notetaking, creation of a display of artifacts with explanations of their thematic relevance, and by evaluation of an online museum interactive website. Time required- One to three classroom work sessions and two to four web based periods of 50 minutes. Advance preparation and prerequisite knowledge/skills- Teacher must examine, and know how to work with the supplied web links, and be able to teach students how to use the online note taking skills. Students need basic website navigation skills, and be able to select, copy, and paste into a drawing or word processing document.(17 minute online video demonstration) Materials/resources required- Internet access. Most efficient if about 1/2 of class can be online at a time, but can be done with either fewer, or more, workstations. A printer for the web notes allows an online>offline workflow to be managed. For the scroll creation, just butcher paper, pencils and either markers or crayons. For a balanced learning experience, social studies texts and topical library books should be used as well. Vocabulary, concepts, focus questions (and responses), generalizations, key points- Civilzations are studied by analyzing "artifacts" that represent important parts of the life and thought of that group of people. For this unit: -The river was the "giver of life" and followed the common pattern of agricultural civilization being centered around rivers. -The ruler-Pharoah- was an absolute ruler, and the social structure was pyramidal. -The religious ideas included many deities, and the idea of life after death -A system of pictoral writing was important both in everyday life and in the philosophy of the civilization. -The Egyptians became very powerful in relation to other peoples. People can understand civilizations by viewing artifacts and clearly written explanations of what that artifact represented to the civilization.... graphical presentation is done to help the viewer! Procedures-Students will create a large scroll of artifacts and annotations based on notes from texts and online resources. They will choose from several online interactive learning activities, and write and evaluation of that experience. The activities of the unit are meant to flow between web, text, and student output in drawing and writing, with these 3 types of learning/doing being balanced and alternating (not all learning can happen at a computer!) Activities - Students search books, and the web, for pictures and explanations that can be composed on a 3 foot paper scroll. The interact with special online challenges and evaluate the interactive site. Extensions or follow-up- There are other online interactives for several other ancient civilizations, and the methods for students to evaluate those sites can be varied. Homework- No homework, but an excellent homework idea would be for students to scan textbook and library books for graphics and information, and focusing class time on the web based work. See Links on left hand navigation list< |
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| Lesson 1- Making History Visible- A Scroll : Students get a list of items they need to find graphical representations of for use in creating a large Scroll about ancient Egypt. The information can be found in our text, but the idea is for students to look more widely and independently to match their particular interest and representational skills with resources available. So they use both text and the internet to find matches. (this also allows for matching of limited computer time/machines, and differentiated help needs) Lesson 2- Online notes- A list of websites to access are given, and a model for notetaking online is demonstrated. We use Appleworks Draw because it is very easy to paste in layers of text and graphics for later rearrangement. However, any word processor that can accept .gif and .jpg files will work also. Students capture text, graphics, captions.... and the all important url for attribution, for later printing and reuse in class. Lesson 3: Art on paper- This is strictly off-line..... or rather, students now use their printed notes to work on representing what they found on a 3 ft long piece of poster paper. They do pencil sketches of items that they think will look the best and be most meaningful for the viewer, leaving space to write descriptions of the item and explain its value as an "artifact". (as they work students find the need to return for more information or a better example) Lesson 4- Evaluating Online Activities- The previous work is in many ways broad and superficial.. although they do work closely with certain artifacts. In this activity, they use excellent online interactives from the British Museum to learn more in depth on an area (or several!), and to then reflect on the value of the online learning tool by writing an evaluation. |
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